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| The 3 Steps to Home Entertainment Enlightenment |
July 13, 2004 |
By Peter Wolchak
If you’re reading this magazine, there’s a good chance you own a high-end stereo, a pricey digital camera, a couple of computers, a big-screen television, you have an extensive movie and music collection, and if you don’t already have an MP3 player you’ve at least thought about getting one.
So you’re fairly decked out. But the problem is, all of it exists as separate media sources. If you want to listen to music you flip on the stereo in the living room, to look at photos you trek over to the PC in your home office, and DVDs play in the family room.
But that’s not really what you want, is it? No, you’d rather access all that media anywhere: listen to music in the backyard while you show off pics from your kid’s school play, or chat in real time with an opponent halfway across the world while you kick his butt in Ninja Gaiden on your Xbox.
What you want is a digital entertainment system that spans your home, delivered through a high-speed wireless network.
And you can have that, although there are some hurdles.
Today all your media exists in sad little isolated pools, but the vision on the horizon is a future in which all that stuff plays nicely together, and it’s all available anywhere. Getting from where you are now to where you want to be is basically a three-step process.
1. SHARE THE ’NET
Canadian households increasingly contain more than one PC, and since a computer without ’net access is simply no darn good, the first reason to build a home network is to share the Internet among all your different boxes.
That can be done by running cables through walls and under floors, but the true interconnected digital home is built on Wi-Fi. Also known by its geekier moniker 802.11, this is the wireless version of the common Ethernet network. In addition to being cable free, Wi-Fi allows users to add devices willy-nilly, without the need for localized connections. So if your office buys you a Wi-Fi-enabled handheld, linking it to the home network is as simple as turning it on. In the old wired world, a computer had to be plugged in to an existing cable drop.
These two features — linking multiple computers and the freedom to move about while online — convinced Larry Hemphrey that Wi-Fi was the way to go. Last summer the Brampton, Ont., resident moved into a home office equipped with one desktop PC plus a notebook. “I needed to be able to work in various locations throughout my home, but I didn’t want to go through the hassle of wiring the backyard, the front yard, the basement, etc. For example, I like to have my morning tea out on the front porch and it would be nice to check my e-mails there,” Hemphrey said.
So he bought a Centrino-based notebook and invested about $200 in a Wi-Fi router and a wireless PC adapter. He installed the gear and began enjoying his wireless freedom — until the kitchen phone rang. Suddenly his ’net connection dropped.
The 2.4GHz phone had cut into the 802.11b Wi-Fi connection. The problem was fixed by simply changing the channel on the phone, but the issue was not covered in the Wi-Fi hardware documentation and not everyone will figure out the link between the phone ringing and the connection dropping. Other times the Wi-Fi signal would fail without an obvious explanation. Frustrated by the lack of reliability, Hemphrey essentially gave up on the wireless option and ran cables, one to his desktop PC and another to his second-floor office. “The only thing I’ve gained from this whole process has been a wired local-area network.”
That solution pains Toron Lee, vice-president of corporate marketing for networking vendor D-Link Networks in Oakville, Ont. He said only about one in 10 people have significant problems with Wi-Fi, and for that one person signal issues can often be remedied by either moving the wireless router a few centimetres or simply adjusting the antennas on top of the units. Those small changes can often improve the transmission pattern of the Wi-Fi signal.
One user Lee helped, for example, had the router tucked right up against a wall. “I suggested he move it a foot away from the wall, and all of a sudden he had signal.”
Lee also said the greatest impediments to Wi-Fi transmission are anything in the house construction that absorbs, such as water, or reflects, such as metal. The wood used to build new houses, for example, will have higher moisture content than older, drier wood in an existing home, and this water can reduce Wi-Fi signal strength. Also, ceramic flooring typically rests on a metal mesh substrate and that “can be a nightmare as far as wireless is concerned.”
Other electronic devices can also mess up Wi-Fi a little, he said. “Theoretically, a microwave can cause interference, because there is a little bit of overlap in the frequencies. The same thing can happen with some 2.4GHz cordless telephones. To fix that, change the default channel settings on the router. There are 11 channels you can use, and you should go with a non-overlapping channel, which is one, six or 11.”
If these methods don’t work, hardware help is available. While Lee doesn’t have too much faith in the add-on antennas available on the market, he said a range extender — a Wi-Fi receiver and retransmitter that simply plugs into a power outlet — can work very well. But as these cost about $150 to $200, time spent moving the router around a little is a good investment.
The consumer demand for shared Internet access prompted Bell Sympatico to become the first Canadian ISP to sell Wi-Fi gear directly to customers. For a one-time $69.95 fee users get a combined DSL modem and Wi-Fi router, and while Patrick McLean, Sympatico’s director of Internet service development, could not disclose figures on the percentage of new customers who decided to go wireless, the uptake is “trending above our expectations. This is validating the research we did before launch (showing consumer interest) and that the price point is very attractive.”
With all your PCs now linked through Wi-Fi, the foundation of the digital home has been laid.
2. DIGITIZE MORE CONTENT
Now you need digital content to fill up the airways, and Wi-Fi pipes can carry a lot. The original consumer spec, 802.11b, delivers 11Mbps, more than enough speed to handle Web surfing and e-mail and even to stream music to another computer or a stereo receiver. The newer spec, 802.11g, moves at up to 54Mbps, and that can deliver TV-quality streaming video to a PC or wireless-enabled monitor.
By contrast, a typical high-speed Internet connection runs at about 1Mbps.
So now you need digital content. Again, discrete content sources have been around for a while: PCs could rip a CD to MP3, a scanner could take in prints and spit out digital photos. But there are devices on the market now that are essentially integrated digital-content factories, and that changes the landscape. One such factory comes from ATI Technologies, headquartered in Markham, Ont., in the form of the All-In-Wonder graphics cards. These units are all around video cards but they also link computers to TV signals, so users can record and pause live TV, do the same with FM radio, digitize and edit old family videos, and then burn any of that content to CDs or DVDs.
And while All-In-Wonders were first introduced in 1996, ATI’s director of marketing for multimedia products, Godfrey Cheng, said the general-user market for this type of functionality is set to take off. “We’ve proved that this idea (of Personal Video Recorder functionality on computers) works, and while we’ve been growing year over year we still think we are about to hit the ramp on this type of functionality.”
The cards are even packaged with a full remote control, so users don’t have to sit at the keyboard to run their multimedia playback.
For consumers looking to buy an entire new computer, updated versions of the Media Center PC (MCPC) recently hit the market. Built by manufacturers to Microsoft specifications, these PCs and notebooks package much of the functionality of the All-In-Wonders into high-end machines that also offer built-in media card readers — to pull pics off digital cameras, for example — along with fast processors and very large hard drives. And, of course, remote controls.
Sean Paterson, HP Canada product manager for consumer notebooks, thinks buyers will appreciate these machines. “Back in the old VCR days, I never recorded anything,” he said. “You have to find a blank tape and set the VCR. It was a hassle.”
Paterson now uses a Media Center notebook for all his TV viewing and recording. “This is simply much easier.”
And he believes MCPCs are a stepping stone to the future. “Today, PCs are a component of your entertainment system.
Tomorrow, they will be the entertainment system.”
3. DISTRIBUTE THE CONTENT
But as impressive as these systems are, there is still a basic gap in the home entertainment network: getting the content from the PC to the devices that play it.
You’ve just returned from a shopping trip to a big-box electronics store. Your credit card is poorer by about $2,000 but the excitement over your new Media Center PC means you hardly notice. Unpacking the computer in your home office, you read the manual, connect up a TV cable and load the batteries into the remote. You channel surf for a while, marvelling at the fact there are TV shows playing in the office, and then using the built-in schedule guide you find Bravo is showing the Frank Capra classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It starts at 2:00 a.m. so you set the computer to record it and toddle off to bed. The next day you settle in to watch Jimmy Stewart have histrionics in the Senate chamber. Before the real action even starts, though, you discover your office chair isn’t as comfortable as the couch in the family room, and your feet keep slipping off the keyboard tray.
You need to move the digital Jimmy to a more comfortable setting. You could burn the movie to a DVD, but if you wanted to record the thing for one-time viewing you might as well have used the VCR in the family room. No no, this is the digital age. There must be a better solution.
One workaround is to run a TV cable from the back of the PC, down the hall and into the back of your TV. It’ll work, but the kids will trip on the wire.It would be nice to use the Wi-Fi you just installed, wouldn’t it? If the equipment is 802.11g, there’s more than enough bandwidth to stream the media, but your TV is not able to receive Wi-Fi. The same is true of music and your stereo.
A quick visit to the home of Cheng from ATI offers up one solution: he has a small PC in his upstairs bedroom. Equipped with an ATI card it can link to the All-In-Wonder on his main floor. Cheng streams video all the time and “the quality is just as good as it is in the wired environment.”
But not everyone has PCs scattered throughout the house, and as Microsoft created the MCPC spec one would think it has worked on this problem. And one would be correct. “When Media Center PC was launched this was a known gap,” said Barry Zeidenberg, group product manager for Microsoft Home & Entertainment. In January the company announced its partners will soon market a Media Extender, a small Wi-Fi box plus a remote that will plug into a TV or stereo. “That means you can enjoy recorded TV, movies and music on any screen, sent from your home PC.”
The Media Extender will be available before Christmas and should retail for about $70 to $100, Zeidenberg said. The same functionality will also be built into some televisions and stereos at a future date.
Competitors are lining up their own offerings. D-Link’s Wi-Fi appliance will be called the Media Lounge, and should be out by late summer. And vendors are also casting wireless eyes at both the Xbox and Sony Playstation. A Media Extender due out this year from Microsoft will turn the company’s game console into a Wi-Fi receiver, and others already offer adapters for both platforms. The D-Link model currently costs $156, but the company would like to get that down to less than $100. “Not everyone can afford a Media Center PC for every room, but Microsoft Xboxes are available now for an outrageous $198, which is a great price,” said D-Link’s Lee. “With these add-on devices that turn Xboxes into client devices for distributed media, the value only goes up.”
ALL OF WHICH MEANS…
With a Wi-Fi network firmly in place, the household’s media digitized and distributed, happy technophiles can finally sit back and splash around in a big pool of entertainment.
Getting there though, was a fair bit of work. That’s because the state-of-the-art today still requires customers to do a lot of integration and construction themselves. “We’re starting to see the pieces of the puzzle come together, but it is still pieces,” said Sympatico’s McLean. “Vendors today are complete in maybe one category, so for example we can offer you a complete gaming experience, and soon we can provide a complete home music experience.”
So when will it all finally come together?“In probably three to five years we will be able to have a complete end-to-end approach to the broadband home,” McLean said. “The Wi-Fi home gateway will become the means through which you can distribute all content throughout your home.”
In other words, Lee said, the hardware is just now catching up to the revolution that has already occurred on the content side. “Everything in the world has gone digital. Music has changed into CDs and then into MP3s, broadcast TV is moving to digital format and being recorded digitally on Personal Video Recorders, and movies are all on DVD. So a reliable home network will become the delivery method for all that, sending it to your family room, your bedroom or your stereo system.”
Which means Jimmy Stewart can someday right those government wrongs in your most comfortable chair, even if that chair is a chaise lounge in the backyard.
Web Wi-Fi
ATI http://www.ati.com
D-Link http://www.dlink.ca
HP http://www.hp.ca
Microsoft http://www.microsoft.ca
Sympatico http://www.sympatico.ca
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