"We believe 2008 will be a watershed year for Blu-ray's ascent in the marketplace," Beeks said.
That enthusiasm appears to be shared by the show's attendees, who flocked to the numerous Blu-ray displays on the show floor. The numbers were noticeably thinner at similar HD DVD displays.
Jodi Sally, vice president of marketing for Toshiba America's digital audio video group, emphasized the continued retail support for its HD DVD format, which has sold more 1 million players since its introduction.
"I've been here for two days of back-to-back meetings with retailers," Sally said. "We are really encouraged by our meetings and the response of retailers that they will continue to offer consumers a choice."
Industry executives said it would be unusual for retailers to abandon any format so soon after Christmas, for fear of sparking a flood of returns.
Here's a roundup of other news and observations from the convention:
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Even gadgets for the pacifier set
Gadgets for grown-ups may be chock-a-block at CES, but the electronics market for the juice-box set is expanding fast. Sales of so-called youth electronics grew 22% in 2006, contributing $1 billion to the $22-billion U.S. toy market that year, according to market research firm NPD.
Some gizmos target children even before they can walk, such as the V-Smile Baby Infant Development System, a push-button lap console for tots.
Because Junior is unlikely to have a credit card, gadget makers don't worry about marketing to him; they pitch their products to parents by boasting that the products can turn kids into the next Stephen Hawking. Yet many have no scientific basis for making these claims, according to a report released Tuesday by the Sesame Workshop's Joan Ganz Cooney Center.
Of the 300 video games released in 2007 as "edutainment" titles, only 69 contained any educational value, according to the report. Just two were based on any type of curriculum, such as math, science or literacy.
Unless the endless beeps and songs drive parents nuts, they don't necessarily have to chuck these gizmos because children learn from them in other ways.
"Technology is another material for children to actively explore," Warren Buckleitner, editor of Children's Technology Review, said during a talk at the Sandbox Summit here.
The event, put on by the Parents' Choice Foundation, explored the question of what kids are doing with technology and what they're getting out of it.
