Sunday, January 16, 2005
By Al Gordon
Columnist
"Convergence" was the buzzword at last week's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Oh-Oh.
Digital convergence is kind of a high-tech equivalent of the Big Dig: The completion date and the price tag are elusive. The concept is simple enough: Consumers have an ever-increasing array of devices in their homes, especially in the home entertainment category, and coordinating them would allow for more efficient management. But the devil, as always, is in the details.
"We are at the forefront in making broad technology investments and delivering breakthroughs that bring the digital lifestyle into the mainstream," Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates said in his CES keynote speech. "Our strategy is to deliver great software and a platform for partner innovation, so consumers can choose from a vast array of devices and services that work together seamlessly and suit the way they live."
Double Oh-Oh.
There is a joke that has made the rounds on the Internet about what a car built by Microsoft would be like, the punch line being that periodically for no apparent reason and at the most inopportune times the car would stop dead. You would have to close all the windows, turn off the ignition, and then restart it to get going again. (This gag takes on a whole new meaning with Microsoft's CES announcement that it was making a push into automobile electronics.)
Let's put that in terms of home entertainment: When was the last time you had to reboot your TV set? TV sets just work. Watching TV via a computer such as one running Microsoft's Windows Media Center, is comparatively a hassle.
Media Center PCs, in fact, are an important case study. It was well known when Microsoft unveiled the technology in 2002 that the software was at best a rough draft of the concept and early adopters were essentially going to be lab rats for the company's home entertainment R&D. Therein lies the reason for an "oh-oh" about convergence: Just because something is a good idea doesn't mean it's ready for prime time. Accordingly, I would suggest some criteria for measuring the value of convergence products:
- Do they make the task at hand easier or more complicated?
- Do they require adding another device or do they let you eliminate some?
- Do they give you more access to your entertainment material or do they limit it?
- Perhaps most important: Do you wind up paying more or less?
Gates correctly notes that the cost of data storage is down sharply and the bandwidth (data-carrying capacity) of home networks is up sharply. Also, consider the number of ways music can come into your house: broadcast radio, satellite radio, music channels from your cable or satellite TV provider, digital recordings on your PC and portable music plays, plus CDs, which you can play on a host of devices including your PC and your home stereo CD player. How many different media format versions of the same song do you need to have? Ditto for video.
I can personally testify to the value of consolidation and coordination. A couple of years ago, my wife and I did a total rehab of our condo and -- because we did not want to have to rip apart our walls ever again -- we got ourselves literally and figuratively wired. As a result, there is a ridiculous number of cables snaking throughout our unit hidden behind wallboards and crown moldings, plus two mammoth equipment racks stacked with audio-visual components. Very expensive and very complicated.
This turned out to be really bad convergence. We invested in an Escient Fireball, a device with a computer brain and Internet access, that you couple to CD jukeboxes (those carousel players that hold hundreds of CDs) to manage and play your CD collection. This flunked three of my tests: more equipment, more complicated and more expensive. Had we waited a year or two we could have met our need for music management at a fraction of the cost through such media networking devices as Apple's AirPort Express or SMC Networks EZ StreamWireless Audio Adapter.
So beware of all the consumer electronics hype in the months ahead. If you apply these common-sense tests to the companies' claims, you are more likely to be a happy customer.
Al Gordon is a Massachusetts-based media and political consultant who also writes about technology. You can read more of his articles at www.tnpcnewsletter.com/al and e-mail him at eagle@algordon.com.
