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 consumer but also cheap. When it comes to consumer electronics, "the price competition is so tough now that if a power line adds $20 to the price of a DVD player, I think that's a detriment," said analyst Kurt Scherf at market research firm Parks Associates. "I think $10 is a reasonable starting point."

From the article "High-Tech Industry Plugs Into Simplicity" By David Colker

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