Digital Home Still Ten Years Away? What Is & What Isn’t

This is creating some waves among the industry types: While companies like Microsoft and Apple are betting that consumers will want to stream video and audio over home wireless networks, John MacFarlane, CEO of digtial home music player Sonos, said neither consumers nor the technology itself were ready. Video still takes up too much bandwidth; new wi-fi standards that can handle video better are not ready for the mass market.
There needs to be more digital content, and people have to understand the technology, he said. Yes, products are on the market that computers can stream music to, such as the Xbox360, but MacFarlane said that retailers and manufacturers have to get consumers to understand home networking before pushing digital home devices. About one in six homes have a home network in North America, according to a recent report from Forrester Research, and only one in five people who have a home network actually use it to listen to music. “It will happen in the next 10 to 20 years not in the next two,” said MacFarlane.
Meanwhile, Diffusion Group has come out with a counter opinion, arguing over the definition of “digital home”. It defines a digital home as a residence that has a broadband connection and a home network…a simplistic view. If we conceive of the “digital home” as more of “smart home” featuring automation, monitoring, and control technologies, then the digital home may be 20 years away, not just 10. If we conceive of the “digital home” as a broadband networked home, then the digital home is here today and is a growing segment which offers opportunities in the here-and-now (opportunities defined by real-world consumer usage behavior around specific types of applications), says TDG.

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