Sony highlights uneasy content/technology marriage

Consumer Electronics Show 2006

Sony chief executive Howard Stringer highlighted the challenges convergence poses to his company in his keynote presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"Content and technology are strange bedfellows," he said. "We are joined together. Sometimes we misunderstand each other. But isn't that after all the definition of marriage?"

Stringer challenged the notion that selling hardware and owning content poses a challenge for the company, which owns record labels and a movie studio in addition to its consumer electronics business. 

The issue was brought to the forefront last December when Sony BMG created a PR nightmare by using anti-piracy technology on its music CDs that turned out to pose a significant security risk.

"Sony BMG did not intend to punish the consumer," Stringer said as he apologised for the debacle.

Highlighting the need to combine technology with content, Sony lined up newly launched products such as the new Sony Reader, a portable e-book reader. Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code will be one of the first books to be available on the Reader when it is launched later this spring.

• Consumer Electronics Show 2006: News, views, reviews and blogs

Speaking at the event, Brown touted the reader as a device that will "level the playing field" for new writers and might "save some trees".

Stringer was also joined on stage by actor Tom Hanks, who plays the lead in a forthcoming movie based on The Da Vinci Code, as well as the movie's director and producer.

Sony also showed off its LocationFree device, which allows consumers to watch television at home on their PSP gaming device or a laptop computer. The technology was launched in Japan and the US in October and will be launched in Europe later this year.

The sharing of content, or convergence of content and hardware, will soon pose new challenges, Stringer warned, as consumers are increasingly creating their own content such as blogs and podcasts.

"We will experience another kind of convergence as our newly empowered digital citizenry all over the globe have to grapple with the same sticky questions such as: 'Who owns what?' and 'Who has the right to share?'. These are questions that none of us can afford to duck."

Consumer Electronics Show 2006: News, views, reviews and blogs