Microsoft gathers partners for home-network initiative

By
EE Times
(11/14/01, 12:14:17 PM EDT)

LAS VEGAS Microsoft Corp. will take a deeper step into consumer electronics this January when it launches a so-called e-Home initiative at the Consumer Electronics Show, where it will roll out new technology to connect PCs and digital consumer devices using emerging home networking technologies, EE Times has learned. The company will also introduce partner companies at CES that are adopting the technology.

The technology will make it easier to share digital music across different devices such as PCs, stereos and handheld music players, even if they are linked by diverse networks. Key to the technology will be a kind of intelligent routing that automatically scales multimedia files to the bandwidth of the receiving device's network. Future versions of the technology will focus on more difficult problems, like sharing video files across diverse devices and networks.

While much of the work will likely involve software innovations, hardware and OEM partners will also be a part of the CES announcement. "Microsoft is interested in a lot of new device types," said one source close to the company. "I think you will see the usual suspects like Philips, Sony and others involved in this."

One new device expected to be part of the announcement, code-named Mira, is believed to be based on a Geode processor from National Semiconductor Corp.

"My problem is I have a great stereo in my living room with 600 CDs in a jukebox, but I have a lot of other great audio files I have downloaded off the Net on my PC in another room," said Aaron Woodman, lead program manager for the e-Home initiative at Microsoft. "I want to bridge those two systems together and create a better experience."

The effort extends to the mobile world as well. "How does that music follow you when you leave the house? That's going to involve networks with very different bandwidths," Woodman said.

The initiative will encompass a number of emerging wireless networks, ranging from kilobit-per-second nets such as Bluetooth to multimegabit networks such as 802.11b, as well as several home networking technologies such as Home Phoneline and Powerline. "We're trying to be agnostic about standards," said Woodman.

Microsoft's work with the OEM community is similarly broad. "We will be working with a number of hardware makers on this going forward," Woodman said.

The networking initiative marks a new front for Microsoft's push into consumer electronics, which is building to the official rollout of the Xbox videogame console on Thursday (Nov 15).

In advance of the launch, the Comdex show floor is abuzz with excitement about the new platform. Microsoft set up a large pavilion in the Comdex entryway where users can try out the console, and Microsoft chairman Bill Gates gave away four of the systems at his Sunday keynote where Xbox was demonstrated to howls of approval from a packed crowd at the MGM Grand Hotel theater.

"The word around the water cooler here is Xbox will be the big thing for 2002," said a manager at Midway, a company developing games for all three major consoles Microsoft's Xbox, Nintendo's GameCube and Sony's Playstation 2.

While the Xbox is likely to give Microsoft an important beachhead in the living room, the company's upcoming networking technology could be key to a wider expansion of its sway in the consumer world.