No media servers until 2006?

Ahh, the elusive home media server. Since, according to this report, there are very few on the market, we'll assume there are decent odds many of our readers don't even know what it is.

Home Media Server (n). A device dedicated to the purpose of providing digital media content to one or more rooms in the home. The device is designed to connect to a home network, using one or more networking technologies (such as Ethernet or even powerline-based networking), and is capable of serving media files to a locally connected television and stereo, as well as to multiple rooms in the home. The home media server has internal storage, typically a large capacity, and may or may not include personal video recording (PVR) technologies (like TiVo).

Sound completely unfamiliar? A few companies have tried, and failed, to bring them to market. Who are these companies? The list includes HP, ZapMedia, Pioneer, Compaq, Dell, Denon, Imerge, Ucentric, and others. All have done... poorly. Many haven't even shipped.

Any success stories? Audio ReQuest. They sell a multi-thousand dollar music-only server. The Escient Fireball, despite one of the worst-designed user interfaces ever, sells well in the high-end channel. Kaleidescape has a $27,000 DVD server. But they're getting sued.

Hoover's is reporting that the market is not ready for prime time, and it may be a couple of years until it is ready. I used to think this was a hot device category, and couldn't see why the demand seemed to be so far out there. Unfortunately, there are a lot of cooks in this kitchen, but they are all making different recipes!

We have the service providers like SBC and Comcast trying to shove a monthly fee down consumers' throats. Consumer electronics companies like Yamaha flounder with their devices (like the MusicCast - it doesn't let you use your existing MP3 collection). And then we have Microsoft and the Windows Media Center PC.

2006? Sounds safe... but how about 2008 to really call it a "market".

Read a good summary from Hoover's Online