Motorola shows off networked-home wares

Motorola is jumping on the home-networking trend, adding new products to its consumer broadband portfolio and showing off its wares in a “connected home” on display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Motorola is jumping on the home-networking trend, adding new products to its consumer broadband portfolio and showing off its wares in a “connected home” on display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show.

The display home features a variety of current and forthcoming Motorola products, including hardware for wireless networking, for creating home theater and audio systems and for connecting devices such as PCs and stereos.

Many of the new products featured are new configurations of already announced products, such as two forthcoming wireless cable modem gateways. The new devices are based on Motorola’s SBG1000 networking gateway, which was first demonstrated in mid-2002 to cable operators at an industry conference and will soon be released to retail stores, according to company spokeswoman Jeanne Russo.

Expected to retail for about $329, the SBG1000 includes a five-port Ethernet router, 802.11b wireless access point, printer port, and software features such as firewall protection and content-filtering tools.

Two new gateways displayed at the show, the SBG950 and SBG900, will carry lower price tags and include fewer features, such as fewer ports.

Motorola also discussed plans for a new line of Internet-connected monitoring products designed to work in conjunction with a home network, such as cameras, sensors and motion detectors.

“We’re not getting into the Wells Fargo (security) business,” Russo said. “This is for broadband users who want to get more out of their broadband connections.”

Uses for the products might include keeping tabs remotely on older residents in a home who might require assistance, she suggested, or monitoring home systems such as water tanks against breakdowns while homeowners are on vacation.

The products, which are still under development but scheduled to begin appearing later this year, will be affordably priced, Russo said, with cameras priced at less than $99 and sensors at under $50.

Motorola is also planning to revamp its simplefi device, a receiver that allows MP3s and other audio files to be sent from a PC to a stereo. Introduced at last year’s CES and highlighted again at this year’s show, the device recently has been updated with new software, available for download, which adds content from new providers and includes support for Microsoft’s Windows Media Audio format.

A new version of simplefi, to be released later this year, will support the 802.11b wireless standard and include some design tweaks to increase the product’s portability, Russo said. Motorola also plans to offer the new simplefi at a lower cost than the current version’s $379 price tag, she said.

Motorola also previewed new devices in its Digital Convergence Platform (DCP) home-theater systems line of machines, which incorporate the capabilities of a DVD/CD/MP3 player, stereo receiver and digital cable receiver. Two new models in the line will shortly be released, the DCP301 (priced at $799) and DCP301HD (priced at $999), which will be Motorola’s first unit offering both digital cable and HD (high-definition) television reception.