Staci is covering BIll Gates’ keynote at CES, and some key announcements and details from Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) on the content side:
-- NBC Tieup: It is tying up with NBCU to power NBCOlympics.com for the upcoming 2008 Olympics. The site will use Microsoft’s Silverlight video technology to power all the live and on-demand video, which is a major win for the still-nascent Flash competitor. The two are also doing an unwieldy branding to the whole thing, something of an MSN specialty: “NBCOlympics.com on MSN”.Videos from NBCOlympics will be prominently featured on the MSN.com homepage as well as on MSN Video and across the MSN and Windows Live networks. Staci adds: It’s a massive project with some 3,000 hours of on-demand and 2,200 hours of live video, the kind that make a nascent product—or break it.

-- XBox Live Content: On its online service for XBox, it has added TV programs from ABC Television and Disney (NYSE: DIS) Channel...for now, a total of about 500 hours of standard and HD content. Also, it has added MGM will bring its library of movies for the service...Microsoft already has similar deals with other studios including Warner Bros.

-- Zune: Its digital music player Zune will be available in Canada in spring 2008. Microsoft also announced that since the November launch of Zune Social, more than 1.5 million people have joined the music-focused social network...which, of course, is puny compared to the bigger online social networks.

-- IPTV: On Microsoft’s IPTV software, it also announced that Mediaroom is now running on 1 million set-top boxes worldwide and launched a new service called called DVR Anywhere, allowing users to watch their recorded programs on multiple TVs in the home.

More details in release here.