High-Tech Industry Plugs Into Simplicity
Soft-spoken and a conservative dresser, Paul Liao hardly fit the stereotype of a showman. But to a standing-room-only crowd at the Las Vegas Hilton, the trick he was about to perform was like magic.
Liao stood alone on a stage, an ordinary household extension cord in each hand. Flanking him were two plasma-screen televisions: The one to his right displayed high-definition video of Olympic speedskating; the one to his left was dark.
When Liao plugged one extension cord into another, the video signal coursed through the conventional copper wires in the hotel’s walls and ceilings, and after 14 seconds, the skating video popped up on the TV to his left, the picture sharp and vibrant.
The audience burst into applause. The magic? Showing that the most dense of media signals -- high-definition video -- could be dispatched from one TV to another through the oldest wires in most Americans’ homes: the same ones that power the toaster.
“I was so nervous,” said Liao, chief technology officer of Panasonic North America, of his demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show this year. He was worried that the hotel’s array of vacuum cleaners, washing machines and elevators would create too much electrical interference. “It was actually rather remarkable that it worked.”
The test of so-called power-line technology was close to revolutionary.
The consumer electronics industry figures devices that can be set up in a home network -- PCs, televisions and stereos that can talk to one another and share high-quality data, video and audio -- are destined to be hot products. The trick is to simplify the networking part so that consumers will bite and, as Liao put it, “the market will expand to increase demand for TVs and all kinds of audiovisual devices.”
Home network regimens on the market today have proved to be troublesome for the average consumer, but using a network based on the old-fashioned electrical system could be about as difficult as turning on the lights.
“It doesn’t take technical finesse to just plug something into the wall,” said Mike Wolf, analyst with market research firm InStat-MDR. “We all do that already.”
This year, consumer electronics heavyweights that belong to the HomePlug Power Alliance -- including Sharp Corp., RadioShack Corp. and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., which owns the Panasonic brand -- plan to unveil a technical standard for manufacturers to ensure their devices will network together.
The alliance’s power-line technology faces competition from other home networking technologies, including ethernet wiring -- which is also capable of carrying signals as dense as high-definition video -- and advances in wireless due out this year.
The stakes are high. The widespread adoption of home networking could finally give the consumer electronics industry something to boost sales. The industry posted $96 billion in sales last year, about the same as in 2000, according to the Consumer Electronics Assn.
The technology that wins out will be not only simple for the consumer but also cheap. When it comes to consumer electronics, “the price competition is so tough now that if a power line adds $20 to the price of a DVD player, I think that’s a detriment,” said analyst Kurt Scherf at market research firm Parks Associates. “I think $10 is a reasonable starting point.”
HomePlug promoters won’t talk about what the system might cost. In fact, most of HomePlug’s technology is still under wraps.
Liao said Panasonic had developed methods for encoding media information and then dividing it into frequencies that would enable the data to travel through electrical lines. These lines are a lot thinner than the cables that, for example, carry cable television into the home, and they are susceptible to interference caused by power surges from appliances like refrigerators and washing machines.
“The last thing a content provider wants to hear is that in the middle of the big football game, the TV picture pixilated because someone in the house turned on the microwave or a hair dryer,” Scherf said. “No one wants to get involved with a home network that could have technological problems.”
Overcoming that hesitance was the point of Liao’s demonstration in Las Vegas. High-definition video is a data-intensive application that requires a fast, reliable network.
Still to come are real-world tests to show that a power-line network can work consistently and simultaneously with multiple televisions, music players and game consoles.
And it must prove itself as a secure system, with no chance that content in one apartment or home will leak next door. An alliance spokesman said the group would be using high-level encryption.
Far less technologically intense uses of the home electrical grid have been on the market for decades. Probably the best-known is the X10 timer system used to turn lights and appliances off and on -- mostly to make it appear as if the home is occupied in an effort to ward off thieves -- that RadioShack has been selling since 1979.
The HomePlug alliance, formed in March 2000, released its first standard in 2001. That allowed Internet data -- far less demanding of a wire than high-quality video -- to travel through the electrical system. But it was almost completely ignored because of the rising popularity at the same time of wireless Internet for laptop computers.
“The laptop is inherently a wireless device,” said Jim Reeber, marketing director of North Plainfield, N.J.-based chip maker Enikia, which develops semiconductors for power-line networking equipment. “No one wanted to plug it in for power or for networking.”
This gave wireless -- which can be found in more than 4 million households in the U.S., according to a Parks Associates study -- a big lead in the networking sweepstakes.
But even if wireless does advance enough to carry high-quality video, it has drawbacks, including distance limitations, signal drop-offs and sometimes frustrating installation.
Heavy-duty wiring is an already proven means of carrying multimedia loads, but getting a cable or ethernet outlet into every room is a job for a professional. “No one wants to start snaking wires throughout a house,” Reeber said.
There have been attempts to move audio and video throughout a house using telephone lines, but few homes have phone jacks in most rooms.
Some new homes are coming equipped with built-in cabling. Sony Corp. of Japan this year introduced packages for residential developers that included a variety of home entertainment components designed to work together throughout a cable-equipped house.
“I think that’s the endgame for a consumer electronics company -- to convince a consumer they have to buy all their products in a package in a home network,” Scherf said.
Future networking, many analysts say, could rely on all three methods: cabling to bring content into the home, power-line technology to take it to all parts of the house and wireless to provide the final link to devices.
That, of course, depends on wireless and power line proving themselves cheap and dependable.
Consumer electronics companies don’t want to wait much longer to provide a networking solution to a generation eagerly awaiting it.
“If you are in the 35-plus age group, you might not understand what all the fuss is about,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst at research firm Creative Strategies in Campbell, Calif. “But kids today are already frustrated that they can’t easily move their digital stuff from one place to the other.
“They want this; they expect it,” he said. “And the industry has to find a way to do it.”
