The world's largest consumer electronics exhibition opened in Las Vegas on Monday as leading tech companies scrambles to showcase what they achieved in the past year in bring more convenience for people's daily life in this ever-changing digital era.

The 2007 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), a three- day annual event in the sprawling Las Vegas Convention Center and nearby casino hotels, is gathering some 2,900 companies and expected to attract about 140,000 industry visitors from across the world to see the latest gadgets and technology trends.

The halls and meeting rooms are being full with events like new product announcements, panel discussions, and keynote speeches by such industry heavyweights as Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Walt Disney Co.'s Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger.

Microsoft Chairman Gates, who always uses the CES stage to promote his company's new products and ideas, said in a Sunday night speech on the eve of the exhibition that the much-awaited home digital entertainment world based on the Internet is just finally within people's reach.

"Truly, the digital decade is happening, we see it everywhere we look," the world's richest man said in his speech, which has traditionally kicked off the CES show in the last 10 years.

Announcing new Microsoft products and services, Gates made it clear in his speech that the software giant is becoming an more and more powerful player in the emerging world of digital entertainment.

"Consumers are getting more connected and software is at the center of that," said Gates, who announced last year to relieve himself from much of Microsoft's day-to-day business in order to pay more attention to charitable causes.

Gates said Microsoft plans to turn its popular Xbox 360 video gaming console into a television set-top box, making it actually a center of the long-promised, but ever-elusive "digital living room. "

Such updated features of a Xbox 360 could enable consumers not only play games and DVDs on the device, but also use it to download and record television programs and other digital media contents.

Meanwhile, Microsoft executives who joined Gates onstage Sunday night unveiled many of the new features of Microsoft's upcoming Vista operating system, which is to be officially released next month.

These new features, ranging from playing video games to sharing photos, underscore the company's emphasis on making the creation and sharing of digital media easier among its users.

Microsoft's eye for the digital entertainment market would put the company in a head-on competition with its long time rival Apple Computer, which also plans to make its way into the living room with the iTV, a device beaming music, television programs and movies wirelessly from the computer to the television.

And in addition, Microsoft is committed to snatch a bit of the portable media players market, which is currently dominated by Apple's iPod players.

The company said it expects to sell 1 million of its Zune MP3 players by the middle of the year. The device hit the market only in November, almost two years after the iPod established its market dominance.

Apple introduced the iPod MP3 players to the market in 2001, and since then has totally sold over 60 million units of the device. The small music player proved itself a market phenomena and rapidly became popular among young Americans.

Source: Xinhua