Who wants an all-connected "digital home"?

The Economist argues that "technology firms are pushing a futuristic vision of home entertainment not because consumers are desperate for it but because they themselves are."

All this points to a huge problem with the digital-home vision: the lack, among most consumers, of any sense of crisis about the status quo in entertainment. "We don't think many folks are looking for an electronic nerve centre in their homes," says Pip Coburn, who runs Coburn Ventures, a technology-consulting and investment firm. After all, popping in a DVD, say, is so easy and works so well. By contrast, getting a digital home up and running promises several lost weekends of fiddling with manuals and settings, and hefty expenses in new gear. According to Mr Coburn's formula for evaluating new technologies, whereby adoption is a function of the users' sense of crisis (ie, motivation to change) outweighing their perceived pain of switching, the digital home ranks as a clear "loser".

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May be only very few consumers feel the need for an all-connected digital home (like what the chart above suggests). But that doesn't mean that there isn't potential demand for a "connected home" of some sort.

Take me as an example. My new house was "smart-wired" during the construction stage, so that the phone/data and TV cables enter the house to a central unit, and are then distributed to a large number of outlets installed in various rooms within the house. Theoretically, all these phone, data and TV connections can be inter-connected.

But the fact is, while some connectivity is great, total connectivity is just an overkill. Moreover, to achieve total connectivity, I have to spend lots of money on lots of new gears (definitely not gonna be approved by the financial controller), go through the trouble to connect them all (probably something beyond my capability) and solve problems related to incompatibility and inoperability.

My haves and have-nots and wants and want-nots at the moment are:

- Analogue TV connections only limited by the total number of "smart-wired" outlets (40) and the number of TVs I have (2), whichever is lower. May buy a super-cheap, small, 3rd TV, so that it can be moved around to where it is needed.

- Set-top box for cable TV is connected to the main TV at the sitting room. Through an AV modulator, the cable TV signal is transmitted as a TV channel, so all TVs within the house can also watch cable TV. But channel navigation can only be done through the set-top box and the remote controll. That is, if I want to watch a certain cable TV channel on my bedroom TV, I have to select it in the sitting room. Switching to another channel is a chore.

- Although the AV modulator is a single channel one, I suppose with some extra cables and an AV switcher, I can put a DVD into the DVD player connected to the main TV/HiFi in the sitting room, to be enjoyed in the bedroom. But, what's the point? I would rather just buy a dirt-cheap 2nd DVD player and connect it to the bedroom TV. It's a no-brainer, and different household members can watch different DVDs in these two locations.

- Multi-room audio system was not installed. Too expensive and too little practical need for that.

- One phone line and several phone sets.

- An ADSL modem plus wireless router is located at a central location in the house to feed broadband Internet connection to 2 computers, with one being wireless enabled, and one not.

- No network has been set up between the two computers because I have no idea how to link up an XP PC and an OS9 Mac. Moreover, I don't see any real need to network them. Having said that, if it can be done easily, I'll do it.

- The printer is also not networked. I would like to have it done but I don't know how.

- No inter-connectivity whatsoever between the computers and the TV/HiFi. I have considered buying a networked device to feed digital contents on the computers to the TV/HiFi, but I can't imagine myself watching any such video on TV in the near future. As for music, I just use my iPod/iTrip to play songs via the HiFi.

- My ISP has just introduced VOIP service a few days ago. But my low level of phone usage does not justify buying a new gear for internet telephony. Moreover, I am already using computer-based software such as Skype and Yahoo! IM to make free calls to those with similar setup. I may consider VOIP if sometime in the future, using VOIP can mean that I can cancel my phone line rental (which at the moment is needed since the phone line carries the ADSL signal as well).

- In the near future, I may buy a new computer to replace my ageing ones. But would I buy a Media Centre PC, which Microsoft has been pushing as the heart of a connected digital home? I very much doubt it. Not convinced, I am afraid, Mr. Gates.