The digital home

Technology firms are pushing a futuristic vision of home entertainment not because consumers are desperate for it but because they themselves are.
Computer, software, consumer-electronics, telecoms, cable and internet companies are in fact out of touch with consumers.
That is because the “digital home”, a concept and category hugely hyped in executive circles but still rarely heard in discussions among consumers, represents their greatest hope for revenue growth.
Demand from corporate buyers of technology has barely recovered from the dotcom bust and is widely expected to be unimpressive for years.
By contrast, the homes of consumers appear to technology vendors as a barely tamed analogue wilderness.
Computers have already led to small revolutions in boosting productivity in the office and helping people to communicate and to be creative,so they think that computers will have a similar effect on the way people consume entertainment.
Their first challenge in stimulating any sort of consumer interest is the difficulty of merely explaining what the digital home is supposed to be.
Confusingly, when vendors talk about the digital home they mean a home in which all sorts of electronic devices—from the personal computer (PC) to the TV set-top box, the stereo, the game console and, in some versions, even the garage door and refrigerator—are connected, both to one another and to the internet.

“When you ask customers what they want, they will never tell you. You have to show them first,” says Microsoft's Mr Mundie.
That is why Microsoft has, since 1994, had an impressive (or, to some people, intimidating) mock digital home on its campus in Redmond, Washington State, which it updates with the latest gadgets.
Market's dilemma
It may seem ironic, therefore, that vendors are refusing to make their technologies interoperable, thus potentially killing their own vision.
On the other hand, it makes sense for each to try to make its own proprietary technology the winner, in order later to grab a disproportionate share of the market.
This would at the same time help them to parry their biggest threat: Microsoft.