Digital Home Thoughts: Network Nightmare in the Living Room

"Technology companies are touting 2006 as the year that networked home entertainment finally becomes a reality -- just as they have in years past. The dream, as described at last week's CES, is to allow devices like TVs, computers and audio receivers to share audio and video around the home, with a single remote control running the show. But where some see the industry awakening to a bright new future, others see an ongoing interoperability nightmare... At CES, tech heavyweights such as Intel, Panasonic, Samsung and Sharp all showed off networking systems, but none of those systems are designed to work together. The resulting problems are similar to miscommunication between people who speak the same language but different dialects -- sometimes they might understand each other perfectly well, but at other times they might not."

I have to agree with the point being brought up here completely. In fact, the problem can be noticed even with a smaller set of technologies in play. Recently, when I got my Oppo DVD player and wanted to connect it to my TV, I couldn't get it to work over DVI at the right resolution and couldn't pass sound over HDMI (limitation of DVD player). So I was forced to send sound to an external set of speakers (something I didn't want to do then) while video was going over HDMI and the TV speakers went un-utilized as far as the DVD player is concerned. Anyways, with several audio, video, network and general home entertainment products coming, each one touting such a variety of features and supporting various (and usually different) formats that this problem is only going to get worse.