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The wired den
By DAVE GUSSOW
Perlman, the co-founder of WebTV, and Gates, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, have much different views on the future of home entertainment. Perlman sees a set-top box working with a TV as the headquarters for a family's home entertainment. Gates continues to push the PC, and links to Microsoft's Windows operating system, to expand choices. While they're getting most of the attention, they are not the only ones looking for ways to simplify and expand how consumers receive and use home entertainment. At last week's Consumer Electronics Show, a number of companies showed off products or prototypes for digital entertainment centers. It's a competition with many billions of dollars at stake because the winner could collect a share of every dollar spent on everything from Internet access to video games and movies-on-demand. But one of the ironies as this battle unfolds is that most consumers have yet to buy into the ideas being pushed: Surfing the Web on a TV has yet to catch fire, and few people watch TV on a computer monitor. Home networking, for those who have any interest in it, mostly means connecting computers, not different devices throughout a house. Much of this technology depends on high-speed Internet access, which is growing but remains a small fraction of the overall market. Personal video recorders have won critical acclaim, but not many customers. The very prospect of mastering an all-purpose super-remote control may be scary to the millions of people who never figured out how to set the clock on a VCR. And no one wants to miss a favorite TV show because of a software glitch. In Perlman's view, consumers are bogged down with too many gadgets that are too expensive and too difficult to use. "People are feeling overwhelmed," said Perlman, the founder and chief executive of 2-year-old Moxi Digital. Think of TVs, VCRs, DVD players, digital music players, stereo systems and PCs, and all the wires that go with them. His solution is a single box, about the size of a DVD player or VCR, working off a TV that acts as a digital traffic cop. It will handle all of a consumer's entertainment choices as well as direct them throughout the house on a network, either wired or wireless that, he promises, will be easy. "Home networking, for most people, it's far too complex," he said. The box will be connected to satellite or cable for TV and Internet reception and will be controlled by a single remote. It will not be sold directly to the public but to cable and satellite TV operators that license the software from Moxi, then offer it as part of their services to consumers. Perlman demonstrated a beta version of the software at the show; he expects the product to be available this year. People in different rooms could watch different TV shows at the same time, or some could watch TV while others listen to music or surf the Web. The key to the system's ease of use is its onscreen menu that gives users their choices. In a demonstration, Perlman called up a Madonna music CD. Another part of the screen showed other Madonna offerings, from movies available on TV to Internet content. TV listings can be searched by title, actor or topic, and the remote has been set up so that its number keys match a letter grid on the screen. That eliminates trying to type with a remote. Perlman says the grid system used for most listings simply does not translate well onto a TV screen. Perlman, who sold WebTV to Microsoft in 1997 for $425-million, has enlisted powerful backers, many of them Microsoft rivals, such as AOL Time Warner; the Barksdale Group, headed by Netscape founder Jim Barksdale; satellite TV operator EchoStar; and Real Networks, the maker of online media players. And to add another shot at Microsoft, it's based on the Linux operating system. "I think this will completely change the game," said Josh Bernoff, an analyst with Forrester Research. "You are looking at the next-generation entertainment device." But in Gates' Microsoft, Perlman is facing a company known for its aggressiveness and for its deep pockets. Gates, too, is aiming for a connected home entertainment system. As demonstrated by the recent introduction of its Xbox video game system, the software giant is branching more and more into the home entertainment arena. Toward that end, Gates demonstrated two software prototypes at the electronics show. Mira will deliver music, e-mail or other information wirelessly from a PC to lightweight tablets that can be placed or carried throughout a house. The tablets will have touch screens and mostly will be used to receive content such as e-mail, Web information or even data on the PC. They won't have any of the power of a full-fledged PC. Microsoft will not make the hardware, which resembles its upcoming Tablet PC. "It goes anywhere in the house," Gates said. "Entertainment will never be the same." The second project, called Freestyle, will allow people to record TV shows on a computer's hard drive. As with a personal video recorder such as TiVo, the viewer could skip commercials and save hours of programming. The saved programs potentially could be replayed on a TV monitor, if Gates' vision of a home with all its devices connected becomes reality. Or they could be viewed as a large image on the PC, a big improvement on the small pictures provided by current TV tuner cards for computers. That might appeal to college students, said P.J. McNealy, an analyst with GartnerG2, because they use the PC as an entertainment device. Among the other would-be inventors of home entertainment's future is Pioneer, which showed off its Digital Library. It will connect to the Internet, store digital music, photos and video and also allow different users to access content from different rooms over a network. It's expected on the market this year. "There's a battle right now for eyeballs and dollars," said McNealy. - Information from Times wires was used in this report. Dave Gussow can be reached at gussow@sptimes.com or (727) 445-4228.
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