Home media network tips up

29 Apr 2008 | 19:40 BST

By Sylvie Barak

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AN ALLIANCE TO PUSH for home networks using domestic wiring, to move around films, music and pictures has been formed between chip and electronic giants Intel, Infineon, Texas Instruments, and Panasonic.

The big four have pledged to form a common standard that will be able to link computers, televisions, stereos and entertainment systems with coaxial cables and phone cables, already available in most people’s homes.

It’s been something of a long term pipe dream for consumer electronics and computer manufacturers to creat the ideal digital home, where all electric devices are interlinked and can be controlled from one source (like a computer), making for near effortless data and digital media sharing between electronic devices. But the fact that there has not really been any sort of common standards between device manufacturers, means that very little progress was ever achieved. But the pact should be able to change all that.

Of course there are already certain things like Wi-Fi, which have a common standard that links household devices, but wires tend to be more stable and robust, have higher capacities, and of course, are already present in most homes, making the need for more infrastructure redundant.

Kurt Scherf, an analyst with market analyst outfit Parks Associates, said that the move was an “important step towards eliminating fragmentation in the industry”.

The big four, who are now the leading members of what has been dubbed the HomeGrid Forum said in a press release that they were going to work with the International Telecommunications Union to push for, contribute to and test a standard that the ITU is already purportedly working on, called ITU-T G.hn.

"HomeGrid will enable a true standardized approach for sharing multimedia in the wired home worldwide," said Christian Wolff, senior vice president and general manager of Broadband Access, Infineon Technologies AG

There are currently seven (lesser) additional members to the HomeGrid Forum, including Aware, DS2, Pulse Link, Ikanos, Sigma Designs, Westell and Gigle Semiconductor. The big four, who are on the forum’s board of directors, noted that they were trying to get other consumer electronics companies, chipmakers, service providers and computer firms to sign up as forum members.

They also expressed hope that the first inter-operable products which used the new standard would be available in a year’s time. µ

© 2007 Incisive Media Investments Ltd. 2007