The consumer electronics industry is on the threshold of a fundamental transformation that will rival the impact of the change from analog to digital technology. Intel believes consumer electronics is now at an evolutionary inflection point, driven by the imminent arrival of the Internet in the living room of the digital home.
If analog was the first generation, or 1.0 version, of CE, and the adoption of digital technology represented the 2.0 generation, we are now evolving into the evolution’s third phase, the era of Consumer Electronics 3.0.
It is widely recognized that digital TV broadcast and broadband technologies, combined with advances in home networking, will give consumers important new access to a much broader selection of content that has not been available in the past, much of it aggregated from the Internet and delivered by service providers.
This disruptive technology will create unprecedented choices for consumers, as well as significant new monetization opportunities for CE product manufacturers, content owners and application developers.
Consumer Electronics 3.0 also promises to provide consumers with enhanced control over their media experiences. In the Consumer Electronics 3.0 environment, people will be able to consume content and share personal media using a choice of connected devices ranging from set top boxes to portable media players.
Why Standards are Important
Moving from promise to reality will require the industry to develop open standards for accessibility to content, device and network connectivity and interoperability. These standards will be implemented in new generations of CE platforms to ensure the necessary balance of functionality, device performance and low cost.
To help realize these benefits, Intel’s Digital Home Group is actively engaged with industry leaders in a broad range of technical standards organizations and special interest groups (SIGs) in communications, computing and consumer electronics.
Our common objective is to promote open standards that accelerate development for all members of the value chain, and ensure that tomorrow’s digital home solutions meet the expectations of the community that matters most – the retail consumer.
Consumer electronics industry professionals commonly ask whether the adoption of open standards will limit product differentiation. The answer is that when properly executed, open standards, including well-defined verification and validation programs, will enable faster time-to-market for new products and faster deployment of digital services, from on-demand video and other local news and traffic updates to video phone, e-commerce and e-learning applications.
In addition, standards will ensure devices work together to satisfy new consumer usage models. Contrary to commoditizing products, standards addressing broadband access, data encoding/decoding, device connectivity, networking and interoperability will be the essential ingredients that enable differentiated features, functions and capabilities for producing CE products that have the competitive edge.
Figure 1 - The convergence of content from many sources to the digital home, and consumption on many connected devices, will require well-defined, open industry standards. Intel is working with standards organizations to help speed development and ensure quality experiences for consumers.
Accessibility standards will enable service providers to broaden their offering of content and media to consumers to an unprecedented degree.
Access to the home is enabled by digital TV broadcast, cable, satellite and broadband sources. Regional digital video terrestrial broadcast standards such as ATSC and DVB, Open Cable*, DOCSIS and DSL broadband are relatively mature standards that reach millions of homes.
Providing the consumer with access to content is equally important. Standards in use include media codecs, high-definition video media such as HD-DVD* and Blu-Ray*, and emerging standards for IPTV.
Connectivity standards will help consumers enjoy their content choices on a multitude of devices, connected locally to the TV in the living room and connected with each other over wired and wireless home networks. HDMI, DVI, Bluetooth* and USB are broadly adopted examples of device connectivity standards.
Network connectivity includes a range of wired, wireless and “no new wires” networking standards encompassing IEEE 802.1AV, 802.3 and 802.11, to HomePlug AV (HPAV)* (powerline), HomePNA 3.0*(phone and coax), MoCA* (coax), WiMAX* (802.16 WirelessMAN) and WirelessHD*. Intel supports multiple standards, including those that work in combination to provide the optimum consumer experience.
Realizing the vision of ‘anytime, anywhere’ access to media will require devices that interoperate when connected together in the home network. The old CE model of separate islands of devices in different rooms will ultimately make the transition to a new model of seamless interoperability. The key message is that when devices support interoperable standards, consumers will have the flexibility to enjoy digital content on the device of their choice, at the time and locale of their choice – in their home and on the road.
The Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA) is an organization comprised of leading companies from the consumer electronics, computing and mobile device industries. The DLNA envisions a world where connected, interoperable devices, including set top boxes, PCs and handheld devices, work together over wired and wireless networks in the home.
Such seamless connectivity will create a new environment for sharing content and services. It is important to note that DLNA does not create standards. Instead, the organization establishes guidelines that incorporate other standards and assists companies in implementing conformant solutions. DLNA guidelines support underlying standards including the Universal Plug and Play initiative of the UPnP* Forum. DLNA CERTIFIED* products are currently sold by leading manufacturers throughout the world.
Implementing standards for consumer electronic devices requires support at the platform and system level. In addition to active participation in standards organizations, Intel strives to ensure that manufacturers have the platform-level resources that are required for success, including memory resources and functional integration to accelerate development, meet cost targets and achieve standards certification.
Intel’s CE platform support includes tools to simplify development using leading operating systems, such as CE Linux*, Windows CE*, and Windows XP Embedded*.
Consumers are beginning to crave electronics products for entertainment and media sharing that overcome the existing barriers between convenience of usability and the services they want, on the devices they want, whenever and wherever they want.
Consumer Electronics 3.0, the proliferation of new content and services driven by the Internet, is a disruptive trend that will create new revenue opportunities throughout the CE value chain. While we are seeing significant progress in many areas, many important challenges remain, including the development of standards for IPTV that help maximize bandwidth, enable quality of service and protect premium content, without compromising user experiences.
By bringing the evolution into clear focus, and rallying the industry, Intel is helping to accelerate the adoption and utilization of advanced usage models that will drive growing demand for new products, services, and solutions.