|  Software giant Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates said in a speech to mark the opening Monday of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas that the networked digital home was no longer a vision, but a reality.
"Truly the digital decade is happening," Gates told some 4,000 delegates late Sunday. "Over 2 billion digital photos were taken last year."
Gates said that 65 per cent of US homes already had a digital camera, 40 per cent more than had a computer.
He used the keynote speech to announce new products from Microsoft and its partners that could further expand the "digital home."
In the second half of the year, Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard plan to launch a simple-to-use home server on which digital multimedia content - like music, videos and photos - and other data can be stored and administered.
Previously, servers tended to be housed in companies and were more difficult to use than ordinary computers. "We think it's a category that can explode in importance," Gates said.
Microsoft's Xbox 360 has a central role to play in the digital home, if chairman Gates gets his way: the Xbox would not only be used as a gaming console, it would also be the product of choice for playing video off the internet.
Gates announced services from 16 providers worldwide that could be played as internet TV, also known as IPTV (internet protocol TV), on the Xbox 360, including some from Deutsche Telecom.
Gates also presented a series of new personal computers that were already using the performance features of the upcoming Windows Vista operating system from Microsoft.
One example from Europe was the Ultra Mobile PC from Germany's Medion that is sold at discount supermarket Aldi.
Gates, who has regularly delivered the opening keynote at CES which celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, is likely to give his last speech to the consumer electronics industry at the show in January 2008.
"After that, I'm not sure they'll want to invite me, because I might talk a lot more about infectious diseases than great software," said Gates, the world's richest man, who plans to retire from daily operations at Microsoft in 2008 to devote himself to the work of his charitable foundation.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation currently has 32 billion dollars to work with in the fight against infections diseases in developing countries.
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