It's a given, of course, that 97 percent of the products included in "The Home of the Future" features never actually get invented. Despite the never-ending fascination with such lists and such geekier-than-thou possibilities, the home today looks remarkably similar to the home of the 1950s.

Still, it's that three percent that keeps life interesting. To that end, then,  industry observer Rob Enderle looks at the potential for Marvell's (News - Alert) just-launched Avanta line, "which could enable a whopping 10-gigabit network - or about 100 times what most folks now have."

Okay, forget the space-age design salt and pepper shakers. This could be something worth looking into.

At a recent show Enderle saw a potential home conferencing system. Instead of the typical widescreen HD TV view of "a bunch of other folks looking at you in the same way," he notes, "Marvell flipped a big TV into portrait format, so you could walk up and talk to the remote person much as if you were standing in front of them."

Is this a home tool, though? Enderle thinks so: "For kids that are remote talking to parents, or for more social kinds of events, this vertical placement was actually fascinating, and the low-latency result is something that would typically cost you $400K to buy, with a $15K per month service charge. Marvell was imagining this on your network in your home."

Perhaps the "most interesting" part of the show, Enderle thinks, was "a discussion by game designer Robin Hunicke. She imagined a future that game designers wanted to create where something as simple as holding your mate's hand and walking through an amazing Avatar-like virtual world was possible."

As Enderle noted, "she said she had the tools, she simply needed the bandwidth. Because if you could do that one simple thing, you could make virtual reality real, and forever blur the lines between what is and what we can imagine."

We're not sure we'd go that far, but we're also sure there are those to whom that sounds like a good things.