Second Screen and the 2013 CES

We kicked off the 2013 International CES show last week on Monday with a 5-hour, program-packed 2nd Screen Summit--working hard to get the "right" people on stage and in the audience.

But was CES the "2nd Screen CES" we predicted it would be in mid-December?



Here are some thoughts from my tour of the show room suites and booths "on the floor" from CES:

• Dish Networks (combined with their sister company Sling Media) had one of the most innovative consumer experiences on the market, all leveraged by an amazing, well-designed second screen app that allowed "the Hopper" set top box to record all of the shows each day in prime time and made them accessible for streaming or download in a second screen app (integrating companion screen experiences chalk full of social and stimulating features and allowing viewing screen experiences that rivaled most OTT experiences available today).
• Samsung showed some very sexy-looking second screen apps off in their booth, allowing you to push video to and from their TVs and to gain companion viewing experiences at the same time.
• Nintendo showed off their Wii U with a built in second screen experience, declaring themselves that "TV will never be the same."
• Microsoft continued to display its SmartGlass features with live sport and movies.
• Countless third party developers showed off their apps for to enable Discovery, with one of the B2B providers even demonstrating a UI allowing you to choose (from Facebook) who you plan to watch a show with and getting a suggestion on which shows you would both like.
• In fact, I visited every major CE manufacturer on the floor from Panasonic to Hi-Sense and Toshiba to Haier, and every one of them showed me some sort of second screen companion experience or viewing experience (multi-screen) that was already deployed or would be deployed.  
• Additionally, every Pay TV operator I had time to visit plus Tivo had some experience to demonstrate that included a second screen Discovery element.
• Even Engadget and the Verge wrote something interesting up on second screen during the show.

So, while I believe that the 4k displays I saw there were awesome and so were the self-driving cars of the near future, second screen seemed to be everywhere, in every booth and suite.

I wonder what NAB will be like...

@ChuckParkerTech