Yesterday I had the opportunity to participate in a panel discussion at CNTRSTG regarding how well the consumer electronics industry is progressing towards delivering the vision of the connected home.
Hosting the discussion was HP’s Carlos Montalvo and joining me on the panel were NPD’s Ross Rubin, Envisioneering’s Rick Doherty, Will Smith from Maximum PC magazine and Gizmodo’s Wilson Rothman.
The discussion summary promised a “spirited discussion” and whilst were starting to see improvements here at CES 2009 with less walled gardens being built to lock consumers into a particular company’s ecosystem, DRM disappearing from music (if not video) and broad adoption of uPnP and DLNA networking standards, there’s still a way to go before it all truly “just works”.
We were each asked to grade the industry on delivering the vision of the connected home based on last year’s CES and this year’s. My grades? 2008: C- and 2009: C
It was a really enjoyable discussion between the panel and audience – thanks to HP for the invite and to CNTRSTG for hosting.
More Info: CNTRSTG
11. January 2009 at 12:55 am
Im not sure how fair that grade is. The tech savy might be able to say C or maybe B but there are a lot of people who have just got the grip or thier iPod, TV remote and desktop browser. To get to, “so it just works” for these people will be a long time yet.
11. January 2009 at 3:04 am
@urmaster – Agreed. C is still not a good grade in my book