Los Angeles Times

The consumer electronics industry figures devices that can be set up in a home network — PCs, televisions and stereos that can talk to one another and share high-quality data, video and audio — are destined to be hot products. The trick is to simplify the networking part so that consumers will bite and, as Liao put it, "the market will expand to increase demand for TVs and all kinds of audiovisual devices."

The technology that wins out will be not only simple for the consume ...read more

Although some forecasters have predicted a multibillion-dollar industry in home networking, the actual numbers have been much lower — in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Venture capitalists have been spooked from investing, said Kurt Scherf, vice president of Parks Associates, a market research and consulting firm based in Dallas that specializes in residential technologies.

"I think it's a real boost to a lot of smaller companies in this space," Scherf said.

From th ...read more

A recent survey by Parks Associates, a research firm that specializes in home networking, found that half of the consumers with Internet access at home were interested in connecting their computers to their stereos and TV sets.

The results reflect the growing role computers are playing in acquiring, organizing and storing digitized music, pictures and videos, particularly among young adults.

Meanwhile, the number of homes installing networks is rising in tandem with the ...read more

Only about 6% of U.S. homes have any kind of digital network, according to Parks Associates, a Dallas market research and consulting company. With too many competing technologies and not enough compelling programming, consumer electronics companies have been reluctant to push home networking, said Kurt Scherf, vice president of research at Parks Associates.

From the article "Software to Channel Films From PCs to TVs," by Jon Healey and Alex Pham.

The service [call waiting ID] is likely to be most popular among those who use both caller ID and call waiting, especially in households with just one phone line, according to Hongjun Li, telecommunications analyst at Parks Associates, a research and consulting firm in Dallas. In 1998, about 19% of all U.S. households subscribed to both call waiting and caller ID, according to a Parks Associates survey of more than 1,500 homes.

From the article "Phone Companies Combine Famil ...read more