Industry Research Reports and Market Analysis at MindBranch.com
  

Digital Home "Any Content, Anytime, Anywhere, on any Device?"

Product Type: Market Research Report
Published by: IDATE
Published: December 2006
Product Code: R221-162
Description
This IDATE market report provides an analysis of the digital home environment and the various factors enabling its emergence. It describes the building blocks and the vision of the digital home being put forth by players from the digital communications market’s different sectors. And, finally, it offers up scenarios for the way that the digital home market will likely take shape in the short and medium term, along with an analysis of the impact these scenarios will have on the players’ strategies.

The concept of digital home encompasses a range of visions. As it stands, its most common embodiment is the networking of two or more computers, or of a PC with a consumer electronics device.

There exists an unsatisfied demand for solutions that enable devices to exchange content, both inside and outside the home.

The fundamental building blocks for creating the digital home are available, but operators’ various visions and the lack of a standard are hampering deployment. No single industry controls all of the essential links in the chain.

Despite the current focus on network- centric or terminal-centric systems, the individualisation of consumption will likely lead to more decentralised approaches and a user-centric digital home, built around an array of devices and decentralised storage solutions.
Table of Contents

1. Introduction: changing uses paving the way for the digital home

2. Factors shaping the digital home

2.1. Digitised content and devices

2.2. New storage platforms, providing alternatives to video streams

2.3. Growing internet use in the home

2.4. New uses: personalisation, portability, continuity

2.5. Are users ready?

2.6. Summary: the digital home’s driving forces

3. Key elements of the digital home

3.1. The devices

3.1.1. The "boxes"

3.1.2. The PVR

3.1.3. The Media Centre

3.1.4. The PC

3.1.5. The video game console

3.1.6. Portable media players

3.1.7. DVD player-recorders equipped with a hard drive

3.1.8. Mobile handsets

3.1.9. Growth of media equipment rates in French households between 2004 and 2006

3.2. Removable storage solutions

3.2.1. Flash memory

3.2.2. External hard drives

3.2.3. Online storage

3.3. Network technologies

3.3.1. Wi-Fi

3.3.2. PLC

3.3.3. Bluetooth

3.3.4. Cables

3.4. DRM

3.5. Standardisation bodies

3.5.1. The DLNA

3.5.2. The UPnP forum

4. Digital home solutions

4.1. What hub for the digital home?

4.2. The players’ marketing strategies

4.3. The Home Gateway: ISPs’ model

4.3.1. Home Gateway initiative

4.3.2. Thomson’s Home Gateway

4.3.3. France Telecom’s vision

4.3.4. Free’s vision

4.3.5. The Sky digital home

4.3.6. Home Gateway, STB manufacturer: Pace micro

4.4. The online digital home

4.5. The Microsoft digital home

4.6. The Apple digital home

4.7. The CE digital home

4.8. The Media Centre-based digital home

4.9. The portable device at the heart of the digital home

4.10. Electrical equipment suppliers’ digital home

4.11. Open source digital home solutions

4.12. Open source Media Centres

4.13. Embedded Linux OS

5. Factors shaping the digital home

5.1. Fragmented consumption patterns: advantage PC?

5.2. Individual vs. collective consumption

5.3. Universal device, core device?

5.4. What type of storage?

5.4.1. Centralised or distributed storage?

5.4.2. Local or online storage?

5.5. Controlling the digital home

5.5.1. Interoperability and DRM

5.5.2. Proprietary storage

5.5.3. The standardisation challenge

5.5.4. The content industry’s reticence

5.6. Profit centre or form of leverage?

6. Development scenarios

6.1. Scenario 1: Device-centric configuration

6.1.1. The PC-centric digital home

6.1.2. The TV-centric digital home

6.2. Scenario 2: The user-centric digital home

6.2.1. The “homemade” user-centric digital home

6.2.2. A seamless user-centric digital home

6.3. Scenario 3: A network-centric digital home

6.3.1. The online network-centric digital home

6.4. A local-network-centric digital home

7. Conclusion




Figures & Tables




Figure 1: Digital terminal take-up in French households

Figure 2: Growth of the broadband subscriber base by geographical zone

Figure 3: Growth of broadband penetration by geographical zone

Figure 4: Broadband penetration in French households in 2005

Figure 5: Average weekly screen time in French households

Figure 6: The boxes’ place in the home

Figure 7: PVR use and TV networking in French households

Figure 8: Annual Sales: Media Server Form Factors

Figure 9: PC equipment rate in French households

Figure 10: Home console equipment rate in French households

Figure 11: Equipment rate in the US for digital media players with a hard drive

Figure 12: Growth of portable MP3 player equipment in French households

Figure 13: Type of MP3 players equipping French households (% of households)

Figure 14: Standard DVD player equipment rate in French households

Figure 15: DVD player equipment rate in French households, by type of device

Figure 16: World mobile handset market, in volume

Figure 17: Growth outlook for the world 3G handset market(1)

Figure 18: How a DMA can be used in the home

Figure 19: Rate of French households’ transition to the digital home

Figure 20: A home network using PLC, based on an ADSL internet connection

Figure 21: Evolution of the players’ digital home offers

Figure 22: Configuration of a typical PC-centric digital home

Figure 23: Configuration of a typical TV-centric digital home

Figure 24: Configuration of a typical “homemade” digital home

Figure 25: Example of a seamless Windows digital home configuration

Figure 26: Configuration for a typical network-centric online digital home

Figure 27: Configuration of a typical local-network-centric digital home

Figure 28: The different digital home configurations

Figure 29: The digital home ecosystem




Table 1: Network digitisation

Table 2: Average number of devices in equipped French households

Table 3: Access speeds offered by some of the leading broadband access providers in Europe, Asia and the US (May 2005)

Table 4: French households’ use of portable MP3 players as music servers

Table 5: Ways that French households watch video files stored on a PC

Table 6: Ways that French households listen to music files stored on their PC

Table 7: The digital home’s driving forces

Table 8: PC equipment rates by geographical zone

Table 9: Breakdown of the world home console base by brand, in 2005

Table 10: Growth of media equipment levels in French households between 2004 and 2006

Table 11: Characteristics of 802.11

Table 12: Characteristics of PLC

Table 13: Characteristics of Bluetooth

Table 14: Leading DRM systems

Table 15: Comparison of player strategies

Table 16: Digital home development scenarios: overview


Ordering and More Information
Price and Delivery Options


MindBranch has been the leading provider of industry and investment research from more than 550 independent research firms since 1992. With over 90,000 market research reports, MindBranch is your trusted source of competitive business intelligence.