Summer 2006 Newsletter

Ways to be Wireless 1. While doing homework 2. Transfering photos in your room 3. Listening to shared music 4. Watching family movies on your TV 5. Downloading recipes to the kitchen 6. Working in the office 7. Sending emails from the garden

Welcome to the Home of the Future

So, with a little hyperbole: Create an exciting environment where you can interact seamlessly and effortlessly sharing rich digital content anywhere anytime. E-mails sent from the garden. Internet video or family photos viewed on the television. Recipes downloaded straight to the kitchen. In a digital home, everything becomes possible. A digital home is an entire electronic habitat with you right at the center.

Three principal developments in the marketplace have driven this trend. First and foremost, especially in Canada where almost 70 percent of internet households have now shifted to “broadband” connections. That is to say, high-speed, always on, access usually provided by your phone or cable company.

The second is the evolution of digital media. CD’s have now replaced analogue types of recording almost entirely. It’s virtually impossible to rent a VHS version of a movie as these have migrated to DVD’s. Digital camcorders and digital cameras outsell analogue and film versions of these devices and even digital TV subscriptions (cable or satellite) will soon surpass analogue cable. In other words, it is likely that virtually all the entertainment you either create, watch or listen too today is 100% digital.

Finally, the evolution of relatively simple ways to network (increasingly wirelessly) multiple devices in the home environment provided the final link to allow the distribution of all kinds of information (be it audio, video or data) though-out your home.

How this will play out in your home will depend on your own lifestyle and household composition. It could be something as simple as hooking your computer up to your stereo replacing your CD collection with MP3 files you’ve created. Outfit and configure your computer to act like a Personal Video Recorder (PVR) and then watch what you’ve recorded from any TV in your house. Have young children and want to see what their up to with the babysitter while you’re out? Install your security cameras in strategic locations, broadcast the signal wirelessly to your main computer and then log on from the internet while visiting friends and have a peek at what’s going on at home. Ultimately some people will choose to include some more conventional appliances, such as coffeemakers, ovens, even lighting systems and heat or air conditioning controls and be able to adjust them from remote locations around the house or from around the world.

What does it take to put all this together?

At the centre of your Digital Home will be your computer. It doesn’t matter if it’s a PC or an Apple but it will become the hub that manages and distributes the content around your home. It is a combination of hardware, things like a TV tuner card and an operating system such as Microsoft’s “MediaCentre XP” that will enable you to record, playback and share television shows or other content saved on the computer. In essence you will be scrapping your VCR and turning your PC into a PVR (Personal Video Recorder. This evolution replaces videotapes by using the hard drive of your computer as the storage device. With the latest edition of MediaCentre you can even access Canadian electronic program guides (EPG) which will allow you find what you want to watch with relative simplicity and even record them at the push of a couple of buttons.

Become a Speed Demon:

If you haven’t already done so, dump that “dial-up” connection and join the world of hi-speed, “always on” service. You can choose either “DSL” from your telephone company or the cable equivalent. Each offer several different speeds and amount of data you can download per month but without a broadband connection you cannot make the vision a reality.

Create a Network:

Now that you have the heart of your system in place and are feeding it with high-speed access a digital home needs also to be a networked home. In other words, creating an infrastructure, either wired or wireless, that allows the various pieces of the puzzle to talk with one another and play (nicely) together. There are essentially two ways to build your network, either using cable (CAT5) or creating a wireless network. Each has certain advantages and disadvantages. (It is interesting to note that there is also emerging technology that will allow you to use your existing electrical wiring, with adapters plugged into wall sockets, to move data and content through the house.)

The advantage of a wired network is sheer speed. A CAT5 network has the capacity to move any kind of data from audio to video at the speeds (up to 100Mbps – megabits per second) necessary for unconstrained high-quality video. The disadvantage of course is that if you are not already “wired” it’s quite a job to pull it through most houses or not all that attractive if you choose to simply run it along the edges of your walls.

Add Digital TV:

Digital TV is like moving from vinyl albums to CD’s or VHS video tapes to DVD’s. Digital TV, available via Satellite TV (such as Bell’s ExpressVu) or from your cable provider, in addition to providing crisper picture quality and sound, also allows you to record your favourite television shows or movies directly to a hard drive. Once stored this way and with the addition of hardware called a “media extender” it can be shared across your home network and viewed on any TV in your home.

And so...

In summary then to quote Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief of Wired Magazine, “The wired home of 2010 will have a centralized media server that will store music, video, and games. Screens and speakers will be networked and the A/V streams that drive them will be digital. Wireless tablets, or simple wireless remote controls, will send the streams to any room with the equipment to handle them. They will all talk to one another using standard Internet protocols, each one a node on a domestic intranet.”

As this article describes, most of the elements of this new reality are in place today. If you’d like to explore how to do this in your own home, give us a call and as always, we’d pleased to help.

For more Tips and Help, call EasyTechCare at 416-987-EASY (3279)