It was hard to miss the fact that Hollywood got star billing at the geekfest that is the annual Consumer Electronics Show. TV stars were everywhere in Las Vegas, and not behind velvet ropes.

Vanna White warmed up the crowd at an invitation-only Sony event. Alex Trebek waxed poetic about Jeopardy’s online games, and Jerry Seinfeld, fronting for Sony’s new online efforts, had ‘em rolling in their folding chairs with gags about everything from his 80-year-old mother to Viagra (”Ever wonder why there’s always a guy climbing a mountain in those ads? And signal a doctor whether the condition persists for four hours? Not before I know what he’s gonna do to me!”). Kevin Costner was roaming the convention floor, and NBC’s news elite, including both Brian Williams and Al Roker, were broadcasting from the show.

Even Brian Roberts, the chief executive of cable giant Comcast, who was delivering the first-ever keynote speech by

a cable guy at the show, played straight man for American Idol host Ryan Seacrest. He fed Seacrest lines during a presentation at which Comcast unveiled several video initiatives, including Fancast, a new service that lets subscribers program their DVRs online or go through to watch TV shows on the Web. Roberts, looking a little lost, watched as Seacrest ad-libbed even while clips from Fancast filled the giant screen behind him. “He didn’t say that stuff during rehearsals,” Roberts told me afterwards.

Yes, the moment has come: Media companies are grabbing the starring role in the world of bits and bytes. The two big winners at that year’s show, at least from where I was sitting, were Sony and Comcast. O.K., Sony is hardly a newcomer to the CES doings. But for the first duration, the company cleared some space to show off its new online sites from…

Orginal post by Top Tech News