Happy New Year! Know what early January means besides new gym memberships? CES of course! The world’s largest consumer tech show, with 2500 exhibitors unveiling “next generation” consumer electronics is under way, and there’s some great news about new devices, apps, chips and services from Open Screen Project partners and others.

• At MAX 2010 we announced AIR for TV for developers and content providers to extend rich media experiences and interactivity to TV. At CES, the HDTV market leader in the U.S., Samsung, and Adobe announced that Samsung will be the first to integrate support for Adobe AIR 2.5 for TV, making it easy for developers to build (using Creative Suite 5), distribute and monetize standalone applications through Samsung’s Smart TV applications store, Samsung Apps. All of Samsung’s 2011 Smart TVs and Smart Blu-ray players will include support for Adobe AIR for TV. Samsung also announced plans to bring Flash Player 10.1 to its Smart TV browser, extending the company’s current support for Flash Player 10.1 on Samsung smartphones and tablets.

• What will the AIR app experience on Samsung TV’s be like? Companies such as CNET, Epix and YouTube are now developing apps for Samsung’s TV app store. Check out the video below for an early look:

Want to start developing your own apps for the new Samsung TVs? Watch Don Woodward’s MAX 2010 session, “How to Develop AIR for TV Applications” and then check out the resource pages here.

• Motorola made news about upcoming devices:
  • With Verizon, they unveiled the Motorola XOOM — the first device on Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb OS designed from the ground up for tablets. Coming Q2 2011. They also announced the DROID Bionic 4G, a new, fast, Android smartphone. Both with support for Flash Player 10.1.
  • With T-Mobile, Motorola announced Motorola CLIQ 2™ with MOTOBLUR™, a 3.7-inch touch screen smartphone with a slide-out keypad. Powered by Android 2.2 and Flash Player 10.1. Available in late January.
  • With AT&T, they launched the Motorola ATRIX 4G, which runs a full Mozilla Firefox 3.6 browser and supports Flash Player 10.1. Available Q1 2011

• NVIDIA announced the arrival of NVIDIA® Tegra™ 2 chips that will power “superphones.” Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen was on stage with NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang discussing the new developments and the importance of Flash support on devices. Watch a demo of a new LG Optimus 2X superphone on CNET

• AMD announced the Fusion family of APUs with low battery consumption, improved graphics and video performance on notebooks and netbooks. AMD Fusion APUs will compliment the upcoming release of Flash Player 10.2, which will include a new video hardware acceleration model that enables dramatically enhanced video playback performance. Sigma Designs, a leading provider of SoC solutions for delivering home entertainment, announced support for AIR for TV and Flash Player running in an Espial browser for TVs. STMicroelectronics, a leader in chips for set-top boxes and digital TVs, introduced out-of-the box content protection for premium Interactive TV video using Adobe Flash Access. Flash Access is integrated with AIR for TV for a content protection solution with support of a broad range of business models, including electronic sell-through, pay-per-view, subscriptions or rentals, just to name a few. Support for Adobe AIR for TV with Flash Access on STMicroelectronics chipsets allows device manufacturers and content providers to rely on a secure, flexible and scalable solution for content distribution and monetization across many devices.

• Another interesting announcement from CES is for UltraViolet, a new system that will allow consumers to purchase digital content and watch it wherever and whenever they want. People who purchase UltraViolet entertainment can watch film and TV content across multiple branded platforms, such as computers, connected TVs, game consoles, smartphones and tablets. UltraViolet came about from a consortium of companies as part of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), which includes Adobe and dozens of other companies such as Akamai, Best Buy, Cisco, Comcast, Dell, Fox, HP, Intel, LG Electronics, Lionsgate, Microsoft, Motorola, NBC Universal, Netflix, Nokia, Panasonic, Paramount Pictures, Philips, RIAA, Samsung Electronics, Sony, Technicolor, Toshiba and VeriSign.

Be sure to check back after CES as we hope to provide some on-the-floor demos of the Flash Platform in action!