DVD Insider #34 - Big, Bad Chips; Home, Personal Entertainment and Phone Everything
Bigger, Badder Chips
The Wireless Life
Combine the efforts of TI, Broadcom, Intel, AMD, SanDisk, Lexar, VIA and a few
loose change others all bent on meeting Gordon Moore's 40 year old law (March
is the unofficial anniversary date) and what do we have? More chip power and
speed than we can handle.
But boy are we trying!
Chips aren't just for computers any more. They are in everything…doing more
and going everywhere. Do we really need dual-core chips in PCs? Do we need
our cars to be smarter than we are?
Today, wireless and cellular are the fast tracks industry analysts are encouraging
us to be on.
We're pretty happy with our wireless entertainment solution(s) at home. Should
be all sitting on a central media server but the truth is everyone in the family
has his or her "unique" solution. Cripes we can't even get people in our house
to share the inkjet printers.
It's only human nature that we want to freely access everyone else's content
and data but…ours is special, unique, sacred. That's why enterprise centralized
backup/archiving is such an uphill battle.
Our Digital Home
Intel, Cisco and the entire DHWG (Digital Home Working Group) are certain we
desperately want everything wirelessly enabled at home. And why not? IDC shows
that if we connect everything, "we" can be a huge market in the years ahead (Figure
1).
We're really not interested in our refrigerator telling us we're out of ice cream
or that the veggies are rotten. We'll find out next time we open the door.
If we miss Extreme Makeover, our ADS Instant TV will capture it to our system
and if we need to take the show with us we'll copy it to our Store 'n Go and
watch it on our notebook while we're waiting for the plane.
Face it, we can't stop the march of progress. Hardware, software and middleware
suppliers are all working on delivering seamless plug-and-pay solutions. Shortly
everything will be wireless -- our TV, our set-top box, our DVR, our digital
camera, our video game system, our audio player, our storage, our phone, our
car, our virtually everything.
When they get it right you'll never be out of touch with anything or anyone.
Wireless even though it is a work-in-progress has changed our work and home habits.
At the airport you open your notebook and set up office the minute you are through
security. When you get home from work as well as before you go to bed you check
your email. If your company's security is really good you plug in and work from
anywhere. Your cell phone - with its custom ringtones -- is on stand-by 24x7.
According to a recent study by IDC, the new technologies allow us to be more
productive and more effective in the workplace (Figure 2).
The challenge that we see from the IDC study is that the technically progressive
consumers have a difficult time separating work and play (Figure 3). It appears
that people who embrace these technologies first do it because they want to be
more productive in everything they do - at home, in the office, on the road.
Certainly some are interested in the status factor but most seem to opt in because
of the convenience and security wireless solutions provide.
The problem is that not everyone is ready - or willing - to take advantage of
the technologies. Our father has rejected the idea of our giving him a PC and
internet connectivity/training so we can email back and forth anytime. His response
- "you want to talk to me, pick up the phone!"
Let's face it, the technology also comes at a cost - fiscal and physical (Figure
4). The stuff isn't cheap. Then you have to learn how to use it because:
- it isn't intuitive
- most sales people can't or won't spend the time to teach you
- documentation isn't written for ordinary people to understand
- tech support, assuming you can reach a real person, isn't there
to help you learn how to use what you just bought
That sort of tells you that consumer training - at home and at the office - could
be the next career for you. Of course you can always do what we do…ask the kids
for help.
Cellphone Swiss Army Knife
Does a cellphone have to do it all? We don't think so but the chip folks keep
piling on more and more features, more and more capabilities. And we're using
more and more of those features/capabilities (Figure 5). They were widely used
at Pope Paul II's viewing and funeral to send/receive IMs, photos and video clips.
Industry analysts and experts somewhat begrudgingly agree that we want all of
this added to our cellphones so we can take our music, videos, games and friends
with us no matter where we go…even on the plane. Yeah right!
We prefer the sophisticated courtesy of the Japanese to the talk/scream, drive,
eat and shop approach practiced in the Americas. They have IMing down to a science.
They can eat, shop, ride public transportation, watch a movie, attend a lecture
and stay in touch without disturbing anyone. You hardly ever see one of them
with a phone in their hand and wire to their ear talking to themselves.
But everyone is bent on "serving" our pent-up demand. They are working on adding
more and more memory. The combined phone/iPod/MP3 player is practically here.
Beyond snap-and-send they are marching steadily to the 1940s videophone. Shortly
the porn folks will have their "services" available to cellphone users which
should be interesting since the screens are so small you're going to have to
have a great imagination.
All of this content - photos, music, video - is going to give memory (just another
chip technology) an even greater potential according to IDC (Figure 6). While
most of the memory cards will still go for digital cameras they estimate that
more than 808 million units will be sold in 2008, a CAGR of 42% over 2003, and
more than 116 million USB flash drives will be sold. And that doesn't even include
the forecasts for rush of USB pluggable 1-in hard drives like Verbatim's Store
'n Go USB 4GB HD and higher capacity units just standing in the wings.
This all sounds great...but!!!
Have you got really great encryption solutions that you use all of the time just
in case? You know just in case someone "borrows" your notebook from your office,
your hotel room, your house, your bag, your pocket? Just in case you accidentally
leave your phone somewhere? Just in case you lose that great (small) storage
device?
In a heartbeat your entire life - and identity - can disappear.
At least with the new high-speed chips it will go so fast you'll hardly feel
it.
