Commentary: King of digital home has a familiar look

-- Electronic Business, 5/16/2006

John Croteau, General Manager, Convergent Platforms and Systems Group, Analog Devices Inc.

In 2005, the buzz at the Consumer Electronics Show was the emergence of “convergence” as the driving force behind digital-product design and development and an impending “battle of the titans”—Microsoft, HP, Sony, Intel, and others—for dominion over the digital home. In 2006, and with significantly less fanfare, the winner was unveiled.

The consumer.

Today, consumers have more options for digital media storage and delivery than ever before, and that freedom of choice—along with low interest rates and high discretionary spending—is fueling a manic burst of innovation. PC makers are envisioning new multipurpose machines at the center of the networked home. Unfazed, home theater leaders—Sony, Toshiba and Yamaha, to name a few—that know a thing or two themselves about the future of electronics are delivering dynamic video, audio and data from single consoles. And then there are the telcos, which believe—and are beginning to back it up—that the set-top box is the gateway to IP-based content.

Although the argument over who (both the brand and the kind of company) will win this “war” will continue to sell papers and fuel watercooler conversations, it is ultimately irrelevant, because each plays—and will keep playing—a vital role in the digital home. Call it “checks and balances” consumer-style: We don’t want a king; we want an elected body that gets us to the promised land of “digital” in the right way, and at the right time and cost that suit our individual needs. So, although younger consumers have warmed to the PC’s being the center of the entertainment universe, there’s still a large part of the population that relies on—and will continue to rely on—the comforts of the television and audio receiver.

Another reason these digital-entertainment platforms will have to coexist is because the digital home is best served by open platforms that freely share digital media, giving consumers the out-of-the-box “plug and play” experience they’ve come to expect from consumer appliances. High-performance consumer audio and video processing technologies must gracefully merge with the network and security processing technologies of the connected world. Every digital home device, from the Internet radio and IP set-top box to the home theater, must be able to upgrade and adapt easily to the growing and evolving content and services possibilities that consumers will ultimately demand.

The real fear for consumers should be that a winner actually is crowned, quelling demand for interoperability and innovation. Until then, however, expect device manufacturers to embrace complementary technologies that support internetworking and interoperable content delivery. Disparate content formats and digital rights management (DRM) formats reinforce the importance of building systems and solutions for the digital home that enable an open multiuse model.