From proven office technologies to the intelligent multimedia home

Home automation is a proven technology in modern office buildings. The time has come to make this technology available in home environments as well. In addition, there is a large amount of multimedia technology available in today's homes such as TV sets, VCRs or PCs, which may be integrated with other consumer electronics and home appliances within a common home network. The TV set is to become a multimedia platform, which may control all these devices and will also serve as a gateway to the Internet. For this new type of networking of most diverse devices, several new standards with overlapping scopes pop up on the horizon. The paper briefly introduces the main developments and points out the common approaches and differences. It also gives an overview on the still remaining work to be done, until the light in the living room can finally be controlled from abroad.