LAS VEGAS -- Oh, pity the poor Sony speech writer who had to come up with the script for Tom Hanks at the Consumer Electronics Show today.

The movie star was the opening guest for Sony CEO Howard Stringer's keynote, but he immediately started improvising, lampooning the state-of-the industry speech delivered earlier in the morning by Consumer Electronics Association chief Gary Shapiro, who had made parallels to the VHS-Sony Betamax wars. Hanks then poked fun at Sony itself throughout his appearance.

"What a cup-of-coffee wakeup Gary Shapiro is," Hanks started out, imitating Shapiro's stage-pacing and joking that he wasn't there to promote the upcoming "Angels & Demons" or to curry favor with Sony execs. "Oh, no, I'm here simply because of Betamax regret. I went VHS, what a fool I was! What a different world this would have been if I had been one of the 600 people who bought Betamax!"

That wasn't exactly an accurate portrayal of Shapiro's comments, but anyway, it was funny, and it went on from there -- with Hanks poking fun at the script that called for him to wax on about the pervasiveness of Sony in his life.

"Everywhere I turn in this world, I see the name, Sony. Sony! Sony! Sony! I show up on the set and there it is on the camera: Sony," he read from the script, before adding, "Really? I have yet to see that."

The whole thing was hilarious, and the audience cracked up. But maybe Microsoft was smart not to bring out any celebs for its CES keynote. When Stringer came out, he told the audience, "I took a risk. It failed. But we'll still be friends. At least until after the movie."