One event widely reported last week was the failure of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 to function when Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates, tried to initiate a slideshow of photos just taken by Late Night host, Conan O'Brien.

Though media reports from the International Consumer Electronics Show 2005 suggested the Media Center 2005 PC that Gates was using had "frozen" or "crashed", a post on the AV Science Forum by Jay P. Kapur, Lead Program Manager of the Windows Media Center TV Team, suggests this was not the case. Gates was also not given the wrong remote, as Gates had commented during the demonstration.

According to Jay, "... it was the IR repeater on the stage that failed. An IR repeater was used to transmit the remote control commands from the stage to the MCE PC running backstage. The MCE PC itself never failed during the keynote. (Nor did MCE have a hitch on the showfloor or in the theater room in the NextGen Home).

The slideshow in question was shown minutes later by Sean Alexander, another Media Center Product Manager, using the same Media Center PC. It turns out that Sean has a synopsis of the events at CES posted on his blog. The current posts, Behind the scenes at CES Keynote and Part II: Behind the scenes at CES Keynote, cover pre-keynote preparations and worries, as well as the infrared repeater, XBOX, and MSN Remote Record incidents.

Video of the entire keynote is available at the following links: 100kbps 300kbps (Windows Media Video)

Video highlights and a written transcript are also available.