The Convergence Channel

As they all
converge, IT resellers could also be making the crossover into selling
entertainment products-and vice versa. Presenting some snapshots of the newest
products that could be driving such trends:

Billed as the world's largest consumer electronics (CE) show-and certainly
the oldest-IFA Berlin opened its doors from September 2 to 7 onto a spectacular
array of digital entertainment products and technologies. Spread out across 26
halls, IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) Berlin was larger than the
better-known US-based annual CES event, but it's held once every two years.

What tied everything together at IFA Berlin 2005 was, simply, digital. Every
product there was digital, with most converging toward standards like IP,
allowing one to talk to another. This also allowed many of the products not only
to converge around the PC (often running Media Center) but also to talk over
standard Wi-Fi bridges connecting music and video devices in the home. This
would let users share a common multimedia source, and even have music 'follow
them' as they went from room to room (in a Philips implementation). With
everything going digital-from the media and content to the services and
products, convergence is a decisive reality, after all the hype.

Megascreen: The world's largest LCD was one of the most dramatic displays at IFA. Samsung's 82" 82F5 outpaced its nearest competitor by 17", and displayed near-natural-color 16:9 pictures at 1920x1080 pixels Live multimedia: Scattered amidst the stunning HD displays and digital electronics were various performances and live audio, such as this Vanessa Mae-inspired trio from the Far East

High-def world

Among the most striking themes at the show were the display products and
tech, such as the world's largest LCD and PDP (plasma) displays from Samsung.
The underlying theme was HDTV: almost every product shown was HD-ready.
Supporting themes included new and more accurate "natural" color
reproduction technology, accurate and powerful audio reproduction, DLP based TVs
and projectors, and digital broadcasting tech for a host of mobile products: DMB
(Digital Multimedia broadcasting), DVB-T, DAB (digital radio, well established
in Europe), and more. HD programming from Discovery and others, and events like
the World Cup next year, are expected to provide a boost to HDTV across the
world.

Stepping beyond digital, the really dominant tech driver was mobility. Many
hundreds of mobile products were on show, from video broadcast receivers to car
entertainment to jukeboxes to combination multimedia capture products to
ultra-high capacity storage.

Storage also saw the battle played out between the rival 'next gen DVD'
standards. Blu-RayDisc was the more visible one, with all the support it has:
Philips and Sony, Samsung and LG, Apple and HP, Twentieth Century Fox and
Disney, and more. HD-DVD, supported by Toshiba, was less visible out there.

IFA had some traditional IT players too, including Intel, which showcased a
range of 'connected home' and other consumer tech, from media center PCs to
video mail, a bicycle-mounted GPS-based tablet PC, and a powerful music studio
from Cakewalk running on dual-core P4HT system Also participating was the
Department of IT, along with IT and CE companies such as Moser Baer, Celetronix,
Bharti Teletech, Dixon and Videocon, among others. Hidden away in the basement
of a remote hall, the Indian stalls neither matched up to the snazzy tech and
displays of the event at large, nor had they, at least until this report was
filed on the IFA's second day, drawn visitors. Even the vendors seemed to have
run away from their own stalls.

The IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) has its roots in Berlin's Deutsche
Funkausstellung, 1924. The CE products of that time were the all-new valve and
crystal radio sets. Since then, the fair has showcased the progress of CE, from
VHF and transistor radios to B&W television and the audiocassette, and on to
the launch of color TV at IFA 1967. The war pushed the fair intermittently out
of Berlin (and it was run by the Nazi 'propaganda' ministry for a while)
before it came back 'home' for good. More recently, IFA 1995 was the first
major multimedia showcase. Ten years down, IFA seems to have made the leap to a
converged, all-digital world.

Prasanto K Roy at IFA Berlin