Connections

Having spent more than half my life testing consumer electronics for CR (no, that's not me in this 1960 picture of a TV test in our labs), I sometimes marvel at the advances in this industry over the years. "Back in the day," CR had audio labs and TV labs, and the only product that connected them was a single piece of furniture called a "home entertainment system" containing a color TV, radio and record player, used one at a time. We didn't have to test telephones because you rented them from the phone company, which did all the hookup and maintenance. Computers were the stuff of universities and large businesses, not homes. And the only wireless devices were the walkie-talkies a few tech-savvy people used to keep in touch with nearby family members outdoors.

Now, if I had to pick one word to characterize the thousands of new products we're seeing at CES, it would be "connections." Hardly a product is introduced that doesn't have features linking it to other devices in the home or outside, through online services, wireless Internet, satellite services, or broadcasts. The industry is trying to cope with the many technological and commercial tradeoffs in keeping all these connections fast enough for the wide bandwidth needed for high-speed, high-definition demands of new media; secure enough to prevent data theft; simple enough for consumers to set up; and profitable for the companies.

Sometimes, the magic works, and sometimes it doesn't. Microsoft's Zune can't play music purchased from services that work with Microsoft's own Windows Media Player. Apple's iPod needs a USB 2.0 connection, not a USB 1.1. New HDTVs will need an HDMI 1.3 connection, not a lesser one. A "draft"-spec Wi-Fi network router has to drop to a low speed to link to another manufacturer's laptop adapter. These are not so much failures of technology, but the fallout caused by the steady march of technology within our commercial marketplace. The confusion, frustration, and expense caused to consumers is unfortunate, though largely unintended. (Well, maybe not the expense.)

There is some light at the end of the tunnel, however. New industry standards will, at least, make it easier to get products to talk to each other, or "interoperate," with less fuss.

An initiative called "Wi-Fi Protected Setup" announced Monday by the Wi-Fi-Alliance allows new, compliant wireless home-networking products to establish and maintain a highly-secure and reliable connection with just a single button-press on the router. Previously, the setup of Wi-Fi security was either complex, or used defaults that hackers could guess. We expect most vendors of networking products to adopt this standard.

Intel's "Viiv" certification ensures that compliant home-entertainment products can connect reliably over a home network to a Viiv-compliant PC and share media content in both directions. We are seeing a small number of Viiv products at CES, and it's not yet clear if Viiv is more of a marketing tool than something that will pervade home media-sharing.

Every networking-product vendor has products claiming compliance with the upcoming 802.11-n Wi-Fi standard, which promises advances in range, speed and security. While a draft 1.0 standard has been ratified by the IEEE standards body, the Wi-Fi Alliance is waiting for the draft 2.0 standard before it begins to test and certify products for compliance and interoperability. Most manufacturers have told me that they expect their current products to comply with the draft certification, but stopped short of any guarantees. Not waiting for draft 2.0, Intel has its own certification process, as part of its Centrino program. So, laptops and Wi-Fi products sporting at least the Centrino logo should interoperate well, according to Intel.

My dream, which is fully realizable but encumbered by the industry's focus on individual innovation rather than cooperation, is this: Bring any new consumer electronics device into your home or apartment and turn it on, and it immediately gets recognized wirelessly by the devices that can communicate with it. The devices let you acknowledge that you want them to connect, and it is done, both for control and content, wirelessly, seamlessly and reliably, regardless of brand. I hope my dreams are fulfilled.

Here are a couple new products I think are cool:

The PCAlchemy Mini Media Center ($1,200) is a tiny, Viiv-compatible Windows Vista Home Premium PC that connects to a TV and home network, and has a wireless keyboard and mouse. It comes in black or white, and has a built-in DVD burner. There's a built-in NTSC TV tuner, and you can plug an optional digital HDTV tuner the size of a USB thumb drive into a USB port. An external hard drive can fit under the unit in the same footprint, and adds more USB ports. Despite having a fast Core-2 Duo processor and a large hard drive, it seemed very quiet.

The Phantom Technologies iBoss ($90 plus $8/month) is a solution to providing website filtering parental controls for savvy kids that might figure out a way around software-based controls. This one is a small box that goes between your broadband modem and the network router (or a single PC). You manage it -- setting approved categories and which computers get filtered -- through a web-page interface. You can also use it to monitor (some call it "spying") your kids' Internet activity, approved or not.

— Dean Gallea, program leader in computer testing