Intel, Infineon, Texas Instruments and Panasonic form an alliance to promote home networks for movies, music and pictures using domestic wiring.

They will market and test a standard to use extent electricity, phone and coaxial cable lines to wire together computers, TVs and entertainment systems. They hope the first products using the new standard will be on the market in about a year.

"Powerline is the most ubiquitous technology in the world. You have powerlines to almost every house in the world," says Intel's Matt Theall, president of the new HomeGrid Forum.

The members of the HomeGrid Forum will work with the International Telecommunications Union to promote, test and contribute to a standard the ITU is already working on, called ITU-T G.hn. Their role will be similar to the Wi-Fi Alliance, who helped promote an IEEE wireless standard and certified thousands of products for WLANs.

The HomeGrid Forum has seven other founding members: Aware, DS2, Pulse Link, Ikanos, Sigma Designs, Westell and Gigle Semiconductor.

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HomeGrid Forum

With more than 220 attendees, the European Home Control Summit in Frankfurt was a success. More than 100 new European Z-Wave products (in energy conservation, lighting, security, HVAC, remote home monitoring, and electrical metering) were shown.  Nokia, Danfoss, Cisco, Merten, Parks Associates, the Danish Energy Savings Trust, Lagotek, Zensys and others used presentations and panel discussions to talk about market developments, plus novel home control products and solutions.

According to the latest studies of Parks Associates, demand for home control solutions has already reached a similar level in Europe as in US. Thanks to more products from market leaders becoming available and the growth of home networks overall, the home control market will grow more than 100% over the next 12 months.

The Danish utility company, Modstroem, showed how to use Z-Wave based tools to reduce energy costs and CO2 output (one single average household using 4000 KWh avoids two tons of CO2 per year.)

Horstmann Controls demonstrated Z-Wave-enabled thermostats, electricity meters, and displays at the Summit.

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British supermarket group Tesco launches TescoDownloads.com this year, starting with music content, but promising to also eventually offer TV shows and video games. The service is scheduled to launch with 3.3 million music downloads and will be an extension of the supermarket group's online retail service.

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CEDIA will no longer be managed by Raybourn Group so they are looking for a new CEO. The current staff, including Don Gilpin as the executive director, will continue in their present roles. 

“Just as the electronic systems industry is experiencing explosive growth, so too is CEDIA as the premiere organization representing it,” says Gilpin. “This expansion of our team will be of great benefit so that I can focus on the internal tasks of running the association, while the CEO can drive the external affairs of CEDIA.”

CEDIA wants to fill the CEO position with a qualified member of the electronic systems industry who is already familiar with the current issues and trends of the market. His or her role will encompass fostering relationships with other associations and industries, speaking on behalf of the organization and industry, and guiding external communications based on the needs of CEDIA members.

Go CEDIA’s Search