Living Room Taking Center Stage at HP
Continuing its yearlong push into the living room, Hewlett-Packard Co. will launch a series of devices to make it easier to move digital entertainment throughout the home.
Chief Executive Carly Fiorina will unveil new computers, televisions and an “entertainment hub” at this week’s International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
HP’s move is part of a larger effort by information technology companies to compete more directly against consumer electronics makers. As more video and music becomes digitized, the lines between computers and entertainment devices are blurring.
“We absolutely know from the research we’ve done ... that there is a big set of consumers that are not comfortable enough with the PC to say, ‘I want this to be the center of my living room experience,’ ” Fiorina said. “But they do want to be able to do, in their living rooms, something like take their digital photos and put them to music and come up with a great slide show, and do it in an easy way.”
The Digital Entertainment Hub, for instance, manages digital files such as music and video, but does not handle traditional computing functions such as word processing. The hub enables users to store digital photos, music and video files including high-definition TV broadcasts, and access them with a remote control.
“I’ve been telling them, ‘You have to put out a simpler, lower-cost, more robust device that does media only and that’s not a PC,” said Roger Kay, an analyst with technology market researcher IDC. “You don’t want to have a balloon coming up telling you that Norton antivirus is about to run out of gas and you’d better re-up.... You just want it to work.”
Fiorina declined to discuss pricing for the entertainment hub, but Kay said it probably would be cheaper than Media Center PCs, which start at $800 without a monitor.
The hub will be based on Linux, an operating system that does not require Palo Alto-based HP to pay licensing fees the way it would for a device powered by Microsoft Corp.’s Windows.
Throughout 2005, HP will introduce 17 new flat-panel and rear-projection TV sets, and a second generation of its Digital Entertainment Center, which is a full-fledged PC for the living room.
The digital entertainment center is built to look like a stereo component but able to beam music, photos and video wirelessly to other rooms. It will also be high-definition capable.
Fiorina said she didn’t think it was too early to put out a successor to the first DEC, which went on sale last fall.
“That is what technology is all about,” she said. “You put an innovation into the marketplace and you introduce subsequent generations, and with each generation you learn something that you can incorporate for consumers.”
