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DVD Insider #30 - Digital Content Everywhere and The Flag
Will Soon Fly
IDF
- Digital Everywhere
IDF - The Digital Home
GDC - Games Are Serious Business
The Infernal Flag
Sometimes it's tough to separate
fact from fiction from wishful thinking at IDF
(Intel Developer Forum) but you have to try or you'd
swear that tomorrow you're
going to go out and buy an ultralite notebook with
a battery life of days that
you could use just everywhere. Intel unveiled their
new dual and multicore processors
that made yesteryear's Big Blue iron pale by comparison.
It was pure coincidence
that AMD also announced their technology the same week. |
|
But the new notebooks have big screens
to die for. They have wireless connectivity
to your home, office, neighbor and beyond. You can put it
into your car - think
MTV's Pimp My Ride - or your rented spaceship. You have the
power to multitask
to your heart content at the office and then still go home
and make movies, watch
TV or go visually online to talk to friends around the globe.
The new processors are great but something is missing. Oh
yes, an operating
system and applications. Longhorn is "coming." Applications
are "coming."
Barrett and his team probably spend more time pushing and
encouraging partners
to step up to the plate than they do to keeping pace with
Gordon Moore's 40-year-old
transistor law (doubling the number of transistors on the
chip every 12-18 months).
Today we've got web commerce, messaging, video, audio, wireless
computing and
implementation in every phase of life and commerce. While
IDF sessions spent
a lot of time talking about the enterprise, everyone's heart
is set on mobile
computing and the digital home.
Wireless and mobile are huge in the Pacific Basin. It's
getting big in Europe.
In the Americas we're still living in a "what if" world. Intel spends
a lot
to drive technology by funding standards groups - WiMAX, WiFi, storage, digital
home, storage/storage management and probably dozens more you never hear about.
It is coming. It has to. We're doubling our digital data
and content every
12-18 months. We need a seamless way to grab, share and store
all of this stuff.
But the implementation of these seamless PnP standards and applications is
still
painful years away.
Problem is MS wants the standards their way. Apple wants
them their way. Linux
folks want them their way. SCO wants to sue them all.
Digital Home, Digital Entertainment
Intel and the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) talk
at a fever pitch to
show that the digital home and digital living room is here
- almost. All of
the PC makers are working to convince us that their solutions
will be the focal
point of entertainment in the home (Figure A) - music, video,
photos, TV, web
surfing, etc.
The new notebooks make a strong case for this solution,
especially in Asia and
Europe where homes are small and space is at a premium. But
in the Americas
where homes sprawl there is less interest.
In addition, even though we have surpassed more than one
billion computers in
the world, the number is way less than half of the global
population.
Truth be told, normal people and the computer challenged
don't even want a computer…especially
in their living room! They want an entertainment center (figure
B).
If they have a computer in the house, they want it back
in the home office.
They want them back in the kids rooms where they can download
music and burn
CDs. Where the kids can IM with friends and share study notes.
They want to
set theirs up on the kitchen or dining room table so they
finish answering emails
or finishing projects.
The home network is still that...a network connecting computers
to shared peripherals
and connecting to the outside world.
The momentum/interest in the entertainment/media center
has jumped dramatically
in the last year. By the holidays we'll see some very attractive
(and attractively
priced) products. Part of the solution everyone overlooks
is the need for huge
centralized HD/CD/DVD storage/access. Then layered on top
of that will be portable
flash and small HD storage people take with them like Store
'n' Go.
Connecting your refrigerator, stove, lights, heating/air
to the network? It's
already done! Just ask Steve (Jobs), Bill (Gates), Michael
(Dell), Larry (Ellison)
who replace these appliances in a heartbeat. The rest of
us may get there in
five - ten years. If the appliance has to be replaced!
But entertainment at home - and everywhere - is the sweetspot.
Intel and AMD
know it. MS, Apple, Sony and the others know it. Home theaters
are on the leading
edge of being a huge business. Home/mobile entertainment
solutions still have
to get easier to set up and easier to program/use than a
VCR.
Security? That's a whole other issue that the Ciscos, Jupiters,
Broadcoms and
RSA focused firms have to solve before governments step in
and "solve" for us.
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