Is A Connected Home In Your Future?

Couch potatoes rejoice. Now you can control your home’s lighting, turn on the coffee pot or adjust the thermostat without taking your eye off the television or getting out of your La-Z-Boy. That’s just one of the "innovations" shown to 70,000 home builders recently in Atlanta.

Sears Connected Home was unveiled at the International Builders Show, and it’s apparent they see Internet-savvy families as their primary market for this technological abode. The comprehensive interlinked home-networking products and services are only available to home builders in the high-growth Atlanta and Denver markets. That means we won’t see them in the Brazos Valley anytime soon, but the bells and whistles that already exist are fun to contemplate.

The best part is you won’t have to be a techno-geek to get a high-tech home. For example, Sears has a partnership with Home Director, a national home networking and software technology company. Together, they will provide end-to-end solutions, including design, installation, service and support for home networks.

Other companies on the Sears team include trusted brands like Cisco, Honeywell and Panasonic. The Sears Connected Home simplifies the process for home builders by becoming a single point of contact for virtually all a family’s home-networking needs.  

These high-tech innovations will allow you to equip your home with a wide range of technological solutions, including integrated whole-house audio and video entertainment, home theaters, computer networks, home security and home control systems. The home’s technology infrastructure uses bundles of data and video cabling that run from a central connection box to multiple wall outlets throughout the home.

Here are some examples:

• Share a single dial-up or high-speed broadband Internet connection throughout the home with multiple computers and "intelligent" Web-enabled devices and appliances.
• Distribute cable or satellite television signals from one source to every television in the home.
• Play a DVD or VCR movie in one room, and watch it on any television in the house.
• Listen to your stereo in any room.
• Place video cameras any place — the front door, baby’s room, back yard — and watch what’s happening from any television in the house.
• Share devices such as computer printers and fax machines.
• Control your home’s lighting, heating and cooling from your television or computer.
• Connect to more than a dozen separate telephone lines.

Sears is a member of the Internet Home Alliance, an association established last year and working to advance home technology. Not only is the association working to develop Internet-based solutions for the home, they are educating consumers on the value of such a lifestyle. Undoubtedly you will be hearing more from them in years to come.

Courtesy of Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University, February 2001.