Getting to the Networked Home
Digital Wizardry
Broadband content is moving in wildly creative directions, as the story on News@Cisco, "Following Video Wizards," clearly demonstrates.
What remains hazy is how these new media forms will be made available to us, the consumer.
Dana Gardner, principal analyst of Interarbor-Solutions, sees a landscape where multiple content providers and delivery channels are all jockeying for advantage. Coming soon, he says, will be a convergence of digital entertainment and connectivity solutions born of necessity in which partnerships will be created to serve the networked home.
"People are looking for simplicity and convenience and an all-in-one kind of approach that will not leave them doing integration," says Gardner, "So we are seeing some major players - Intel, Microsoft, Apple and Cisco - all starting to piece things together in terms of simplicity, completeness and convenience."
A catalyst needs to occur to create one solution for the regular user - you and me.
"When my broadband provider says to me that, ‘For $120, you get broadband, TV, VoIP, a place to host your blog, a website to download your pictures, and you’ll be able to do metered TV, and you’ll only pay for channels you want and get access to a rental store to rent movies compatible with your mp3 player of choice,’ then we are talking about the big enchilada,’” Gardner says. “For $120, I’d say ’Yeah, I’m in with that, and if you want to throw in a cell phone service for $30, terrific.”
That will be the kind of package that will get us all the way into the networked home.
"So why don’t partnerships happen where Cisco on the backend works with Time Warner on the front end?" Gardner asks. "When I buy a car, I don’t buy a transmission from Ford and an engine from Toyota and wheels from GM and put it together in my garage."
We just want the car.
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