A recent report published by Accenture has highlighted what it sees as a fundamental problem with the 'digital home' concept - it's too costly for the majority of consumers.

Over the past two years, the digital home market has been restricted to a slow burn. The concept is clear - the digital home embraces networking technologies, whole-house video and audio distribution and home automation. But it's failed to ignite as big manufacturers have thrown sloshing buckets of imperfect products at it, hosing down any excitement with sky-high prices and incompatible standards.

 The results are in
So it comes as no surprise that 80 per cent of the 2,600 respondents polled for the Accenture report found that the cost of products (i.e. new TVs, PVRs etc) was too high. The report also revealed that 70 per cent of respondents would like a single provider for their digital content, devices and services. As consumer electronics giants and smaller IT-based companies all join the battle for the living room, the technology choice is bewildering to high street shoppers.

"Despite strong consumer desire for a single aggregator for converged or complete digital home packages, said Al Delattre, a partner in Accenture's Communications and High Tech practice, "many companies provide only a portion of the content or services that comprise the complete digital home. In order to truly meet consumer needs, stronger collaboration and partnerships among hardware, content and service companies is imperative."

Most tellingly, perhaps, Only 4 percent of all respondents said they could afford a converged digital home service now, although 48 percent believed that such a service would be affordable in one to five years. Nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of all respondents said they believed they would never be able to afford such a service and 35 per cent were nervous about the complexity of installing new products.

Buying a digital home
Is the house of the future too expensive? Is the digital home something we should be thinking about in 2010 rather than in 2005? Until companies get together and produce friendly products working within a shared standard, we face the prospect of having PCs that can't communicate with our set-top boxes, and copyright protected music tracks that won't play on our hi-fi systems.

"It is clear that the technology itself is just one piece", adds Delattre. 'Business models and customer support are almost as important as the product itself. Without demonstrated and specific consumer preferences to drive adoption of the digital home concept, it will continue to be just that - a concept."

But the flip-side to this argument is that tech-savvy consumers are driving the digital home concept forward and prices are rapidly falling. LCD TV sales are soaring, you can buy a 52-inch HD-ready TV for less than £6,000 and go digital with a HD set top box for as little as $45 from an Aldi supermarket . Even a decent PC will only set you back $650 rather than the $1,000 it cost last year. We're getting there, albeit at a painfully slow pace.

Is the home of the future too expensive? Not if you know where to look and what to buy; not if you're prepared to get your hands dirty when things don't do precisely what you hope they'll do; and not if you're prepared to cobble together a system from components readily available today. For some of us, the digital home isn't coming, it's already here.

The Accenture survey, entitled "Digital Home Solutions: Issues, Trends, and Consumer Insights," was designed to be representative of the full consumer population in each country surveyed. Of the 2,600 respondents.