Solving the digital device dilemma

Connected devices are the key to the connected home. This is a statement most operators, manufacturers and vendors fighting for space in the digital living room can agree on. Defining the digital living room is where things start to get murky.

For Apple, CEO Steve Jobs says it's really just a hobby. In the company's fourth-quarter earnings call, he blamed the economy for the lack of real success in the digital living room and said that experimentation has slowed down, with many early companies fading away entirely. Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst with In-Stat, agrees with Jobs. “The digital living room should come with the warning ‘some assembly required,’” he said. It's not an easy thing to set up, as evidenced by the number of people who buy high-definition (HD) television sets, hook them up incorrectly and can't use the service as intended.

“The consumer electronics industry as a whole has really fallen flat on its face to make this deliverable,” Kaufhold said. “To get this to work, it takes a higher level of consideration than the typical user will give it. As soon as they see that phrase ‘some assembly required,’ they put it back down.”

Still, a large group of start-ups and established device manufacturers are focused on transforming this ‘hobby’ into the standard for connected homes everywhere. According to In-Stat surveys, the average consumer has between seven and 10 devices in the home, typically including a TV, surround-sound receiver, CD player, DVD player, VCR, MP3 player, and at least one set-top box (STB). This cacophony of devices could be simplified and replaced by an emerging class of all-in-one devices that combine the PC experience with the TV form factor.

Several electronics manufacturers, including Panasonic, Sharp and Sony, have launched HD plasma TVs that fall into this category. On Panasonic's Viera Link line of TV sets, a walled-garden browsing experience lets users access YouTube videos, Picasa online photo albums, weather information and Bloomberg Television content, streamed from the server to the gateway.

Panasonic is working with cable company Comcast to bring tru2way cable service to all its markets within the next year. The technology lends itself well to the Viera Link TVs in that it eliminates the need for an STB and extra remotes. Any equipped TV can be connected to a cable service through a middleware layer, which serves as an internal platform that software companies and developers can use to create new applications and services.