What's Holding Back the Digital Living Room?

By David Pogue

New York Times

Published: December 7, 2005

Click here to see the original article on nytimes.com

This week, I moderated a panel at a conference dedicated to the digital living room--that is, the interconnection of computers, stereo systems, the Internet, home networks and TV sets.

Truth is, it's a good idea for a conference. After all, anyone in the electronics industry will tell you, hands on hearts, that the digital living room is the Next Big Wave. Heck, the imminent arrival of the Connected Home was the theme of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2003. And again in 2004. And again this year. It will surely be the theme of the 2006 CES in January, too.

But on the flight out to California, I got to thinking: Whatever happened to the Connected Home, anyway? I'm bombarded by pitches from P.R. people plugging these gadgets; magazines dutifully write them up; and here I was on the way to a whole conference about the subject. But who the heck is buying these gizmos? Outside of early-adopter masochists and geeks, I don't know a single person who has actually connected the TV to the PC, or the Internet to the stereo, or whatever. I know only one guy who even has a Microsoft Media Center PC, and he uses it to watch sports at his desk. It's nowhere near his living room.

As for me, I'm IN the geek industry, and even I don't do all that. You know what I watch on my television? TV shows and movies. The TV is not connected to my stereo, computer or the Internet.

But here's what really blew my mind. Once I took the stage at this conference, I took a quick poll of the audience. Within the last month, how many of them had actually watched a slideshow on their TV sets of photos from a PC elsewhere in the house?

This was a room full of several hundred people, all of whom are IN the connected-home industry. You'd think that they would, as the saying goes, eat their own dog food. But guess how many raised their hands?

Nine.

Nine!

This was all relevant because the point of my panel at this conference was just that: What's holding back the digital living room?

The panelists were fantastic. They explained that connecting your gadgets means networking, and networking is still way too hard for the average consumer. They noted that today's copy-protection hysteria keeps people from playing, say, their iPods on their Roku Soundbridges. They observed that the companies making these gadgets are all promoting mutually incompatible standards for cables, jacks, software and so on. (Panelist Don Norman, a riveting usability expert, pointed out that the home-theater industry hasn't even standardized on something as innocuous as remote-control infrared codes. In fact, some companies don't even standardize remote codes across their own product lines!)

All of this is true. The companies in this business can't seem to see that their greed, ambition and mutual suspicion are preventing the industry as a whole from taking off. (Of course, as my wife commented later, their inability to put their own interests aside momentarily for the sake of the greater good is a microcosm of the human race in general.)

But to me, there was one huge issue that nobody was talking about, an elephant in the digital living room. Even if you could connect all this stuff easily--even if the copy-protection wars were over--does anyone even want this stuff?

Maybe the reason the connected home still hasn't caught on has nothing to do with standards and interoperability. Maybe people just aren't interested.

In the mid-90's, Steve Jobs remarked that nobody would ever want to watch the Internet on their televisions. It was a wildly heretical remark, because at the time, the industry was just as gung-ho about bringing the Internet to TV as they are today about bringing the PC to the TV. But his logic was this: For most people, turning on the TV means turning off their brains. They want entertainment, not interactivity. TV watching is passive, not active.

He turned out to be right; WebTV and similar efforts bombed spectacularly.

Could it be that the digital living room concept is equally flawed--and all Silicon Valley's horses and all Asia's men are barking up the wrong tree?

I'd love to hear your opinions (visit the Pogue feedback board). I'm well aware that early adopters and gadget freaks may already be enjoying their digital living rooms. But I'd like to know if you can genuinely imagine your parents, your neighbors and your non-nerd friends connecting up their homes.

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P.S. Every Thursday for over a year now, I've been creating a funny little weekly video for the Times Web site. And every Thursday for over a year, I've fielded complaints from readers who've had trouble viewing them. The video-format choices were Windows Media and Real Player, neither of which is, ahem, likely to make all people happy all the time.

I'm thrilled to announce that those Bad Old Days are over. The Times has handed over all of its Web videos to a professional "video supply-chain" company that really knows what it's doing.

For example, you'll now find all Times videos in one place: video.on.nytimes.com. (Click David Pogue to see my videos.) When you click a video, the new system automatically "sniffs" your computer to see what browser you have. If you're using Internet Explorer for Windows, the video plays immediately in Windows Media format.

But if you're among the 15 percent who use Safari, Firefox or another browser, you automatically get the video in the Flash format, which (for 95 percent of Internet visitors) doesn't require the installation of any plug-in.

The bottom line: everyone should be able to view the videos on the first attempt, and I should get a lot fewer complaints about Real Player and Windows Media.

P.P.S.--If you become a regular viewer of my own videos, here's a link that you can bookmark (do not attempt to memorize). It will always automatically begin playing the latest video: http://nytimes.feedroom.com?fr_chl=a70bf18ea508268510db33cb15a2b03750645b3d.

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