The Next Big Thing

If you are building or updating your home entertainment system and a new HDTV is on your shopping list, you are focused on the size of the set and a list of important features (number of HDMI connections, native resolution, etc.). The one additional thing you may want to look at on your HDTV (or for that matter, PVR, AV receiver, Home-Theater-in-a-Box, etc.), is an RJ45 port. That’s right, an Ethernet (RJ45) port. The mere mention of terms like Ethernet, LAN, NAS or DHCP probably has you thinking about computers, if you are at all familiar with these terms. But as the lines between consumer electronics and computers continue to blur, these terms are not only reserved for MACs, PCs and UNIX boxes, they are more and more becoming part of the language of HDTV and other consumer electronics products.

Pioneer, Toshiba and HP have been sporting Ethernet ports on various HDTV models in their respective 2007 line-ups. Industry heavyweight Samsung has begun to include Ethernet ports on their 2008 Series 6 and 7 models. So, you may want to ensure that your next HDTV set (or any other device) has an RJ45 port to allow you to take advantage of the next big thing in home entertainment. The next big thing in home entertainment is seamless access to all of your digital content. A collaborative effort that began in 2003 known as DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance), is about to move to center stage in the home entertainment market. If you are unfamiliar with DNLA, then you may want to read this background article. In a nutshell, the goal of DLNA is to achieve seamless interpretability between all digital devices in the home, using a home network.

What the Ethernet port provides is a way to access digital content, stored on your PC, NAS (Network Attached Server) or even the internet directly from your HDTV (or other devices) in real time. If you have digital pictures stored on your PC, all of the current DLNA sets will allow you to find and display the content on your HDTV across your home network. The HP SL4778N and SL4278N, allow you to play DivX movies stored on your computer directly to the set, and also provide the ability to utilize DivX Video-on-Demand (VOD) services directly. The InfoLink service on the Samsung series 6 and series 7 HDTVs, allows you to view RSS feeds of news, weather and stock market information in pop-up windows over top of your regular HDTV content.

What we are beginning to see is the vanishing of Digital silos. Devices like televisions which once only presented content like your weekly evening sitcom, are being transformed into portals capable of accessing and presenting any form of digital content.