An Emerging Standard for Home Media Networks

This standard is something to keep an eye on. If you haven't already upgraded to digital TV, then in a year or so, network connectivity will be one more feature to look for. Of course there are lots of ways to accomplish this today, but standardization usually makes thing easier & cheaper.

Industry leaders join push for home media networks - Yahoo! News:
"FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Chip and electronics makers Intel (INTC.O), Infineon (IFXGn.DE), Texas Instruments (TXN.N) and Panasonic (6752.T) have formed an alliance to promote home networks for movies, music and pictures using domestic wiring.
. . .
The four leading chip and electronics makers will help market and test a standard to wire together computers, TVs and entertainment systems using electricity, phone and coaxial cable lines that already exist in most homes, they said on Tuesday.

There is already a common wireless standard to link home devices using Wi-Fi. Wired networks often have the advantage of being more stable and having more capacity, and the building blocks for the infrastructure already exist in most homes.

"Powerline is the most ubiquitous technology in the world. You have powerlines to almost every house in the world," Intel's Matt Theall, president of the new HomeGrid Forum (homegridforum.org) said on a conference call.

"There's a huge market potentially for this type of technology. It can be embedded in DVD players, TVs, PCs, speakers -- any home entertainment device."

The four leading members of the HomeGrid Forum (homegridforum.org) said they would work with the International Telecommunications Union to promote, test and contribute to a standard the ITU is already working on, called ITU-T G.hn."