TECHNOLOGY : High-Tech Homes: Just Around Corner

The InfoHome of the future, awash in electronic data, could begin becoming a reality in the next two to five years.

The buzzword of information technology is convergence, referring to the converging of three items--the television, telephone and computer.

The bedroom of the near future may be electronically anchored by a product of convergence that is just arriving--an information appliance similar to computers now available from Compaq and Packard Bell. They come with a built-in television tuner so you can take a “Baywatch” break while looking at your computer screen.

These computers also have a modem, a microphone, speakers and software that let the computer double as a speaker phone.

The bedroom, alternatively, might have a telephone with a five-inch screen as its most distinguishing characteristic. It’s a descendant of the P-100 Screen Phone, which Phillips Home Services started selling earlier this year. Visual information can be transmitted along with voice conversations on an ordinary phone line.

The phone’s readout can guide you through phone calls the way an automated teller machine leads you through a cash withdrawal.

Call your broker’s automated stock-quote line, and you don’t hear the prices of mutual funds in your portfolio, you see them.

AT&T; is working on a family of phones due in 1995 that are intelligent, screen-based devices. The project should culminate in three categories of phones, according to Eric Sumner, product vice president for AT&T;’s Home Systems unit.

Some will work in conjunction with a TV set; others will be integrated into a PC display, and others will stand alone with their own screens.

You won’t even have to make a call--Sumner suggested you could simply program it to dial up weather information each morning, or display traffic information only if it involves your usual commuting route. The new phones could retail for $100 to $300.

In the living room, cable system operators such as Time Warner and Tele-Communications Inc. plan to beef up TV set-top boxes with computing power that will make them the gateway for a variety of advanced services.

Larry Miller, vice president of marketing for TV Guide On Screen, said it won’t be long before set-top boxes will have the computing power now in a $12,000 workstation.

The living room TV also may help lower your utility bill. TCI, Microsoft and Pacific Gas & Electric are collaborating on a management system designed to give homeowners information about their energy use so they can cut costs. You can learn how much it costs to run an appliance, how many hours it has been running and what percentage of your electric bill is generated by it.

In the InfoHome’s kitchen, a smaller TV lets you use ShopperVision to go grocery shopping. Scheduled to debut in Time Warner’s experimental cable system in Orlando, Fla., ShopperVision lets you see a product and electronically pull it away from the shelf to examine it and read package information.

The information network would not be limited to phones, computers and TVs--it could comprise everything in your household that plugs into the wall.

“It sort of boggles the imagination when you think about how this might evolve,” says Jim Vander Mey, chief executive officer of Intellon, a company working on a standard of communication among devices. “If nothing else, all the clocks on all the appliances could be kept in sync.”