By Mitch Webster, Media4u a Mindport Company
Future business models for interactive television and media-based e-commerce in the broadband environment are spawning the need for a new type of media enterprise: the Media Service Provider (MSP), a combination of an ISP and traditional broadcasting company. Since subscriber delivery of interactive, instantly accessible video and audio media is the key revenue driver in this concept, there will be need for low-cost, reliable mass data storage in the home.
This paper surveys the next generation of multimedia home storage and suggests how the home media server might merge with the traditional television set-top box, the current entertainment "gateway" to most living rooms. The future model is neither a fat nor thin client, but an entirely new model: a storage client.