Media convergence reaches the “masses”

Hardware manufacturers around the world are creating new visions of digital life. Highly innovative projects, such as Philips’ Connected Planet, Samsung’s Homevita, or Intel’s Digital House, suggest that in the near future we will be using fully functional digital homes equipped with devices that will work together perfectly. Even 10 years ago, for example, building digital homes or apartments was something only people with truly vast amounts of money could afford. In the mid-90s, we were amazed by Bill Gates’ house, which, at the cost of many millions of dollars, was packed with digital devices, allowing, for instance, his refrigerator to order products over the Internet. However, in recent years, such great technological progress has occurred that the technology and the idea of building digital homes have very slowly, but surely, begun to reach the homes of ordinary people.

When the first digital homes were being built, no one thought about having all devices exchange information with each other. Moreover, they were built using very modern, yet very expensive, non-standard technologies. Hardware manufacturers did not cooperate with each other and did not use common designs, which also contributed to such significant implementation costs.

In recent years, there have been very significant changes, mainly in the way digital homes are designed. The use of widely available, cheap, and standard technologies has begun, and the very concept of digitizing life, based on devices that work together, is gaining increasing importance. A new term has emerged: Digital convergence, meaning the process of combining many different technologies, the goal of which is mutual data exchange and fast communication between digital devices.

Digital convergence is a phenomenon, a design philosophy, thanks to which devices that have existed for years are equipped with new functions and take on new meaning for humans. Imagine, for example, a digital camera and a television: thanks to NFC technology developed by Philips, we can bring the camera close to the TV receiver, and our photos will appear on the screen in a moment. The same will happen if we bring a phone with mp3 tracks close to audio equipment; our Hi-Fi system will start playing our favorite song in a moment. Data transfer between devices takes place automatically and without any human intervention.