2. Cobbled Together Home Networks Deliver The Goods

Buying and holiday gifting of PC/CE gear rose 32% to nearly $160 billion in '06 according to Strategy Analytics.

Recognizing the fact that consumers want more play anywhere options and more connectivity, more than 30% of the digital home devices sold in '07 will be wired/wireless and IP enabled.

To maintain their portion of the entertainment spending, Tellywood and cable folks are rushing their DVR and VoD solutions to market. Problem is only a small portion of the viewers take "advantage" of the products/services.

But media adapters - PCs, AV, audio - are gaining in home penetration (Figure 2) because everyone has heard how easy it is to connect all their entertainment devices together and zip content everywhere in the house...the living room, dining room, kitchen, bedroom, study, kids room, even half-way across the country to your notebook computer.

Figure 2 - In homes that have multiple computers, home networks, centralized content storage and shared entertainment solutions are becoming increasingly popular. The centralized storage allows you to consolidate music, photos and videos and enjoy the content anywhere in the house. - Courtesy of InStat

However, even after three-four remakes of Frankenstein since the 1931 classic, the home network is still a bunch of parts forced together into a single being. It still doesn't look attractive. It moves rather clumsily. Some of the parts are for decoration only...not functioning!

While a few of us have struggled to build these home networks that tie work, study and entertainment together most people still believe it is better not to mess with the natural order of things such as life/death and mashing TV, entertainment consoles and PCs together.

Or they prefer to have the other guy do it for them.

Good choice.

Home network and home entertainment specialists have made a good living putting the parts together for those who are less adventurous. In fact the demand has attracted the interest of big box stores who now offer to put it all together for you for as little as $15K!