Integrating the Digital Home

The challenge for Viiv, as with the other approaches, is not to forget that most consumer electronics equipment has a longer lifespan than IT, and that there are legacy integration issues. (Known domestically as, "no you can't replace the XXX, we've only had it 5 years".)

There will always be a minority of early adopters keen to get their fingers burned on the latest technology, and for those in the upper income brackets, there will always be domestic installers and integrators who can be paid to make the problem go away.

But for the mass market, the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better.

Now if IT vendors could really sort out the interoperability challenge and incorporate valuable legacy consumer electronics appliances in a seamlessly integrated digital home, they might have something with mass market appeal.

Of course if they could do that, don't you think they'd already have done something similar for their business customers?

The dark horse, or given their prevalent colour scheme, white knight, in all this is Apple.

The turnaround of the last few years has not only brought increased sales in the traditional Mac fan community, but also a new audience of consumers via iMac, iPod and iTunes.

Apple is now well positioned to build on this success, and the industry is already making up or picking up rumours of more iThis and iThat consumer devices to add further to the IT core.

Having this core based on Intel won't hurt either, if Viiv becomes a consumer electronics integration bandwagon of note. In the meantime, digital home consumers will have to cope with ‘pick your own'.

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