A peek inside the connected home.

"The connected home is all about getting digital entertainment--whether that is content we have ripped off CDs, video we have downloaded from the Internet, or digital photos we have taken--into living areas of the house, like living rooms, bedrooms and other places where we would actually like to enjoy it, rather than sitting around the PC," says Daniel Putterman, president and CEO of entertainment networking software development company Mediabolic Inc., San Mateo, Calif.

While most homes do not yet fit this definition of "connected," many people have taken the first steps toward it by doing things like taking digital photos and downloading music. Today, 22 million households in the United States, and millions in other parts of the world, particularly in Asia, have already taken the second step, which is having a home network, Putterman says. The third step, which makes a home truly "connected," is using devices that actually get the entertainment from the room with the PC in it, to the living areas of the house.

Putterman says he expects to see explosive growth in connected homes in the near future. "Once content is digital, the first desire consumers have is to get it from the PC to devices where we typically experience and enjoy entertainment," he says. "My personal prediction is it will be impossible, a few years from today, to purchase a consumer electronics device that is not connected to the network in one way or another. As we see networked homes and broadband connectivity grow, networked entertainment in general will grow at an exponential rate."

The connected home of today has a PC, a broadband connection, and a home network with one or more consumer electronics devices connected to it that can play back content. "Some of the higher end audio systems on the market have built in connectivity back to the PC and the Internet, and there are also a number of merging devices, such as digital media adapters, that can connect an unconnected device like a television to other devices in the home," Putterman says.

"In the next year, we're going to see more consumers purchasing these types of devices, so this kind of connectivity will happen on a broader scale. But in 5 or 10 years, things get a little more exciting," he says. "That's when, just like in the case of ubiquitous computing, we'll have seamless digital entertainment in the home and out of the home, where every device that can either acquire content, like a digital camera, or any device that can play back content, such as a dedicated music system in the home or an MP3 player, will be connected in a completely seamless fashion. Our personal preferences are going to follow us along. We're not going to have to worry about the technical details of what's going on--we'll just be able to enjoy our content any time. That's an exciting proposition."

In terms of digital pictures, Putterman says storage and photo sharing will become critical within the connected home environment. "We're going to see new devices in the home, like networked digital photo frames, that are responsible for getting digital photos into enjoyable places in the home, and methods of getting photos to and from photo sharing services without having to go first to a PC. We'll see much more consumer-friendly models for dealing with photos."

Not surprisingly, Putterman predicts cameraphones will play a major role in the connected home. "Many cell phones today have increasingly higher-quality digital cameras inside. When those mobile devices get home, they are an important source of content. When we snap photos, we may want to be able to play them back on a television or immediately back them up on some sort of hard drive in the home," he states. "Also, mobile devices themselves are going to be important control devices moving forward. In the future, we'll be using the cell phone as an advanced personalized remote control for various devices inside the home. It's going to be hard to separate mobile applications from fixed in-home applications."

What does this mean for retail digital imaging labs? Putterman predicts they will have a role to play. "From a use case perspective, there is still the notion of dropping your memory card off and getting prints back. Fast forwarding a few years, with the Internet-connected home and seamless entertainment, a lot of this capability is simply going to happen automatically. The need for going to an external establishment will become less critical," he says.

"This is a paradigm shift. In the world of photography, companies that have really hung in there are ones that have embraced digital photography and made that rapid switch from film to digital. Certain camera companies say they are going to completely phase out their traditional camera lines and be 100 percent digital in the very near future. There needs to be a corresponding paradigm adaptation on behalf of the labs and other constituents in the ecosystem," Putterman notes. "[To remain relevant, photo retailers] can really embrace digital photography and make sure the education level is extremely high in-store. They can carry and work with various successors to accessories that are relevant to digital cameras, and they can embrace online services. They can help consumers learn about and integrate the next-generation services that take advantage of the devices they can buy. I think the confluence of service and device is going to be critical, and retailers can have a place in that."

The transition to the connected home is happening, and quickly, Putterman says. "I think it's going to take many of us by surprise when we see how exponentially this market grows. There is no question the area of digital photography is very critical in the connected home--specifically, next-generation connected services and new types of devices that go in the home as a means of accessing the digital photography that's taken on the road. This is an exciting time in digital entertainment, with a special focus on photography in general."

To learn more about the connected home, download the podcast of Digital Imaging Digest Editor Jennifer Kruger's interview with Mediabolic CEO Daniel Putterman.