A look at the new world of on-demand media

LAS VEGAS -- The telecommunications industry over the past year promised drastic changes in how we're entertained and informed. This week, consumers get their first glimpse of how the industry plans to make those promises come true.

Cable companies, mobile phone providers, and telephone companies all grasped at each others' turf in 2005, and spent billions on mergers, network upgrades, and partnerships that promised to usher in an era when movies, music, and television would be available from anywhere at any time. Cable boxes, they said, would be programmable via a cellphone miles away, that same cellphone would allow you to watch a movie stored on your TiVo, and the TiVo could get its programming from the local phone company, not the cable guys.

All those moves have set the stage for the Consumer Electronics Show, the country's biggest home and mobile technology trade show, which this year should begin to show how all of these new services will work in consumers' hands.

''It has to become real at this show," said Ford Cavallari, senior vice president and head of the consumer practice at Adventis, a Boston management consulting firm. ''If the telcos want to stay competitive, they need to make a transition."

That transition could be as dramatic as the difference between how Ward Cleaver and George Jetson watched television.

Most of the major phone, wireless, and cable companies have remained tightlipped about their major unveilings in the weeks leading up to the convention. But information leaked by some smaller companies and subtle hints dropped by the big players have given a clear indication about what consumers can expect in the year to come.

Microsoft will unveil its long-awaited new version of Windows, called Vista, which the company says will provide ''enhancements to TV and movies, digital memories, music and gaming." The company's founder, Bill Gates, is offering the opening keynote speech today, and its chief executive, Steve Ballmer, is highlighted as a participant at a Verizon Wireless press conference tomorrow morning.

Verizon Wireless launched its broadband media service, V-Cast, which allows customers to watch video clips and download ring tones to their cellphones, at last year's convention. It has said that it plans to unveil a music service offering downloadable songs to cellphones early this year.

Other companies haven't been the least bit coy about what they plan to show this week. Sling Media, a San Francisco company that makes the Slingbox -- a device that lets users access programming from their televisions on a PC or laptop anywhere in world -- will unveil new software that will let the service work on mobile devices as well.

Brian Jaquet, a spokesman for the company, said the service would be available to consumers as early as February. The Slingbox can already access live shows coming through a cable box and recorded shows stored on a digital video recorder, then shoot them to Internet-connected computers for viewing. With the new service, that portability will be extended to any device with a wireless high-speed connection and equipped with Microsoft's Windows Mobile operating system.

Such advancements are part of a paradigm shift that Cavallari said he believes will be kicked off during this week's convention, in which consumers' expectations of an on-demand world will finally be met with real technology.

''The way entertainment is currently packaged, that's a very 1950s way of delivering TV. When you have both time and location independence, then you have an entertainment universe that the consumer of 2006 can relate to," he said.

Other analysts agreed that a shift is approaching, but aren't convinced that the time is now.

''The things that the cable guys are looking for in terms of controlling your cable box and being able to control your content from you cellphone is probably an '07 event," rather than an announcement to be made this week, said Jeff Bray, an analyst at Babson Capital Management in Boston.

Rather than groundbreaking announcements about devices that will revolutionize how people watch TV, Bray said he expects prototypes of devices that will further whet consumers' appetites for technology promised last year.

He pointed to a deal announced in November that called for wireless provider Sprint Nextel and five cable companies, including Comcast Corp., to invest $200 million to develop phones that can access cable content remotely.

''The key is going to be bringing the cost of the phones down. They're probably not going to be cheap enough this year," Bray said.

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.