Home Entertainment Networking: The Future?

GHoosdum

Wired takes a critical look at the various home entertainment network technologies that were revealed at CES last week, revealing a general lack of standards and interoperability.

MacDonald said that Intel has put a lot of work into setting standards for how devices act on a network, and that Viiv will have a certification program to ensure products work intuitively for users. Intel expects the first Viiv products other than PCs -- such as TVs and DVD players -- to appear in the later part of this year. But even if Viiv does work well, it will be useless if the big consumer electronics companies don't sign on.

Holdouts for now include Panasonic, Hitachi, Samsung and Sony.

Standards aren't the only problem. According to the anonymous engineer above, divisions within his own company can't agree on common specifications. Different teams are focusing on individual products and not considering how they can work together consistently, this person said.

Source: Wired

RWB

Standards are for COMMIES!!!

Thrax

Viiv will die.

People can't figure out their DVD players. You think they're going to endorse a fully-integrated home theatre system powered by a computer which might as well be pre-Rosetta Stone hieroglyphics to them? Nah.