Digital Home Connectivity comes Nearer with New Working Group

Seventeen consumer electronics, computer, and mobile companies have announced the formation of the Digital Home Working Group (DHWG), a non-profit organisation dedicated to the simplified sharing of digital content, such as digital music, photos and video, among networked consumer electronics (CE), mobile devices and PCs. The group includes Fujitsu, Gateway, HP, Intel, IBM, Kenwood, Lenovo, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), Microsoft, NEC CustomTechnica, Nokia, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, STMicroelectronics and Thomson.

With a large increase in broadband adoption and device sales, consumers are acquiring, viewing, managing and sharing an increasing amount of digital media on devices in the CE, mobile and PC domains and they want to easily enjoy this content, regardless of the source, across different devices and locations in the home, says the working group. A number of conflicting standards and media formats exist today making the digital home complex to set-up and manage.

The group shares a common goal of establishing a platform of interoperability based on open industry standards and will deliver technical design guidelines that companies can use to develop digital home products that share content through wired or wireless networks in the home. Examples of these products include PCs, TVs, set-top boxes, printers, stereos, mobile phones, PDAs, DVD players, digital projectors and other devices.

Stephane Negre, Intel's consumer solutions marketing director for Europe, Middle East and Africa, said the move was to make the market more consumer-centric so that digital content can be enjoyed on whatever appliance people want to use.

He sees the initiative as a means of driving new business and innovation, but conceded that work would have to be undertaken to explain the new developments to the public. 'Focus groups like it after we have explained it, but this is not something obvious. If the industry is not there to explain it, it won't work. But the industry is committed to do this education stage and we have support from the service providers,' he said.

He said that companies were in this for the long term; it would not be about selling more units this Christmas. In the next six to twelve months, there would be campaigns to show the usage model, including displays in major shop windows around Europe.

He predicted it would be years before convergence was seen as obvious by users, but continuing education would demonstrate that this was not just 'serving the Web from the kitchen'.

Talking about the technical aspects of the initiative, Negre said that industry standards alone do not always ensure interoperability. The interoperability framework and technical design guidelines established by the DHWG will go further, to provide the baseline for development of multi-branded products and systems that will work better together. The goal of the group is to deliver guidelines resulting in the first compliant products within the next 12 months.

The DHWG design guidelines will use established standards such as Internet Protocol (IP), UPnP ™, Wi-Fi ™, and other common formats. Format interoperability will be achieved by requiring certain formats that meet specific criteria.

Based on these guidelines, a set of programmes including certification, compliance logos, marketing and promotion, will be considered by the group and made available to DHWG members.

Although this feature is not being stressed, some companies within the group are keen to use the opportunity to control data use, as well as to enable it. Sony is known to be concerned to stop piracy. It is expected that data streaming around the home will take place with 'view' quality, not 'commercial' quality content, said Negre.

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