Sin City is preparing to become the heaven of consumer electronics for the remainder of this week. And so the city's billboards that normally advertise shows aiming to amuse or excite are being covered up with more mundane posters selling LCD monitors.

In the airport arrivals hall, Intel succeeded at getting four side by side billboards touting the Viiv entertainment platform (Viiv rhymes with live) that chief executive Paul Otellini is expected to unveil on Thursday. The billboards showed various entertainment focused taglines and depicted people holding up both hands with their fingers in a "v" shape, which I assume indicates the first and last letters of the Viiv brand.

Warming up to Intel's  new consumer focus, the company on Tuesday already unveiled a new corporate logo that is supposed to tell us consumers that the chip maker is now more about applications than about technology. But insiders will see the signature of Intel's new marketing chief Eric Kim, who was poached from Samsung in November 2004.

Prior to Intel's Viiv blast off, Microsoft's chief software architect will get to deliver his traditional opening keynote on Wednesday afternoon. You can expect a lot of talk about Windows Vista, most notably about the Media Centre edition.

But until then Vegas will be busy cleaning up the remains from the New Year's party and inevitably remain itself. That mean including rude taxi drivers who will tell you off for insufficient tipping after they just insulted you on the way over there and hotels that try to cram you into a disgustingly smelling smoking room.

Finding out the latest and greatest about consumer electronics comes at a price.

Mobile operator Cingular hopes that a CES billboard will revitalize the lacklustre sales for its iTunes phone.

Tags: intel, viiv, CES, ces blog, Microsoft, las vegas