We may have to wait a few years for the flying car, bummer for those of us who commute, but the need to acquire, store and share digital information and entertainment is upon us now, creating home-run opportunities for the chip industry.

The "digital home" is a popular catchphrase for a technology tidal wave sweeping consumer electronics. Music downloads have gone mainstream; video is delivered in digital form via DVD, DBS and cable; and just about everyone is on the Internet.

The first big opportunity is software and hardware that simplifies the storage and usage of video and audio content in the home. A part of the story is time-shifting video, or digital video recorders (DVRs), popularized by TiVo. Another is the "audio jukebox" concept. It is likely that these two functions, and several others, will be combined into "home media servers," with many homes having both DVRs and PCs with stored personal and broadcast content. Parks Associates estimates that 25 million U.S. households will have this technology in one form or another by 2008.

Once this digital information is in the home — video stored on a DVR's hard drive, MP3s on a media server, home movies on a PC — people want to access it anywhere in the house, and in many cases have it on-the-go. Having "islands" of home entertainment will not be an option. The two big silicon opportunities for "sharing and using" are whole-home networking and portable storage.

Wireless networking has been a standout in the chip business over the past couple of years, and has captured the public's imagination. It will continue to have a valuable place in the digital home, for everyone appreciates the mobility gained when laptops can travel around the house, fully connected to the Internet with no wires. However, WLAN has limitations when it comes to whole-home multimedia networking. Both standard-definition and high-definition video come in multimegabyte packages from the broadband connections feeding the home, and from stored sources in the home. Consumers will demand no-excuses video anywhere in the house.

That is why a wired backbone will be required for transferring large multimedia files from room to room. But what is the best way to accomplish this with the least amount of hassle for the user? Fast Ethernet is a proven technology, but it has no built-in quality-of-service and it requires new wires. An alternative will be "no-new-wires" technology with built-in QoS that uses the existing coaxial-cable wiring already installed in virtually all U.S. homes. Backed by a number of industry heavyweights including Cisco, Comcast, EchoStar, Motorola, Panasonic, Radio Shack and Toshiba, this technology is being standardized and will be widely available late this year.

In addition to the home network backbone and the appendages that WLAN provides, there will also be a need for large amounts of portable storage for on-the-go home media. There is a big silicon opportunity in this area as well for flash memory.

Patrick Henry, President and CEO, Entropic Communications, San Diego