IT TRENDS
Home is where IT's happening
ANAND PARTHASARATHY
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Printer king HP is now into storage networks, TV screens and media-centre PCs
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A GLORIOUS `SANGAM': As home entertainment products become more affordable, upwardly mobile customers are suddenly able to experience a new reality.
A RECENT edition of the popular Dilbert cartoon strip has its hero exclaiming: "My new home theatre is amazing. It's got DVD, HD, DVR, FM, satellite dish, MP3, wide screen TV, seven speakers and a universal remote... It's fun to invite people over so they can show me how to turn it on."
As home entertainment products from large screen, high-definition television sets to DVD players and recorders; music systems to `convergence' PCs, become more affordable (and theatrical cinema-going simultaneously more pricey), upwardly mobile customers even in India are suddenly able to experience a new reality: The hitherto separate worlds of the boring and productive, lean-forward desktop computer and the more relaxed sofa-based lean-back TV-DVD monitor, are not only mutually compatible, they can be merged together in a glorious `sangam' by the all powerful `remote.'
Three national providers
As satellite-based television in India is increasingly offered `direct to home' (DTH) (there are three national providers today) and complemented by paid video or movie-on-demand services, the home digital hub is becoming a reality.
Only, it is not so much a hub as a number of separate silos: digital video recorders that store television programmes for offline viewing; photos and video clips by the hundred, taken by digital cameras and downloaded to a PC hard disk; MP3 music files floating around in the flash memories of CDMan or iPod... it makes for an inconsistent, often challenging experience that cries for some of that old marketing mantra — KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Breaking down barriers
How does one break down the barriers in the home and help consumers to manage, share and enjoy multiple streams of digital content?
The challenge is attracting some unexpected candidates, from PC makers to networking players to storage providers. Or a company like Hewlett Packard, which seems to say: We can do all this and more, for you.
Their motivation is in recently published numbers that show that home networking is poised to grow by 25 per cent to cover 36.3 million homes in the Asia-Pacific region alone. At its recent annual showcase of new technologies in Beijing, the company seemed to drive home the message that home is where IT's all happening now — and how!
In a shrewd differentiator from other brands that also build PCs to Microsoft's MediaCenter edition of Windows XP, HP has shrunk its own offering, the Pavilion Slimline's 7500 series to one third the size of the conventional desktop and pandering to the tastes of younger users, it comes with customisable `skins' where one can select from a number of floral or abstract shapes and images.
Based on the latest Intel Core Duo processor chip, the Slimline allows one to store and burn TV programmes into DVDs — then label them by etching designs directly on the disk using HP's proprietary Light scribe feature.
It will be available in India before year-end. To complement the high-definition audio and video capabilities of the PC, HP has got into the LCD monitor business and offers 19 and 20-inch flat screens.
Dramatic increase likely
All these tools are likely to dramatically increase the amount of digital content in the home. Add the files, photos and films stored on PCs, digital video recorders and music players and a typical networked home (that means a household with multiple PCs on a wired or wireless network) may end up with 800 gigabytes of stored data.
By 2010, estimates Coughlin Associates, this will go up to 4 terabytes (TB). A terabyte is a thousand gigabytes — enough storage for 375 hours of TV footage or 6000 CDs. To encash this expected storage deluge, HP has announced that it will enter the arena with a 1.2 TB home network storage solution by 2007 that will serve as the centralised storage for up to 3 PCs or laptops in the home.
It will come with software tools that make it a dummy's task to routinely back up all the data in a RAID1 (Redundunt Array of Inexpensive Disks) configuration that will ensure that if one disk fails, a mirror drive takes over. For starters it has already launched into portable 2.5 inch 80 GB and 120 GB hard drives.
While promoting a central home storage, HP is also putting local storage into some of its printers: The PhotoSmart A716 inkjet, not yet available in India, can store 4000 photos on board, in addition to `fixing' basic image faults with a single touch of a button.
Consumers snapped 140 billion pictures digitally in 2005, printing 33 billion of them. By 2010, market research suggests, some 80 billion photos will be printed — and the home is where much of it will be centred — either printed locally or through easily accessible online photo services.
Constant innovation
In the digital home ecosystem of tomorrow, it may be difficult to identify the separate devices that make it happen. "We will continue to provide extraordinary experience at home and businesses by constantly innovating and enhancing our technologies", Chris Morgan, HP's Senior Vice President for Asia Pacific and Japan told me.
Broad digital front
When technology players venture into so many areas, on such a broad digital front of user aspirations, it might be time for a company like HP to mimic a famous Tata Steel advertisement slogan of yesteryear and remind their customers, "We also make printers!"
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