CES: Cisco moves further into consumers' homes

LAS VEGAS – Cisco this week unveiled several products to further establish its presence in consumers’ homes. In addition to transitioning its Linksys division into a dedicated consumer business group, forming a consumer-focused council and altering its approach to building consumer products, Cisco introduced both a wireless home audio system and a home media hub.

At a press conference held Wednesday at the Consumer Electronics Show, Cisco unveiled the Linksys-by-Cisco Wireless Home Audio system. The multi-room audio solution uses lossless technology, meaning there won’t be any compression or degradation of the audio signal from source to speaker during wireless transmission. The mix-and-match product includes options of a conductor, CD player and speaker, receiver with an amplifier, player and controller, stereo speaker kit and iPod docking station. Using an 802.11n router, users can access their digital music libraries across the house. The product also supports Rhapsody music for streaming online.

The Linksys-by-Cisco Media Hub is a network-attached storage device that collects the digital video, music and photos consumers may have spread amongst devices in the home, including the PC and TV, and organizes and presents them on a single browser-based location. For $300, consumers can purchase the device with 500 gigabytes of storage, remote access and automatic backup features.

“It is about accessing content,” said Dave Clark, director of product strategy and management at Cisco. “If other devices are tied into it, it’s about moving that content around the home...It’s not dictated by an actual device. I can have that enjoyment throughout the house. You can also store content and back it up. It is available now – easy to use – ease of use was our first bullet point. That is a product that will be moving towards making it easier to enjoy all the stuff in [consumers’] houses.”

Cisco also took the wraps off Eos, a platform for media companies to create their own social networks. The platform will be centered on creating a community for media fans to participate and connect with their favorite artists or TV shows. Cisco will support the ability to create blogs, live chat, message boards and rating and ranking systems. The first announced customer is Warner Music Group, which will use Eos to create dedicated pages customized by its artists, including Sean Paul and Laura Izibor at launch.