The world at your fingertips

Most people start their day with the touch of a button -- the snooze button, that is. But imagine being able to press a button that would simultaneously turn the lights on in your kitchen, start warming the room, begin brewing coffee, and turn on the TV morning news.

This may sound like a scenario from the distant future, but such technology, and others like it, is already available. Networked homes tend to conjure images of a sleek, impersonal techno-fortress or machines going haywire and turning against their owners. But the latest home networking products are designed to improve safety, convenience, and energy efficiency.

The demand for these technologies is growing, with the market projected to be $4 billion by 2008, according to ABI Research, a New York-based technology research firm. Many of these products are being introduced today at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

As new products arrive, companies are mindful that with rapid technological changes, what's hot today can seem outdated within months.

Smarthome sells products to control lighting, security, and other features. Using a home's existing wiring, the Irvine, Calif.-based company has developed a technology called Insteon in which almost anything that can be controlled by a switch or a remote can be controlled by Insteon switches and remotes, once the software is loaded onto a homeowner's PC, says Matt Dean, Smarthome's executive vice president of sales and marketing. This means homeowners wouldn't have to worry about frequently upgrading technology.

"If you're always throwing out technology, only a small segment of the population is able to do that," says Dean. "For regular homeowners, they want to feel like they don't have to do that."

The first Insteon-based products are due to appear in stores by April. The technology has a wide range of uses: Homeowners can touch one button to turn off the thermostat, TV, lights, and lock the door as they leave; program a security alert through e-mail or phone to let them know if someone is in their home when they're not; or display on TV who's standing at the front door.

For couch potatoes, networked home entertainment products might make it even harder to tear themselves away.

DigitalDeck allows users to control DVD players, VCRs, PCs, and other devices with one remote and send the content on these devices to any room in the house. Say you're watching a DVD in your living room and want to finish it in bed, but your bedroom TV isn't hooked up to a DVD player. You could pause the movie in the living room, turn off that TV, and direct the movie to your bedroom TV. The system would work the same way if you wanted to change rooms while watching live TV or listening to music.

"The concept is watching what you want, where you want, when you want," says Marty Levine, DigitalDeck's vice president of strategic development. "Most people have an awful lot of equipment already and nobody wants to throw it out."

DigitalDeck, based in Redwood City, Calif., launched its signature product a few weeks ago. The system includes a device called an MX1000 that can play music, video, and show photos, and an eDeck adapter to connect to a home's TVs, or computer, and speakers. DigitalDeck uses a wired distribution system of ethernet over Cat 5, which keeps video images from breaking up. A two-room setup with one media player and two adapters costs less than $4,000 while a three-room setup with an additional eDeck is priced just under $4,700.

Until recently, products for networked homes might have been available only to those willing to pay large sums to have them installed. But the current devices are increasingly affordable and appealing to the do-it-yourself market.

Tom Cullen, vice president of sales and marketing for Sonos, says products such as the iPod are changing how people look at networking. As people become comfortable with having their music in a portable, digital format, they're likely to want the same throughout the home.

Instead of relying on the one techie in the house who can work the complex stereo system, Sonos's digital music system allows a homeowner to customize music in each room. The system requires the company's ZonePlayers, which contain an amplifier and player, two speakers for each ZonePlayer, and a PC or Mac with music files on its hard drive. Using a hand-held controller, you can play music anywhere in the house. During a party, for example, the same music could be programmed to play in different rooms or different music in each room.

"It makes people fall in love with their music all over again because they can see stuff they hadn't seen before," says Cullen. "If you love music and you have a big collection and you think about how you use CDs, most people are playing the same five CDs way after they're tired of them."

Cullen calls Sonos, which goes on the market this month, "a luxury product, but it's a mass luxury product." He estimates it might cost as much as $20,000 to hook up a high-end stereo system across five rooms but Sonos music players and controllers could be installed in the same rooms for $4,000 to $5,000.

A Danish company called Zensys has developed Z-Wave, whose technology works with mass-market timers, dimmers, and switches. Z-Wave is a wireless radio frequency system that can be also accessed online. If the smoke alarm detected a fire in the garage, for example, the system could light an escape route away from the source of the fire. From the Internet, a homeowner would be able to log on and program temperature and light settings, and check on their house while on vacation.

Raoul Wijgergangs, vice president of business development for Zensys, said the cost of a Z-Wave system varies depending on the size of the home and whether a homeowner purchases a system that would control lights only, for example, or lights, security, and smoke detectors. He says it would cost about $5,000 to outfit a single-family home.

Many of these networked products are available through the companies' websites or catalogs, but some are compatible with what you'd find at stores such as Home Depot.

Wijgergangs says the company is launching a joint marketing campaign at CES among all the companies that are developing Z-Wave products.

"For consumers, in the end it's going to be about convenience, safety, and energy conservation," he said. "You can imagine a lot of new products you buy will have this technology inside."

Networked homes aren't just about bringing technology to the home but sometimes literally building technology into it.

Mike Rosen, a Philadelphia architect, designed the NextGen Home, which brings together a vast array of networked products under one roof. A NextGen Home will be on display in Las Vegas at CES and another will be shown at the International Builders' Show in Orlando the following week.

But Rosen has also developed a product for the NextGen Home called CoreWall, which puts all of a home's central systems -- plumbing, lighting, heating, electrical, computer mainframe -- inside one wall of the house. The wall is custom made and shipped to the site. Once it's installed, all of those systems are ready to go.

Rosen says homeowners could save 15 percent to 20 percent in costs by reducing the amount of pipes and wiring they need.

"CoreWall is essentially architecture flipped on its head. Normally you design a home to fit the needs of the homeowner or the client and technology is woven in," Rosen says. "What we did with CoreWall was ask the question, What if you designed a house that revolved around technology?"

As the idea of a networked home becomes more popular, more homeowners may start asking themselves the samething.