CHOICES ABOUND: "MediaCenter" home PC bundles from Acer (left) and Sahara

Bangalore: In its top 10 predictions for the Indian Information Technology market, analyst IDC suggested a few weeks ago that 2006 might be the Year of the Digital Home — driven by a doubling of the number of digital cameras sold and Internet connections taken. Judging by the flurry of their announcements, leading desktop and portable personal computer makers intend making that prediction come true, in a big way — and digital camera and printer makers are not sitting back either.

The result is an unprecedented choice for the lay customer, who shops for the whole family, looking for products which offer that all-important access to the limitless opportunities of the Internet but come with the icing on the cake — entertainment that will woo the less techno-savvy members of the khandaan.

All-in-one device

This month alone, Acer, one of the world's Big Five PC vendors, unveiled its latest offering for the Indian digital home: Aspire E500, an `all-in-one entertainment' device that marries personal computing and television functions, providing a standard Internet-ready multimedia PC with a flat screen monitor which can switch seamlessly to become a TV set, complete with remote. The combo optical drive can burn CDs and view CDs as well as DVDs.

The Rs. 47,000-Acer E500 is the latest machine to exploit Microsoft's MediaCenter software — an operating environment that cannily anticipates the day when home users will refuse to spend separately on a PC and a TV set — and expect one system to answer the infotainment needs of the entire family. It allows the user to browse the Web, play PC games, e-mail and instant message friends, while delivering digital entertainment as television or through a DVD player or broadband connection.

Acer's launch came on the heels of a MediaCenter PC range introduced by one of the newest PC players in India, Sahara, whose entry-level machine is priced at Rs. 30,000 and with high-end systems coming with 19-inch screens and the best of contemporary sound systems.

Serious proposition

HCL, first Indian company to launch a MediaCenter PC back in 2003, has decided to build the PC from the bottom up and tied up with the National Institute of Design to create a new form and feel tailored to Indian needs. Together with leading players both international and Indian — such as HP and Zenith — these companies have within one year brought down the price of a MediaCenter machine to between Rs. 30,000 and Rs. 50,000. A serious proposition for many families, which do not yet have either a PC or a TV set.

For those who can pay a bit more, laptops too are going the digital entertainment way. Two weeks ago, Dell announced a new notebook for India — the Inspiron 9400, fuelled by Intel's latest double-core Duo chip and a 17-inch screen, backed by the high-end Nvidia graphics card, to better view DVDs and play high-speed games.

It costs around Rs. 77,000. Sahara opted for AMD's Turion 64-bit processor and a 14-inch display, which allowed the company, based in South Africa, to price its NB5240-N9 notebook at just under Rs. 48,000.

Seeing all this traction in the digital home, it is hardly surprising that Japan-based Canon last week announced that it was phasing out its analog-type imaging products — that means only digital cameras and digital printers in the coming months. Like other printer and digicam players, Canon increasingly offers "direct" photo printers, which can download shots from cameras without having to route them through a PC.

With so much happening on the `home front,' it is hardly surprising that for so many manufacturers this year home is where their heart — and the Indian mart — lies.

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