Disney's Innoventions Dream Home Opens its Doors
By Scott Wilkinson June 16, 2008 — Amid much fanfare—including a live marching band—Disneyland today opened the doors to its latest "home of the future." Located next to Space Mountain on the first floor of the Carousel of Progress building in Tomorrowland, the Innoventions Dream Home encompasses over 5000 square feet of living space filled with the latest technology that defines the connected lifestyle.

Of particular interest to me—and, I suspect, most of our readers—was the family room, with its 100-inch Blue Ocean rear-projection screen by US Nippura. The image was provided by a Christie industrial DLP projector in a niche behind the screen—a bit of overkill for a home-theater system, to be sure, but this is a public exhibit, so it must be as bulletproof as possible. A 5.1-channel Tannoy Arena speaker system handled the audio, and all A/V content was sourced from a Life|ware Life|media server.

Unlike Disney's previous home-of-the-future attraction, the Innoventions Dream Home is not inhabited by an audioanimatronic family. Instead, a cast of actors portray the Elias family, who "live" in the home and explain its many wonders to the 3 million park goers expected to visit each year. (Elias was Walt Disney's middle name.)

All operational aspects of the home, including security, heating and cooling, lighting, and entertainment, are controlled by a Life|ware system that responds to any of the touchpanels mounted in each room. The system is programmed with each family member's preferences, which are automatically selected as the actors enter a room thanks to the RFID (radio-frequency identification) tags they carry.

About 60 to 70 percent of the technology in the home is available to consumers today, such as the many wireless digital picture frames from Hewlett-Packard and the ability to stream all sorts of media seamlessly to any appropriate device in the home. The other 30 or 40 percent is still under development—for instance, Microsoft's Surface technology turns an ordinary table into an interactive display on which you can arrange photos, read an e-book, or write messages to other members of the family.

The Innoventions Dream Home is fully interactive, and visitors can operate the touchpanels and other devices to get a sense of what it would be like to live in such a home. The only question is, when can I move in?