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Introduction
The introduction of networking capabilities into consumer electronics equipment and computers is revolutionising home entertainment. It allows users to acquire greater control over their media library - audio, video, photography, etc. - capitalising on the digitisation of media seen over the last few years.
The next step will be for users to share and distribute their digital content outside the home. For instance, they may wish to interconnect with the home networks of family or friends, or take their own home environment with them when they travel in a car or train or go on holiday. The popularity of peer-to-peer (P2P) networks already point in that direction.
This proliferation of home networks can be seen as the culmination of various technological and market trends. Innovations in affordable digital media devices, storage, personal area networks and digital media content have all played a role.Apart from the obvious advantages to home users, the emergence of home networking also brings major business opportunities for service providers.
The advent of home networks presents many new research challenges. Storage, retrieval, rights management, and interfacing to the global networks and other homes are all issues needing to be addressed. Digital rights management within a distributed home and multi-home environment is also a demanding aspect. Moving away from the media focus, another issue is how to connect these audio-visual (AV) networks into more general home automation systems.
This brochure describes IST research on Networked Audio-visual Systems, showing the integrated nature of European research in this domain. It presents profiles of specific research areas holding a promising future, together with selected project descriptions to exemplify and illustrate key on-going research and technology development.
The focus of research is two-fold. Firstly, user-friendly home network solutions that allow information to be moved, organised and retrieved within a heterogeneous home environment. Secondly, extended home AV platforms that allow the sharing of digital AV content between homes (or home-offices).The key area of interest is interoperability between home networking technologies and their integration with global networks. Research targets low-cost and user-friendly home AV platforms that can be reconfigured to the users' requirements.
The brochure is one of six in The Networked Future series, describing European funded research for Network and Communication Technologies.
| View of download the complete brochure (PDF, 630KB) |
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| Read or download the General brochure (PDF, 1.644KB) |
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This book is one of a series of six which correspond to the six strategic objectives:
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| Paper copies | A limited number of printed copies are available (the pack includes the introduction and all six specific booklets). If you wish to receive copies please send us an email mentioning the key word INFSO.D Brochure, the number of copies and the address. |