HEXUS - CeBIT 2007 :: Fujitsu-Siemens' Björn Fehrm explains Follow Me TV

At's all very good tech but is it really any better than just having a TV+VCR in each room as most people do?

DVD recording never really took off so there's no real simple alternative to the VCR. It's profits not demand that's pushing all this technology.

jimbouk
At's all very good tech but is it really any better than just having a TV+VCR in each room as most people do?

Well, in lots of ways, it clearly is - if I've understood this right, the box in the living room is a media server (though NOT a PC) and gives you access to a variety of media stored on networked PCs.

And, of course, once you have a receiver box in another room - and since the system used is UPnP - you'll also have access to all the media on the server AND all the media on all networked PCs.

That said, the name is likely to be a problem - Motorola has something with exactly the same name - that centres on the same sort of receiver boxes/PVRs that Sky and Virgin Media supply!

And this works over co-ax, not Ethernet.

Oh and there's also a mobile satellite TV system with the same name!


This page tells you more about Fujitsu Siemens' offering.

jimbouk
DVD recording never really took off so there's no real simple alternative to the VCR.

Is that really the case or are we at a point where it's in a significant growth phase?

jimbouk
It's profits not demand that's pushing all this technology.

Surely, profits are what push all technology - and, very often, the makers don't actually know whether products will be successful until they bring them to market?

I can remember laughing up my sleeve when Sony introduced the first Walkman (which was based on the Compact Cassette) - something that it did not because the world was crying out for such a product but because Sony thought that a whole lot of people would fancy owning one.

Sony, of course, was right, and my doubts about Walkman completely wrong but the company absolutely didn't create this whole new class of product because of public pressure.

Actually, if you look at most new products, the same is true - someone, somewhere, thinks they can make money by introducing it and it's only when the thing goes on sale that the truth is known.