Digital Home 10 years off?

Over at the BBC website we stumbled upon an article claiming that the digital home is still 10 years away. We were initially shocked and thought that this was complete crap until we finished reading the article and now we fully understand what they mean.

They mention some powerful statistics that start to bring this into focus.

About one in six homes have a home network in North America, according to a recent report from Forrester Research.

and

According to Forrester, only one in five people who have a home network actually use it to listen to music.
And of people who do not have a home network, one in six said it was because they did not understand what one was.

One of the interesting things about the article is that one of the people they quote saying that the digital home is so far away is none other then the CEO of Sonos, John MacFarlane! Thats when we realized that we had been looking at this segment of the market with rose colored glasses this whole time.

So if we really sit back and think about it what they are getting at makes sense. While the people reading this site know about home networks and how to stream media, we are in the vast minority. It is not until your average non tech savvy person can walk into an electronics store, walk out with a media streaming device and have it installed as quick and easily as they did when they bought their first VCR that this sector will really take off.

The fact that only one in six actually has a home network speaks volumes. And the fact that they have a home network doesn't actual mean they have what you and I consider a home network. Having a wireless router at home so you can use the laptop downstairs doesn't count. When we think of home networks we think of a setup involving client machines, servers, media streamers, back up devices, etc.

The problem is that there isn't enough information out there for the average person on setting up their network. We reviewed a great book on how to do it, but who is buying that? Not mom and pop or average joe.

What we hope is that device manufactures keep building devices for the rest of us. You know the famous line, "build it and they will come". Eventually the rest of America will catch up and everyone will be streaming media around their house and the companies that have been releasing products all along and have been refining their offerings will be the ones poised to grab the largest market share.

One thing is for sure, the digital home is coming, when exactly no one knows, but it is coming. We are so excited for the next few years and the new technologies that will be developed and of course the new gadgets.

Hopefully the whole DRM thing won't destroy the entire industry and the big media companies will embrace the digital world and not hold onto their dying business model. Keep your fingers crossed.

May 10, 2007

Digital Home 10 years off?