5 - Smart home networking for content management

Abstract

Users have access to multiple sources of digital content, including user-generated content and commercially distributed content. At home, users want the option to find relevant content sourced from any location (internal or external), and render the content on any target device connected to the home network. This chapter examines first some of the recent industry efforts to deploy content management solutions in home networks. After a decade of improvements and increased deployments, and despite the ubiquity of devices capable of such operations, the usage levels for the currently available solutions remain limited. In this work, we examine some of their constraints, including their inherent operational complexity, which essentially deters average users from frequent and fluid use. We argue that making content management much more intuitive requires investments and improvements in device intelligence. Users should be presented with simplified tasks while devices should gain a certain intelligence level to address the complexities of setting up connections, preparing the network for content exchange, and transferring content. We introduce the concept of contextual proactivity as a methodology to implement this type of device intelligence. Contextual proactivity offers the possibility of designing future home networks with much more intuitive interfaces and simplified user operations.