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The Home
Network/Entertainment Connection Is…Easy
by
Andy Marken
“Hey Bill, look, do
me a favor, give him a chance. He came in
here with a little piece of information. I
know you worked with him before and had a
little trouble, but don't get off on the
wrong foot, if you have problems, come to me
with them, I'll handle it.” – Walt
Simonson, The French Connection, 1971
Even
though there is entertainment everywhere –
on your TV, on your PC, on your smartphone –
people still go to movies.
It’s
escape from reality.
There’s
always a happy ending or at least good
triumphs over evil. The same is true when
Jobs, Gates/Ballmer, Otellini and others
take the stage. 80% of the time the demos
work…flawlessly. The other 20% of the
time? Guys who set up the demos didn’t
want to work there anyway!
We always
wanted the same for our modest home.
Everything
at Home –
Consumers
don’t want to run to the store every time
they have a question about their home
computing and entertainment networks. They
don’t want to call in the repair/support
person. They simply want the stuff to
work…first time, every time. Scene
Credit – The French Connection, 20th
Century Fox
But
unlike the movie version of a home
PC/entertainment solution it doesn’t just
suddenly appear…it evolves. It’s a waste of
hard earned dollars for every computer user
in the house to have his/her own
printer…their own internet connection. Home
networks have gotten easier over the years.
We still have some wires running along the
baseboard but the wireless hub finally set
us free.
Kids can
work in their room, by the pool, wherever.
Of course we don’t talk anymore. We email
(that’s old-fashioned but we’ve mastered
it), text, IM. The kids abandon the TV.
Don’t need it.
Everything is on the Web.
- Web-ready
–
If you
wonder why our son spends even his spare
time on the computer it is because as far as
he is concerned it’s where all the best
entertainment lives. Music, videos, TV,
movie clips, almost anything/everything you
can imagine is vying to for eyeballs on the
web. Illustration – NYTimes
YouTube,
MySpace, Yahoo whatever…they all have news,
information, entertainment, movie clips,
music and yes commercials. Even though the
audience is the younger crowd (below 30),
the market is expanding because of the
variety of stuff you can find.
Video
Rich, Video Ready –
The
web-enabled generation (24 and younger)
expect to find all of their content
available to them at the click of a mouse.
Their monitors are their first port of call
for movie clips, dumb/dumber videos, TV
shows and more. Source – Ipsos
Doesn’t
take long to find that you’ve got to add
more hardware. You download everything –
just in case. A cute dog trick here. A
great music video there. Sports
highlights. On The Lot and
American Inventor shows. Before
long you’re out of space and need more
flash, more CDs/DVDs, bigger HDs.
“And by the time it
gets down to nickel bags, it will be worth
at lest thirty-two million.” – Sal Boca.
Breaking
the individual storage upgrade habit is
pretty easy and damn cheap! For us the logic
was upgrading one of the PCs (logically
ours) and adding a network attached storage
device.
Shared
Content –
Once the
family moves beyond individual PCs to
networked system with Internet connection,
the next phase is to centralize content –
photos, music and video – so everyone on the
network can entertain him/herself when they
want, how they want. Source – Parks
Associates
With a 1TB
NAS you swear to gawd you can control the
world…After all our first HD was 5MB and we
had no idea how we would fill it. Today with
Vista bloat (Leopard isn’t a lot better) and
the world at your fingertips…
Tellywood
is firmly convincing the law that with all
that power, all that capacity, all that
sneaky will you’re going to spend 80% of
your time stealing their stuff.
Or as Sal
Boca warned… ‘I'm telling you, they'll
split if we don't move! This guy's got 'em
like that, he's everything they say he is!”
Not on
our systems. Not on most folks storage
devices.
Stealing On
The Fly --
Anyone with
a lick of sense and even a modicum of
research in their neighborhood would find
that most people who grab and store
information and content on their computer
hard drive don’t spend the time, effort and
money to steal and store movies. They are
far more interested in themselves and
personalized content – great photos, great
music, great personal videos. Source –
Parks Associates
Unless
you’re a Doom9er Tellywood’s “prize jewels”
are way down on your priority list of
important stuff you have on your system.
Yeah we know. Doesn’t stop them from
acting like Walt Simonson…“Buddy, here's
the warrant. The court order's in there for
the wiretap, the judge gave you sixty days
on it. Tell Doyle that Mulderig and Klein
will sit in for the Feds.” .
The home
computer network has become “almost” plug ‘n
play. All you need is a good friend or
neighbor who happens to be very
technically inclined!
He plugs…you play.
Unfortunately when it comes to the home
entertainment network We believed
Otellini at IDF (Intel Developers Forum) two
years ago. Believed Gates at CES.
All we
wanted to do is get in on the fun, the
action. You know:
-
stream videos
-
download videos
-
share videos
-
record TV on the PC
-
watch videos on portables – phone,
PMP, whatever
-
grab a couple of good movies on the
PC
Nothing
much. Just all the neat things they did so
easily! You can complain about blue
differences holding back brilliant home
movie viewing but it’s a street punk
compared to home entertainment network turf
wars. Every acronym group has the right
answer…
Our home
solution wasn’t installed…it evolved! Only
in the movies and Home Theater
and Architectural Digest do
people build their entertainment around an
automated, controlled-environment room!
TV is in
one room. Stereo is in another. PCs are
everywhere. Bringing them together to
talk/play is…fun.
First
generation was to use
Pinnacle’s ShowCenter seemed like a
great alternative to MS “sure fire” Media
Center enabled PCs that folks wanted you to
buy. After a little effort it worked ok. A
lot better than an earlier attempt to
connect our PC to a big screen LCD using the
DVI outputs and connecting to the HDMI
inputs on the panel.
Display
resolution configuration is so much fun.
But the
ShowCenter did allow us to move content
(photos and video) from one PC to another
and even to the big screen. Even got to
master the PVR and timeshift shows…now all
we need is viewing time.
Once
you’ve done that you’ll want to placeshift
shows and events. Back to the big box store
for a WiFi solution that handles both
standard and high def content. Between the
techie friend and techie son we were able to
figure out how to use
PCTV To Go HD Wireless and even
configure our notebook so we could use it on
the road.
Of course
kids have everyone else’s content – music,
video – on their smartphone and PMP in no
time. Our home media network “almost” looks
like the stuff Gates, Jobs, Otellini talk
about … almost.
Computing to
Entertainment --
Most
consumers have moved from information and
entertainment islands – PC, PC network, TV,
portable device – to a connected/shared
environment that enables them to entertain
themselves individually and as a family when
and where it is convenient. Source –
iSuppli
Can mere
mortals install these things?
Following the “easy to install” instructions
ain’t that easy! But selling the
dream? Goldmine! That’s
where the new generation service guy comes
in. We know folks who tried it with
their cable guy. Bust.
We know
people who tried it with their phone person.
Hello ??
That’s why
PC/CE network installation/service contracts
are going to be huge!!
Getting
the Job Done –
All of the
parts for the home computer/entertainment
network is out there. The challenge for
most consumers is getting the pieces to work
and play together. Until the industry has
true tinker toy plug and play solutions,
there will be a ready market for
installation and service support by
integration/implementation experts.
Source – Parks Associates
We’ll
attend the next keynote and press
presentation and get excited. We’ll also
walk behind the stage and look at the poor
techies sweating bullets and crossing their
fingers. If content doesn’t fly
everywhere? There are always support jobs in
New Delhi!
You’ll buy
the new sweets the boys are pushing. Just
remember what Walt Simonson said,
“Brooklyn is loaded with guys that own candy
stores, two cars, and like to go to
nightclubs!”
Don’t
worry…the service guy will show up.
The Reliable
Service Guy --
With
everyone wanting to lock in their consumers
you can expect to see a wide range of
offerings from the cable guy, the phone guy
and your PC/CE store. They’ll all knock at
your door…the challenge will be to determine
which one you’ll let in the house. Scene
Credit – The French Connection, 20th
Century Fox
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copyright 2007
Andy Marken
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