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They were still laying the carpet and bolting TVs to the walls at the massive IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin today as I wandered around checking out the new technology on offer.
The show really gets underway tomorrow but I've already clapped eyes on enough new gadgets to suggest there's nothing wrong with the state of innovation in consumer electronics.
A dominant theme to the show hasn't become obvious yet, but there certainly seems to be a major focus on kick-starting growth in high-definition media formats the dominant two of which are HD-DVD and Blu-ray.
If you didn't know already, there's a major format war going on between the two technologies, one which has divided Hollywood studios and consumer electronics makers alike.
Just last week, Paramount and Dreamworks turned their back on Blu-ray, undertaking to release future titles on the HD-DVD format developed by Toshiba and backed, by among others Microsoft, which has an external HD-DVD add-on for its Xbox 360 video games console.
It was no surprise that at the Blu-ray Disc Association press conference today, its members were putting on a show of unity with executives from the likes of Disney, Warners and 20th Century Fox releasing details of the blockbusters they'll be releasing on Blu-ray in the run up to Christmas - the Harry Potter and Spiderman franchises and the Prison Break TV series among them.
Blu-ray announced some new wins - Hitachi is releasing a Blu-ray player and Acer is joining the group. The Chinese Huala Group, a major supplier of audio-visual content on the mainland is building an authoring centre to produce Blu-ray titles for domestic distribution but also with a view to exporting.
The Blu-ray gang also released some interesting statistics. Of high-definition players old in the US, 63 per cent are Blu-ray players, 30 per cent HD-DVD players and 7 per cent dual-format players such as the one released earlier this year by LG. In Europe, Blu-ray movie sales outstrip HD-DVD sales by two to one.
Sony Pictures' executive vice president of advanced technologies said he thought it was hard to rationalise Paramount's move to HD-DVD.
"Paramount had the opportunity as well as Dreamworks, to evaluate the same marketplace numbers," he said.
Eklund said he had recently invited kiwi director Martin Campbell in to Sony to watch the Blu-ray version of Casino Royale, Campbell's second James Bond effort. A good portion of Sony's Blu-ray movie sales can be attributed to that movie. Campbell appeared in a video interview to say of Blu-ray "I'm a big fan of it and I hope all my future movies are released in Blu-ray".
The Blu-ray association has also been talking up the interest independent film companies like France's Studio Canal are showing in releasing their movies on Blu-ray.
It all sounds very good for Blu-ray, but the HD-DVD camp gets its moment in the IFA spotlight tomorrow. While it will be hard to negate the superior Blu-ray sales figures, there's speculation that HD-DVD is going to begin competing viciously on price, with talk of HD-DVD players hitting the market in the near future at the US$200 mark.
One thing seems obvious, the high-def format is entering a new phase, one where the respective benefits of the technology aren't the focus of attention any more, but the industry alliances that could see one prevail over the other in the next couple of years.
