December 9, 2008

By Erik Sherman

Seventy years ago, a television set in a private home was not just unusual, but actually exotic. Over the following decades, market penetration of nearly 100 percent has made television today nearly ubiquitous in most developed countries. And over the next several years, video will evolve from an isolated TV in the den or bedroom into a networked resource. Sound and images from personal videos, Web videos, DVDs, and downloaded movies and other purchased content will be distributed everywhere in the home.

Home networks will become necessary to make such flexibility possible, according to Derek Kerton, principal analyst with The Kerton Group. "We're at the land grab, the mad rush stage of this market," he says.

Thanks to new standards, the ubiquity of the Internet and the growing adoption of wireless data networks in the home, the technical hurdles to achieving this video nirvana are crumbling fast. Around a third of U.S. homeowners already have a wireless network so they can distribute Internet access to multiple PCs without punching holes in their walls for cables, according to a survey by the IDC market research firm. Many of these homeowners are eager to add video to their existing network, one day soon making the wireless video network throughout a home almost as commonplace as a home theater (multiple speakers, large screen TV, surround sound audio amplifier) typically found in one room of a house.

To pull this off, consumers will need a little help from their local service provider to successfully merge the two different types of video they've been watching for the past several years:

1)The traditional world of entertainment video: normal television programming delivered over the air or via cable or fiber, pay-per-view programming, DVD purchases and rentals, and some specialized downloading services, like Netflix. The signals come in either directly to a television set; via a set-top box, digital video recorder, or DVD player; or from a camcorder.

2) Videos downloaded to PCs from such Internet sites as YouTube and Hulu. Although originally a curiosity compared to the established TV-centric world, the signs of Web-based video breaking into the mainstream are already here. "In one recent month, 11 billion video streams were viewed online," says Dr. Ken Morse, vice president of client architecture for Cisco's Service Provider Video Technology Group.

In general, the two video worlds are separate, but consumers want to merge them into their existing home networks. A third of the respondents to a June 2008 survey by IDC wanted to bring streamed video from the Internet or digital video on PCs to their television sets. "One out of five home network owners said they'd be interested in connecting their televisions to their networks," adds IDC research manager Jonathan Gaw. "That outranks the number who wanted to connect their web cameras, DVRs, and home stereos" to their existing data networks.

In fact, more than four out of ten homeowners with a data network are eager to watch Internet videos on their TVs, according to an IDC survey (see the pie chart).

Strong interest in Internet video on TVs
(Percentage of respondents who wanted to watch
Internet video on their home television sets)

Source: IDC's Consumer Internet Video Survey, December 2007

Home networks are the natural medium to bring the two video worlds together. "Telco TV set-top boxes are by their very nature 100 percent networked," says Joyce Putscher, an In-Stat principal analyst. The cable companies and other service providers are already offering multi-room DVRs that will enable home networking, she adds.

Home networks have the capability, in theory, at least, to handle even high definition video, which "can be anything up to 20 megabits per second," Morse says. A network running on cables should handle a minimum of 100 megabits per second. As for wireless networking, the popular 802.11 family of standards is getting a new member, as the final version of the 802.11n standard will be approved in 2009. The new standard has a theoretical limit of 300 megabits per second, though in practice the actual available capacity will be much lower. The real-world speed of the new 802.11n standard will be more than enough for wireless distribution of HD video in the home, Morse notes.

However, there is another issue related to wireless video networks that spells opportunity for service providers. In addition to having the necessary bandwidth, a network hosting such content also faces so-called quality of service questions when distributing high quality video. Wireless data networks' distribution of video signals is subject to tiny delays unless they are installed properly. Furthermore, video signals can be disrupted by interference. The delays could result in a few unanticipated and unwanted breaks in the movie.

Consumers who have literally grown up with top quality video delivery might put up with interruptions in something from YouTube, but not in major television programming. According to Morse, there are already some technologies that can help avoid the problems. Cisco, through its Linksys brand of home networking equipment, for example, supports the 802.11n feature of running two separate network segments-one for data, the other for video. Separating the two streams can eliminate the interference-based delays which would mar the home theater experience.

Although home networks are not necessarily the easiest technology for consumers to manage, ease of use improvements have recently been introduced. High-end consumer wireless data network software called the Linksys Easy Link Assistant helps users establish complex configurations. However, just as most homeowners who wanted a home theater experience hired professionals to install and set up the speakers, screen and other components, experts say the wireless home video network will be a great opportunity for service providers and other professionals.

Service providers are starting to offer special networks for their own video, often using the television coaxial cables already running throughout most homes built in the past 30 years. The challenges of implementing a wireless video network make the service providers nervous right now, but eventually the lucrative business opportunity - and competitive pressures - will encourage them to add wireless network set-up to their offerings.

"They don't want their customers being less than satisfied with a wireless connection," Putscher says.

Given the rate at which wireless networking is evolving, it's a safe bet that it won't take another 60 years before video over home wireless networks is as common as television is today.

Erik Sherman is a free-lance writer based in Colrain, MA.