Who needs a digital media adapter (DMA) anyway?
This beauty, the BR-NX8, is the latest from Onkyo, with a 80GB HDD, a CD and MD player and a LAN and USB port it is full of potential. It is also DLNA compliant, so it can act as an audio server and probably also as a player of music from other servers on the home network. This brings us back to our eariler analysis regarding UPnP AV (or DLNA) in 2006. We said that standalone devices will gradualy become a rarity and instead the UPnP functionality will find its way into all sorts of devices, and this one is a great example. Another good example is the Nokia N80 which can serve the music stored on it to other network devices, or play the music stored on other device. It can even be used as a remote control of other UPnP compliant devices. So far we have UPnP complaint Hifi systems, and cellphones, yet the best example to illustrate our point is the new breed of LCD and Plasma TVs with built in UPnP AV support. Many companies announced such TVs in CES including names like Sony, Toshiba, LG, Samsung, and others. Sony even showcased in CES the PSP acting as a UPnP control point and initiating playback of a video coming from a Sony network storage device (which acted as a UPnP media server) to a Sony Bravia TV which acted as a UPnP media player (or in technical terms media renderer). The PSP could even play the video on its small screen through its location free TV capabilities while the TV could act as an independent control point, initiating the playback even without the PSP. It seems like a few years from now every audio, video or photo related device (mobile and stationary) will have UPnP AV functionality built in, so who needs a digital media adapter anyway? (yes we know, it is for guinea pigs that got to get a taste of the future right now and therefore are willing to pay a premium for products that barely work - no offense, I belong to this group as well).
The real question is, if every device in the home can act both as a server of content and as a client that can access content provided by other servers, isn't it going to be chaotic to try and figure out where is that song I am looking for. Is it on my iPod, my PSP, my Stereo, my mini system, my car hard drive, or maybe on one of my laptops, macs, or PCs? I sense an opportunity here, and yet I don't see any large company that can rise to the challenge because they are all too busy taking open standards and breaking them so that their products will not work with the competition. It is, in my opinion, one of those case where a small company with no hidden agenda can actually make a difference by bridging those islands of incompatibility and enabling a new type of ecosystem to emerge. This is what TVersity is all about and this is why I started it, will it be able to make a real difference? Only time will tell. In the meantime, let me know what you think about all this and how it will play out in your opinion.
