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19 February 2004
 With broadband penetration in the millions in Britain, many of us are experiencing the promise of the Broadband World and how that's changing our lives, at home and at work. I know that my flexibility in working from home changed enormously once I had a broadband connection. My recent excursion to the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (cesweb.org) was enlightening. It seems integrated home entertainment networks, the digital car, wearable technology, home network devices, DVD recorders and portable DVD players are the categories to watch in the coming months. DVD players continue to be the fastest-selling technology of all time, with factory-to-dealer sales of more than $3bn (£1.59bn) in 2003. Silverscreen is a UK retail start-up designed to capture the growth in the £2bn-plus DVD retail segment. Backed by a £13m seed investment from Apax Partners, it currently runs six shops, in malls like Lakeside and Bluewater, but aims to open 150 in the next two years. Silverscreen is run by the former chairman of New Look, Gavin Aldred. Former HMV man Trevor Johnson is one of the executive team, while Ernesto Schmitt, the founder of Peoplesound, is joint CEO. The business has strong support from all the major studios. There are three areas in which technology arrives at the home: entertainment, the home office and appliances. Whoever connects these three worlds will have a powerful position. That connector will most likely be someone other than the vendors pushing their products. Managed service provider Intamac (intamac.com), a private UK company, is positioning itself to be the interface between the hardware and software in the home network. It provides a service to the consumer, for a couple of pounds a month, to monitor the home using sensors and cameras. Alerts are sent via text messaging and email. UK customers can use Intamac's service to monitor their home for security purposes, or to watch children or elderly who are unattended. Meanwhile, Linksys is positioning itself as the hub in the home. If you're interested in wirelessly connecting to the Internet at home, your first stop will probably be Linksys. The company was bought last year by Cisco for $500m, and it's the first time Cisco has kept the brand of an acquired firm intact.Linksys deals with hardware; Intamac is a service provider. There's a beautiful relationship waiting to develop between to create a powerful home network.Catching up at CES with Curt Nichols, who runs Intel Capital's Digital Home fund out of Sacramento, California, reminded me of Intel's repeated success in delivering on the promises associated with its brands, first Pentium and now Centrino. With its new Digital Home brand, which it expects to announce this year, it's creating the ecosystem in which the home network will exist. Announced alongside the new $200m (£106m) fund focusing on the Digital Home was a Consumer Electronics group. This fund will be investing in hardware, software and services that make home networks absolutely simple and easy. Nichols was clear to indicate that Intel isn't necessarily pushing a PC-centric view of the world, but a Metcalfe's Law vision of the digital home (namely that the utility of a network is the square of the number of users). Certainly the broad penetration of wireless technologies is driving take-up of home networks. Julie Meyer is CEO of Ariadne Capital, a London-based investment firm that advises and invests in companies globally; julie@ariadnecapital.com New Media Age is the UK's leading weekly
on the Internet, iTV and wireless, comprising the latest news and
analysis on digital media developments, Internet market research,
exclusive sector reports, audience statistics and online advertising
data. For more information call 020 7292 3717 or visit
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