Through the fog... The digital home

What's needed to reach the nirvana of integrated, digital technology in the home? Quocirca analyst Christina Ioannidis explains...

You have heard the story and can even imagine the vision. Your home devices seamlessly connected. Broadband connection on your PC, your video and Little Johnny’s shoot-'em-ups available on your games console from your storage facility in your digital TV set-top box. Your integrated PDA/mobile phone wirelessly accessing your address book on your corporate intranet. And the selling points – fast, simple, easy-to-use, no cables, no messing with complex user guides. The home WLAN and the Digital Media Adaptor do all the work for you. We can only but visualise a technological nirvana.

But before this nirvana becomes a reality, there is the need to overcome imminent, and important, issues. It is obvious in today’s market there are three islands jostling for prime position in the home, each depending on one core central device: the trusted PC (where PC and PC peripherals communicate), the TV (via advanced set-top boxes communicating to traditional consumer electronics) and the mobile world (consisting of mobile phones, PDAs, laptops and similar devices enabling connectivity inside and outside the home environment).

What's critical in this battle for domination is that there is not going to be one winner. From the consumer’s perspective, it is clear the TV, PC and mobile are meant for different uses and it is up to manufacturers, service providers and content partners to deliver rich media experiences that are relevant to each context. I will come back to this point later on.

One of the gravest problems is that of device interoperability. We have heard many a story of ISP modems (for example, AOL Broadband's) not talking to WLAN equipment (for example, the Buffalo WBR G54-1 Broadband Access Router). Has it not occurred to ISPs and Wi-Fi players to undertake interoperability testing before going to market? I know that the majority of early adopters are a tenacious bunch and will, by hook or by crook, make the things work but let's consider the poor, less-IT-gifted consumer (and I class myself as one of those). One sour experience and, forget it, I would not go anywhere near this wireless nirvana.

Then devices that we would plug into the home network need to be content agnostic. On the tail side of this, the content delivered needs to be device agnostic. Or, at least, rendered for that particular device. This requires content partners and device manufacturers to work together closely. How close are we to this today? Not very. The usual paranoia dominates the engineers and product developers in the industry and so systems developed are, of course, largely different and proprietary.

One of the best examples of this is in the field of content protection, the contentious area of digital rights management (DRM). Different content providers have different security platforms, a lot of which are proprietary. DRM goes hand in hand with media asset management – the proper exchange of media information (including organisation, browsing, storage, search and selection) across disparate devices.

Corporations such as IBM and BBC Technology are working closely with their broadcasting clients on an open standards basis in order to enable this. IBM is working together with Intel, Matsushita, Toshiba - via 4C entity - licensing protection technologies allowing solutions to be combined to provide end-to-end protection of content as it is delivered to, managed, stored and consumed on a range of devices. Furthermore, IBM’s xCP Cluster Protocol solution binds protected content to a dynamic cluster of in-the-home networked recording and playback devices.

While this article is not a tribute to IBM, it is commendable that it is working to deliver such solutions and it is not doing so alone. It is encouraging to see the Digital Home Working Group, comprising 17 computer, consumer electronics and mobile phone manufacturers working together to encourage such standardisation.

However, assuming we get the technology sorted out in terms of physical media, network transports, media formats, streaming protocols and DRM, so content flows seamlessly across disparate devices (a big assumption), there is the critical issue of getting rich content to end users. Again, it is not a matter of signing up content agreements and pushing out content to Little Johnny at home, much like wireless operators have done to date. Nor is it the ISP model of bombarding portals with what would be relevant services and messages.

The digital hub represents a completely different world. Content providers, service providers and in fact anyone who will be seeking an interactive relationship with users need to understand the difference between a mass-market, one-to-many approach as provided by broadcasting, as opposed to the one-to-one approach needed to capture and retain consumer interest via broadband (traditional, web and via mobile phone/PDA).

It is here that I start feeling very uncomfortable. The industry has to change the way it thinks and really get under the skin of the users in the home. The greatest complexity, of course, arises when considering the different mindsets users have, not only when we use different devices, bound by the limitations of the user interface and form factor, but also depending on the environment we are in. I know that as soon as I walk inside my living room I automatically enter 'autopilot' mode, not prepared to give anything more than simple touches to a remote control. When in my office, however, I easily get to grips with any PC-based software problems.

Then we come to the area of getting potential users attracted to this vision of the digital home. Consumers want their different devices to work together (rather than morphing into one) so they can easily download, create, manage, store and share content. Apart from giving them a user-friendly experience and affordability, they need to be guided on the value of the digital hub in the home. As the Digital Home Working Group states in its Digital Home White Paper: “The vision of convergence has not been realised in the mind of the consumer.”

The industry needs to realise this vision. However, rather than focus on what technology is capable of, it needs to present users with what the technology does for them - provide extensive choice, create opportunities to unlock creativity and share special moments.

It sounds a little simplistic, I know, but at a basic level it is what the industry needs to do – as it does have a tendency to overcomplicate.

Why risk the creation of this nirvana when all stand to gain?

Also in this series:
Through the fog... Will IM stand for 'isolated messaging'?
Through the fog... Who should protect you from viruses?
Through the fog... Software configuration management
Through the fog... The Functional Infrastructure
Through the fog... Mobile tariffs
Through the fog… Management of utility IT
Through the fog… Management of utility IT
Through the fog... How to buy content management software
Through the fog... Getting your business processes finely tuned
Through the fog... Better connecting users to technologies
Through the fog... Better connecting users to technologies
Through the fog... Predictive texting
Through the fog... Business continuity and disaster recovery
Through the fog... Wireless email at work dilemmas
Through the fog... Storage as a service
Through the fog... Buying an application server
Through the fog... Corporate content management
Through the fog... Automated speech recognition
Through the fog... Public Key Infrastructure
Through the fog... Vendor-channel relationships
Through the fog... What future photo messaging?

For Quocirca's 'What's the fuss about...?' series for silicon.com, see this page

And for their earlier 'Surviving the Recession' series, see this page.