| Sumario: | This article the home entertainment industry's efforts to push its vision of the "digital home" on consumers who may not want what the industry is offering. Whether or not computer, software, consumer-electronics, telecoms, cable and internet companies are in fact out of touch with consumers may be the biggest question facing these industries today. That is because the digital home, a concept and category hugely hyped in executive circles but still rarely heard in discussions among consumers, represents their greatest hope for revenue growth. Darcy Travlos, an analyst at CreditSights, a research firm, estimates the market opportunity of the digital home at $250 billion in America alone and $1 trillion worldwide in three to seven years. The first challenge in stimulating any sort of consumer interest is the difficulty of merely explaining what the digital home is supposed to be. Companies invariably mean a home in which all sorts of electronic devices--from the personal computer (PC) to the TV set-top box, the stereo, the game console and, in some versions, even the garage door and refrigerator--are connected, both to one another and to the internet. It may seem ironic that vendors are refusing to make their technologies interoperable, thus potentially killing their own vision. On the other hand, it makes sense for each to try to make its own proprietary technology the winner, in order later to grab a disproportionate share of the market. For the foreseeable future, the only certainty is that all these mighty companies will continue to preach interoperability while pursuing proprietary hegemony. This could lead to several scenarios. One is that one company, or camp, wins. Another possibility is that the technology wars end with a truce, perhaps brokered by industry consortia that push open standards. There is a third possibility. This is that the wars continue, but consumers continue not to care.
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