Your Home, More Connected Than Ever

If the latest Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas is any indication, the future holds a whole new generation of web-enabled products that extends well past laptops and smartphones. This new generation of technology will increase energy efficiency and build a more sustainable economy, but requires high-speed Internet connections to reap the full advantages.

A new wave of connected electronics is bringing the Internet into your living room, kitchen, garage, and oddly enough even your laundry room.

Though Internet-connected refrigerators and washing machines, which would feature things like web-synced calendars or photo albums, still seem like a reach for many consumers, other web-enabled products are slated to boom in coming years.

First in line is the family television, which has made the leap from analog to digital, and is now pushing for a new Internet-ready standard. Though online-capable TVs have been available for the last three years, that option has mostly been offered in high-end sets. With the popularity of connecting to the web through DVD and Blu-Ray players, as well as gaming consoles and set-top boxes, putting the technology into the TV itself is the most logical next step.

According to the Consumer Electronics Association:

Last year U.S. consumers purchased 3.2 million televisions that could be connected to the Internet, about 9 percent of all those sold. This year the CEA, the industry's trade group, expects that 15 percent of televisions sold will be able to connect to the Internet, and that by 2014, more than half the sets sold will be Internet-enabled.

Such connected TVs would come packaged with a wealth of web-applications, including online video from Netflix and Hulu, Internet radio from Pandora, and web browsing services that would let users connect to the Facebook or check the weather.

Analysts believe that connected TVs will be the vanguard of a consumer product revolution throughout the home. Appliances, and even car radios, may soon embrace an Internet connection and sync up with user's persistent web identities.

Though future trends may fluctuate, there is one constant in all of this — a wealth of new Internet ready machines and dozens of new web-apps will put home users Internet connections to the test.

Web access across the US needs to be robust enough to keep up with multiple machines on a single network, performing bandwidth-heavy operations such as streaming movies or downloading photo and video content, be they laptops, televisions, or refrigerators. As the popularity of multiple connected devices inside the home grows, our Internet connections should be able to keep pace.

Coming soon: Net-connected ovens, washing machines and more (Mercury News)