Intel and the Digital Home

Standards enable the vision

Intel's commitment to computing standards has enabled innovations like the digital home. Intel's digital home vision consists of interoperable devices in the home that are capable of sharing digital media across a home network. This allows, for example, the easy transfer of pictures from a digital camera to a PC for editing, and then to a large-screen TV for viewing. It means you can use a PC to download a movie from an online vendor, and then play it through your DVD player or TV, or download music and play it on your home stereo. The ultimate goal is to enable consumers to access digital content from any device, anytime and anywhere, both inside the home and on-the-go.

The amount of media available today is enormous and growing. By 2006, online music subscriptions and downloads will account for 10 percent of the $12.8 billion music industry, and by 2008, one third of music sales will come from downloads (source: Forrester Research). Worldwide, approximately 370,000 motion pictures have been made since 1890 (source: UC Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems). If these titles were played back-to-back the show would last over 100 years. Many of these movies are being digitized so they can be easily downloaded.

"Consumer digital media libraries will continue to swell. In the U.S., according to Yankee Group's 2002 Digital Home Entertainment Survey, 31 percent of households currently download music and 32 percent snap digital photos. By 2007 these figures will grow to 43 and 56 percent, respectively."
– Yankee Group, August 2003

The problem/opportunity

Consumers are acquiring huge amounts and varieties of digital media on mobile and consumer electronic devices as well as on PCs � movies, games, photos, email, music and more. They want to be able to access and enjoy that data easily and conveniently, using any number of devices. To do that requires a home network that allows disparate devices to interoperate seamlessly. Up until now, this consumer desire has remained largely unfulfilled.

– In-Stat/MDR 4/04

Home networking growing rapidly:
The rapid increase of IP networking inside the home provides ample opportunities for the PC and consumer electronics (CE) industries. In-Stat/MDR forecasts close to a three-fold increase in the worldwide home network installed base from 2004 to 2008.

Untapped potential: The number of consumers with broadband access, a home network, and those who are using digital home applications is still very small today—less than 2 percent of households in the U.S. and Western Europe. This indicates that the digital home is still in the very early stages, with vast growth potential.

A small percentage of households are using digital home applications today

Industry collaboration

"The PC and consumer electronics industries must work together to specify open standards for digital home products, if we are to create a much larger playing field for both industries. We need to collaborate before we compete."
– Louis Burns, Vice President and General Manager, Intel Desktop Platforms Group

Intel, as one of the founders and strong supporters of the Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA - formerly the Digital Home Working Group), is among those leading the effort to converge PC, consumer electronics (CE), and mobile technologies in the home.

For years, Intel and others in the industry have envisioned the day when the PC would become a peer within the digital home network, helping to manage and facilitate the acquisition, distribution, and enjoyment of digital media on demand. It has taken time to deliver the required broadband pipe and network to the home, grow the industry that makes the digital content available, and develop the PC technologies to make it all possible.

The DLNA presents a great opportunity to bring together key players in the PC, CE, and mobile industries, to address which standards and specifications are needed to enable the digital home. Without cross-industry standards and specifications, the growth of the digital home market would be very limited.

It is important for key leaders in the PC, CE, and mobile industries to stay aligned on digital interoperability. Historically, these industries have delivered innovative consumer products side-by-side but not necessarily in concert. None of these industries has the means to drive digital interoperability alone. However, each industry offers unique capabilities and attributes.

A collaboration of industry leaders can also facilitate industry marketing and promotion while encouraging development, interoperability, and support of digital home devices by all players in the marketplace, independent of their size or geographic location.

"The establishment of the [DLNA] based on principles of open standards and home networking interoperability will unleash a rich digital media environment of interconnected devices that enable us all to experience our favorite content and services wherever and whenever we want."
– Cesar Vohringer, CTO of Philips Consumer Electronics (from June 2003 DLNA press release)

Standards progress

The DLNA is focused on referencing existing standards and specifications and defining specific implementation details so that products of different vendors will interoperate.

Ethernet is a basic standard that helps enable networking devices within the digital home. The Internet Protocol, or IP, is a family of protocols that has been chosen as the foundation for the networking and connectivity of PCs, CE and mobile devices in the digital home. IP is the basic means of establishing communications among all devices over the Internet.

UPnP* is another critical standard that addresses the layers just above the IP network. The UPnP Forum, which is driving the initiative, has more than 670 members representing 29 countries on 5 continents. The main goal of the group is to make it easy to connect a wide range of wired and wireless devices, to make installing a home network easier.

Basically, UPnP dictates how devices in the digital home will interconnect and interoperate and how one device will discover other devices and their capabilities, their content and content formats, so that they can communicate. It is a robust standard that allows for discovery and control between devices that may have different operating systems, program languages or physical network connections. The DLNA expects UPnP to be the primary media management and control standard for products that are built using DLNA guidelines.

Update on the digital home initiative

Since its formation in June of 2003, the DLNA has grown rapidly and now includes more than 130 member companies, including major players from all relevant business fields (CE, mobile, and PC) and on a global scale (Asia Pacific, U.S., and Europe).

The DLNA Board of Directors is run by representatives from the following companies:

Sony Electronics
Philips
Hewlett-Packard
Matsushita Electric Industrial
Microsoft Corporation
Intel Corporation
Nokia
Samsung Electronics

The first set of design guidelines to specify the standards that manufacturers should use to ensure interoperability among digital home devices was released in June, 2004.

One of the group's key accomplishments is creating guidelines for interoperability between media codecs (technology and standards for compressing and decompressing data). The guidelines merge existing individual codec standards (for example, MPEG) and technologies (such as Windows* Media Video, or WMV) to build a framework for enabling devices with different codecs to communicate.

The guidelines will specify a single required baseline format for each media type (linear pulse code modulation, or LPCM, for audio; JPEG for images; and MPEG2 for video) to ensure all devices can talk to each other, then recommend a number of optional formats that vendors are also encouraged to implement.

For audio, those optional formats include AAC, MP3, WMA9, and Sony ATRAC3; for video, the options are MPEG4 (ASP and part 10) and WMV9. Because the guidelines specify a baseline format and the requirement to convert to and from optional formats, the consumer will be assured that all devices in the digital home will be able to share content regardless of the native format used.

In addition to specifying media formats, both the PC and CE industries worked together to specify details of other layers of the media distribution stack-networking, device discovery, media management, and media transport.

Initial digital home-compliant products from top manufacturers are expected to be delivered in the second half of 2004. In 2005, there will be a significant ramp of products — everything from DVD players to home theaters-in-a-box to PCs and network devices, such as digital media adapters.

"After warming up in 2003, [products supporting the digital home standards] are now coming into the market. Manufacturers are all busy grasping market opportunities. 2004 is the year when the market for the digital home network takes off. Intel has always been the pioneer driving the promotion of digital home standards and it pays a great deal of attention to the market in China."
– www.ebnchina.com, March 9, 2004

"Along with the convergence of computing and communications, there is a parallel convergence of computing and electronics� The area where the convergence will be felt strongest is that of TV and the personal computer (PC)."
– S Sadagopalan, Director IIIT Bangalore. (The Financial Express, April 2)

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