Chapter 4

Introduction
Scope
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Glossary
About the Author
Index
Acronyms

Chapter 4: Home Entertainment Technology

This chapter explores the advances in technology that will be used in a variety of products - particularly the entertainment server. The topics covered are:

Disk drives - 320 GB disk drives are already available. Terabyte disk drives should be available by 2006. How much do we really need?

Optical discs - the third generation of discs Blu-ray are expected in America in 2004. They're already delivering between 23 and 27 GB of data in Japan. Blue lasers enable the revolution.

Semiconductor memory - RAM, DRAM, DDR-DRAM, SDRAM, ... 16 MB for $2 now in quantity, 1 GB for $100 soon.

Semiconductors - CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, diversity and convergence on the chip are coming.

Home networks - WiFi, FM, Coax, Ethernet, USB, FireWire - no fiber required except on the biggest estates.