Our friend and colleague Graeme Philipson (today's his birthday, which makes the black eye he picked up by falling over last night even more tragic) proved why he didn't survive as a Gartner analyst, with another completely honest and accurate summation of the situation: "Convergence is still a long way away," he reported, largely because the industries involved were still operating in a complete vaccuum, and were trying to send each other broke while at the same time avoiding accomplishing the same fate for themselves.

In the meantime, of 1000 Australian households surveyed last year on the issue of this home convergence, only 10 per cent could nominate a home automation supplier, and 80 per cent of them nominated B & D Roller Door.

What fascinates us, whenever the industry starts talking about the joys of television time-shifting etc., is that here in Australia the commercial televison networks are engaged in an entirely different form of time-shifting - a sadistic form of programming which so often guarantees that when you replay that show that you absolutely didn't want to miss, at the precise point when the mystery is about to be solved, or the hero and the heroine are about to realise their love for each other etc, a little message pops up informing you that playback has stopped. This is not what we call convergence.

And unfortunately, while the competitors are playing this zero sum game, consumers who choose the wrong technology from the bewildering range of competitors - has anyone noticed that those Microsoft Windows Media Centre devices don't seem to be all that widely available these days? - are probably going to be considerably out of pocket.