Rambus (RMBS)

[cordob]

Hey Elixe, quite geeky that setup:)

Here is an aricle from today about the media stuff:
http://www.reed-electronics.com/electronicnews/article/CA484385
Home Media Servers Not Ready for Mass Market Until 2006

By Jessica Davis -- Electronic News, 12/2/2004

For a market that hasn't seen a lot of sales as of yet, the home media server/hub space is bustling with activity.

These next generation devices are designed to be the center of the digital home, organizing and networking audio and video and providing intelligent functions, such as the time shifting and automatic recording available with a personal video recorder.

And companies are coming at the market from many different angles – from next generation set top boxes to "entertainment" PCs to enhanced personal video recorders to entirely new devices– all looking to get a piece of the action, even though most observers agree that the action won't really arrive in earnest until 2006.

It's a market at the Wild West stage of development with lots of players and no rules.

"The end result is consumers are very confused," said Connie Wong, a senior analyst at Semico. "There isn't a standard name for this. There are all sorts of different names -- media hub, media server…"

"And the price points are significantly different because all have different capabilities," she said. "Some handle some media formats, some handle a lot of media formats. They have different sized hard disks. And the price points are all over the place from low end to high end depending on capability."

Just what are these devices? Analyst firm InStat defines a media server as a device with a hard drive, a broadband connection and in-home networking capability. Some analysts choose a more liberal definition that does not include a broadband connection.

Still, people have started to buy the devices, in spite of the confusion. By the end of this holiday season, just over one million entertainment PCs will have shipped, a drop in the bucket compared to overall PC sales, said Mike Paxton, senior analyst for converging markets and technologies at InStat. And that million shipped as of this holiday season is nothing considering the devices have been available since 2002.

"The price difference between media server PCs and a more basic PC is an extra $300 to $400 for those additional capabilities," he said. The PCs are among some of the most expensive devices that fit the category.

Denon's media server won best of show at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2004. The device did not function as either a cable or satellite box but rather simply was designed to manage video and audio throughout the home. The device was due for release in the September/October time frame but hit a delay.

"They are still trying to figure out the market for it," said Paxton.

Other media servers combine cable/satellite set top box functions with personal video recorder features such as time shifting. And some devices allow users to access IP-based video, adding all the content on the Internet to the regular channels that come into the home from satellite and cable carriers.

Texas Instruments is one of the companies that is looking to cash in on this emerging market by offering devices designed for streaming media. Such product would allow cable companies to offer an unlimited number of movies on demand without any constraints on start times. Or users could access "channels" on the Internet in addition to the traditional channels that are available today.

TI and others are also looking to tap into the vast emerging market for chips that will network the home media server/hub to all the other entertainment devices in the home, through both wireless technologies, existing coaxial cable already in the home, or enterprise networking technology such as Ethernet.

Ultra wideband (UWB) and a new Wi-Fi spec, 802.11n are two top contenders for the wireless digital home networking market, both offering enough bandwidth to send quality video signals from device to device throughout the home.

Cable operators are also catching on. Echostar offers consumers the option of buying a PVR-type box. Others are charging customers a fee of $5 to $10 a month for the time shifting capability available with PVRs.

And in an end run around all these CE players and other device makers, content company Disney contracted with Samsung to create its own set top box to offer movies on demand to consumers. Called MoonBeam, the service launched at the end of September in Jacksonville, Fla; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Spokane, Wash. The service charges consumers a per month equipment rental fee, plus a fee for each movie ordered.

"Disney is leaning the farthest on this experimentation of having a media product in the home," said Paxton.

"We are just at the leading edge of media server products getting out there," he said. "Operators are just dipping a toe in the pool, many consumers aren't even aware that these products are out there. And if they are aware they are asking, 'Is this something that is going to add value to our home experience?'"

Device makers in this market face a number of challenges before this market can take off, said Wong. Top among those are pricing, consumer education and an acceptance of the concept of this new device in the home.

Paxton believes prices need to go below $500, and preferably below $300 before the market is ready for the masses. And the PC devices will need to get down to the $800 price point at least, he said.

"Prices are huge," he said. "A lot of that price reduction will have to come with volume. But before we get to that point a lot of questions have to be answered in terms of features, networking technologies and partnerships."

Consumer education will also play a key role in the success of this market, said Wong.

"You have to make the consumer need and want this capability," she said. "On top of that, you have to make networking these products invisible to the consumer."

Consumers may also be confused by all the different media format technologies in the market today.

"We are still in the emerging stages of this market definitely," she said.

Paxton believes we are in the first year of a two-year long experimentation cycle. But, he says, the opportunity for semiconductor companies is very attractive.

"You are looking at a lot of processing power and a lot of memory," he said. "Devices will need processor modules, tuner modules, MPEG chip sets, wireless chipsets, networking chipsets…"


For me the atraction would be to record w/o the commercials. Does TiVo do that for you? I don't know how TiVo works, we don't have it here.


Cheers
Cor