As always, the demos were the talk of the show. How DO I get my wife to let me spring for that quarter-inch thick, 55-inch OLED display? Definitely NOT by buying the robotic window cleaner as an anniversary gift. It seemed like the only thing missing was a Hawaii Chair demo.

Several themes stuck out, but the one that I heard loud and clear was the need for people to find new and better ways to discover content. Remote controls are giving way to multi-platform interfaces, gesture control and in our case, voice-controlled navigation to any set-top box or connected device.

For one thing, there’s entirely too much to see from too many sources for traditional navigation to be effective. For another, there’s a frustration with the limitations of existing remote controls and set-top boxes. Sometimes you can have a different navigation experience on every TV within a single home.

Viewers want to manage all of their video and apps across all of their devices from one central interface that’s the same on every set-top. One of the hot storylines to come out at CES was how ActiveVideo has chosen to partner with Cisco to deliver that type of experience to every STB, from the oldest ones in the field to generations that are still coming to market.

So if CES is any indication, keep your eye on the navigation space in the months to come. You’ll see new ways for viewers to spend less time finding more to watch.

Now, if only someone could find a more efficient way to navigate CES…

Man, you’d think that the Xbox was the first multitasking set-top box ever to infiltrate American homes, based on the excitement over the latest update to Xbox Live. Xbox now offers loads of OTT and some cable content in addition to a top-notch gaming experience, and that’s great… but it’s still just some cable.

There’s a buzz about Xbox Live being the final nail in the coffin of cable set-top boxes. But guess what: Cable STBs are in way more homes than Xboxes. I believe the latest research on just how many STBs are out there reported “bazillions.” Don’t quote me on that, but I think it’s pretty accurate. And those STBs are in it for the long haul.

Sometimes it seems as though it’s “open season” on the cable beast, but the tricky thing is that NONE of these aftermarket set-top boxes, including Xbox Live, offers the breadth and depth of first-rate content that cable does. And that doesn’t appear likely to change for several years at least.

That doesn’t mean that cable isn’t paying attention to Xbox Live and its predecessors. On the contrary, the cable folks are not only keeping up with the Joneses—in many cases, they’re surpassing them with bleeding edge features.

So, while the Xbox tries to be the OTT Trojan horse in American homes, the sleeping giant of home entertainment is the cable STB. And that STB is capable of things that consumers are just beginning to realize: social gaming, T-commerce, and app experiences like live broadcast streaming, PC-to-TV mirroring, VOD & DVR playlists, advanced touch-screen navigation, and more. Tie any digital STB into the cloud and you can basically do anything…including the next hot feature: voice control.

So while the Xbox is adding some TV content to what is essentially a gaming experience, cable boxes are adding interactive features and gaming to a premium TV experience. Which would you prefer when you want to watch TV?

At SCTE Cable-Tec Expo, Cox Communications president Pat Esser talked about how cable isn’t leading “the revolution,” its customers are.

Just to clarify, Pat wasn’t speaking of Occupy Wall Street. He was speaking of the video revolution. And unlike Gil Scott-Heron’s revolution, this one will indeed be televised.

Cable operators have made impressive moves this year to better address the emerging desires of subscribers, who not only want better VOD interfaces and more VOD content, but also over-the-top and Web-based content. As evidenced by the popularity of smartphones and tablets, subscribers would also love apps on television, though the set-top box has proven to be a hurdle to that kind of innovation in the past.

It’s clear that cable operators acutely understand the rapid, seismic shifts that are occurring in terms of how we all consume media. Netflix, Hulu, Microsoft, Sony, Google, Apple—all of these very large and very well-known companies are looking to take a healthy bite out of cable’s dominance, which can no longer be assumed in this fast-changing media world.

Operators, wisely, not only want to serve subscribers’ needs, but also to anticipate their future needs—and even create demand for things that subscribers never would have imagined. And there’s no better way to do that than to deliver enhanced navigation and intriguing TV apps via the cloud.

Why? Because the cloud is fast and flexible. In the cloud, operators can use standard Web dev tools (like HTML5) to prototype and publish applications much faster than they ever could before. They no longer need to worry about which cable set-top box can support which application, because EVERY digital cable box can support apps and interfaces delivered from the cloud. And operators can quickly develop and test new features as consumer preferences change.

So I say, “Viva el Esser revolución!” And I also say, “Más! Más!”

Sometimes the forces of history make people and organizations do things that would have seemed unthinkable just months before they did them.

That seems to be what’s happening right across the street from my office, over at Adobe. What can I say? I like watching history happen outside my window… as well as birds flying by, traffic tie-ups on the Guadalupe, cranky people attacking pigeons and, of course, clouds. Lots and lots of clouds. Anyway…

It was revealed this week that Adobe is bringing a halt to Flash player development on mobile browsers, and letting go of 750 workers in order to refocus its efforts on HTML5 and their AIR platform which produces apps for several of the major app platforms. That’s not all. Adobe is abandoning Flash on connected TVs too.

So that’s interesting. Adobe is obviously trying to tackle the problem of device fragmentation on two fronts: through the support of HTML5 which is fast becoming a ubiquitous standard on all media devices, and through AIR which basically provides one development environment that produces code for several different platforms.

Of course, we prefer the HTML5 route, because in the end, AIR is yet another platform.

GigaOM reported an Adobe spokesperson said, “…we believe the right approach to deliver content on televisions is through applications, not a web browsing experience, and we will continue to encourage the device and content publishing community down that path.”

I’m not really sure how to take that quote. Sounds like they are promoting AIR more so than HTML5 in the case of connected TVs. But surely they know that all the arguments they’ve made for why HTML5 works great for mobile applications apply to the TV world as well. I think everyone agrees that a “web browsing experience” doesn’t work well on TV. That’s what makes HTML5 so great—it’s finally turned the web into a full-fledged application platform.

Perhaps I’m just getting bogged down in semantics, and the real kernel of truth behind that quote is that Adobe doesn’t want to admit that a resource-heavy client like Flash isn’t a good fit for the connected TV world. Manufacturers are trying to get the best bang for the buck out of the least amount of hardware, and the easiest integration.

So, hey Adobe, look out your window, I’m the one in the corner office waving. Sounds like you’re taking one more step towards the cloud and HTML5. Welcome to our side of the street. Who knows, maybe someday we’ll build an airborne bridge between our buildings, just like you have between yours.