Home WiFi setups handle music and movies, too

The most commonly used technology for wirelessly networking home computers, WiFi, is quickly being adopted for another, less work-related use: home entertainment.

Traditional computer component and networking companies like Microsoft and Linksys are tweaking their product lines to include devices that beam music files and pictures all around the house.

And electronics makers are increasingly including WiFi receivers in standard home appliances like televisions and stereos, giving consumers the ability to listen to any song or view any photo stored on the home computer from any room in the house.

"Your PC becomes your library of information, and every time you add a device that's media oriented, you access that information that's stored in your library," said Craig Cincotta, a spokesman for Microsoft. The Redmond, Wash., software giant is working with several computer manufacturers to put "media extenders" -- devices that send content to televisions and stereos via home wireless networks -- on the market this year.

"You don't get up out of your chair and change that DVD or CD, you call it up from your computer and wait for it to play," Cincotta said.

WiFi technology was originally developed for sharing Internet connections wirelessly between computers in a home or office. The technology was popularized as homes increasingly had multiple computers that needed to use the same Internet connection simultaneously.

By installing a small radio transmitter called a router, and receivers called access points, one high-speed Internet connection can be used by several computers for tasks such as downloading music and sending e-mail at the same time, without much loss of speed.

The latest WiFi standard, called 802.11g, is capable of transferring data at 54 megabits per second, 1,000 times faster than a standard dial-up modem and fast enough to stream a song from a computer to a stereo in another room without any skips or pauses.

Industry estimates peg the number of home wireless networks in the United States at 3 million to 5 million. That number is expected to grow into the tens of millions before the end of the decade. With that level of acceptance, computer and home electronics manufacturers started to view home entertainment as a potential growth area for WiFi-enabled products.

"The vast majority of people are still buying wireless networks for data applications, as opposed to entertainment applications. We expect that to change significantly over the next 12 months," said Michael Wagner, director of global marketing at Linksys, an Irvine, Calif., company that makes WiFi routers and access points.

Wagner said Linksys' computer networking products account for 10 times more sales than those designed specifically for home entertainment uses. Still, the company is already selling products that connect game consoles like Sony's Playstation 2 and Microsoft's X-Box, stereo equipment, televisions, and video cameras to the Internet via an existing WiFi network, with plans to develop more.

Eventually, "it will end up being 50-50," Wagner said regarding Linksys' ratio of data networking and entertainment networking product sales.

Other companies are also joining the fray. Microsoft developed software that lets computers running its Windows XP operating system switch to "media center" mode, allowing users to access music, pictures, or video stored on their computers via remote control. When Microsoft's media extenders come out this year, consumers will be able to beam the same content to specially equipped televisions and stereos using WiFi.

Media center computers start at under $1,000, and the accompanying receivers, to be made by computer firms like Hewlett-Packard, AlienWare, Dell, Gateway, and Samsung, are likely to hit the market at between $200 and $300, Cincotta said.

Sharp is selling a television equipped with WiFi technology, which allows it to receive content up to 50 feet away from a DVD player or VCR. Rockford Corp., a Tempe, Ariz., company best known for its Rockford Fosgate line of car stereo components, launched a division called Omnifi Media last year. Omnifi sells a hard-drive for cars that can store thousands of songs in MP3 and Windows Media formats, and a digital music server -- a small, cable-boxlike device that hooks up to a home stereo. The units, which retail for $599 and $299, respectively, can receive music from a home computer over a standard WiFi network.

Still, there are glitches, and not every consumer electronics company has jumped on the WiFi bandwagon.

The wireless-g standard is perfectly capable of beaming music and pictures around the house, but sending video would prove slow and choppy at best. Furthermore, the major film studios have yet to embrace full-scale downloading or "ripping" of their content from DVDs to be stored on home computers, for fear of piracy, thus limiting the functionality of WiFi applications for video.

And the WiFi standard itself is imperfect.

WiFi devices still require the user to configure security measures such as encryption on their own, in order to prevent digital pirates from standing outside their homes and gaining access to any content stored on computers or other wirelessly networked devices, including music, movies, and personal photos.

"If you buy one of these products and take it home, you're letting anyone into your network, which is ridiculously stupid," said Dave Arland, vice president of US corporate communications and government relations for consumer electronics maker RCA.

RCA is making home entertainment products like speakers that can communicate with a computer wirelessly, though not via WiFi technology. In the company's view, Arland said, WiFi is a promising technology for home entertainment uses that's not yet ready for prime time. "For the average consumer, it's not a reality yet," he said. "They want to be able to buy something, take it out of the box and have it work."

Omnifi managing director Tom O'Mara agreed using WiFi for music and movies leaves a lot to be desired: "The holy grail is that wireless becomes the same thing as a light bulb -- when you add a new electrical device at home, you plug it in, you turn it on, and it works. That's wireless in the future; when you want to add new devices, you just turn them on and they sync up into the network."

"I think we're still several years before we're there," he said.

Keith Reed can be reached at reed@globe.com.