Orchestrating the digital living room

In all, Tim spent close to eight hours helping me. But, being a computer guy, he wasn't discouraged.

In fact, he'd like to get a media center - after the price comes down. "Even at $999, it costs more than your TV and my TV," he says. "I think there is some unwritten rule that you should spend at least as much on your TV as you do on the stuff to drive your TV."

Nonetheless, he says, "I definitely think this is the way we are going to be doing things. Recording a movie on anything other than a hard drive is going to seem like horse-and-buggy days. You'll only record to a DVD if you want to bring the movie with you."

But what do you do if you want to set up a family media center and you're not a computer whiz - or know one? There's a "whole burgeoning market right now for people who do high-tech handyman stuff," Cooley says. In the fall, CNET will begin offering a list of what it's calling "home integrators" who'll come to your house, install your electronic devices, and make sure they talk to each other properly.

"People really do want this stuff. They do want convergence," Cooley says. It's a case of marrying the worlds of PCs and consumer electronics (TVs, stereos), which "have different ethics," he says.

The PC industry is all about the potential of new hardware to do new things. The consumer-electronics industry is much more conservative, he says. "They're all about ease of use."

Setting some industry standards will be a part of the solution, just as when automakers agreed that a car's accelerator pedal is always under your right foot. Whoever can make these two worlds live together comfortably will win customers, he says. "Convenience always wins."

Which means, according to some seers, eventually even the wireless mouse and remote control need to give way to some sort of voice-recognition system. (Maybe we'll give our media centers names: "Hal, record all coming episodes of 'The Apprentice.' "Hal, show me my new e-mails.")

We aren't there yet - but I can see how media centers are going to be a lot of fun, once a few more hassles are eliminated.

Today's PC and Internet users want to share media among their digital home devices, such as DVD and CD players, computers, TVs, and hand-held wireless devices. Here is what people say they're looking for:

• 39 percent of PC households are interested in installing a home network in order to view photos on any TV or PC.

• 33 percent are interested in downloading movies and sharing them among the devices they own.

• 31 percent would like to download music and share it among devices.

• 28 percent are interested in sending video between devices in the home.

• 21 percent of US households want to use their PCs for digital video recording.

Market researchers have estimated that 35 million devices are currently connected in home entertainment networks. By the end of 2007, it's expected that 183 million devices will be connected in home entertainment networks. That's a compound annual growth rate of 65 percent.

Sources: Intel, the Yankee Group, Park Associates, CED

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