Home Networking Moves to the Forefront
Tue, 01/10/2006 - 09:05
Consumer Applications
The news out of CES was full of the wonders of digital video, but these wonders will be dependent on a decent home networking setup. There were several announcements along that line in terms of UWB, HomePNA, and others, but it is still recognized as a problem that needs to be solved. The sweet spot they seem to be aiming for is 400 Mbps, which should be able to support uncompressed HD signals.
Personally, I am quite happy with the Gigabit Ethernet backbone I am using to transport video. My total investment in this network is under $200, thanks primarily to watching the sale ads at Fry’s and taking advantage of construction to place Cat6 wiring. It is not as flashy as the new wired and wireless networking technologies, but it more than handles moving the bits around. Granted, it doesn’t put the DRM locks around the data that many would like to have in place, but quite frankly I am not too concerned about that.
The absence of these locks is a situation that most likely will not last much longer, though. The technology to manipulate digital media has been around for quite a while, but it has been impeded by the lack of consumer-level devices to make it easy to manipulate and view this media. That level of devices has been held back by pressure from the media industry, which has made it difficult to obtain digitized programming. The recent surge of news around the capability to download this media has been primarily enabled by new DRM capabilities from Microsoft, Apple, and others that has raised (somewhat) the comfort level of the media guys. The question now is whether they will choke it off by tightening the locks too tight or making DRM too difficult to use.
Larry Mittag
Personally, I am quite happy with the Gigabit Ethernet backbone I am using to transport video. My total investment in this network is under $200, thanks primarily to watching the sale ads at Fry’s and taking advantage of construction to place Cat6 wiring. It is not as flashy as the new wired and wireless networking technologies, but it more than handles moving the bits around. Granted, it doesn’t put the DRM locks around the data that many would like to have in place, but quite frankly I am not too concerned about that.
The absence of these locks is a situation that most likely will not last much longer, though. The technology to manipulate digital media has been around for quite a while, but it has been impeded by the lack of consumer-level devices to make it easy to manipulate and view this media. That level of devices has been held back by pressure from the media industry, which has made it difficult to obtain digitized programming. The recent surge of news around the capability to download this media has been primarily enabled by new DRM capabilities from Microsoft, Apple, and others that has raised (somewhat) the comfort level of the media guys. The question now is whether they will choke it off by tightening the locks too tight or making DRM too difficult to use.
Larry Mittag
