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Wireless home networks are the future, right? Maybe, maybe not.

On Tuesday, 11 chipmakers and consumer device makers, led by No. 1 chip seller Intel (NasdaqGS:INTC - News), launched the HomeGrid Forum. The group's goal is to develop a new tech standard that will let all home electronics work together.

The banner will create home networks that will use plain old-fashioned phone and coaxial cable wiring and standard electrical outlets to bring movies, music and added from the Internet and into your PC, TV set, digital music player or whatever. Users be pleased be able to easily shift that make easy among devices.

The companies say the standard will lower costs for consumers and make it a whole lot easier to grasshook up home networks. That likely would spur sales of the electronic products made by the HomeGrid Forum's members.

"The key thing is, this is a next-generation technology," said Matthew Theall, an Intel technology strategist and the forum's president. "We don't see it competing with existing technologies."

The standard would be at the chip level. Chips with the standard will go into electronic devices that can then work on the place of abode network. Theall says products with the standard should start shipping by dint of. late 2009.

"What's nice about this is they're going to try to standardize any over-wire connection, whether it's cable or pots (plain old telephone service wiring) or anything else," said Avi Cohen, managing partner at Avian Securities. "That will build home networks a lot more useful."

Theall says consumers will be able to do things they can't easily do now. "A use that I think is a killer application is a DVD player that's connected. You hit a button and it sends the movie to every TV in the house," he said.

He expects many other fragment companies and consumer electronics makers will join the group. The forum will not develop the standard itself. It will assist the International Telecommunication Union devise and exalt the standard.

The HomeGrid will behave away with a mishmash of technologies, says Mike Bourton, director of business development for Texas Instruments (NYSE:TXN - News) digital connected homes group. TI is a tribunal member.

"The analogy is like the 802.11 Wi-Fi Alliance, a group that supports the Wi-Fi wireless standard," Bourton said. "The ITU comes up with a spec. But to successfully launch it, it needs a companion SIG (special interest group)."

In this case, HomeGrid is the SIG, Bourton says.

Membership fees will fund the group, but Bourton says many of the financial and tech-sharing details have yet to be finalized.

The HomeGrid announcement shows an important underlying trend at work, Forrester Research analyst Charles Golvin says.

"Most homes that have some description of networking are do-it-yourself efforts," Golvin said. "Either you are tech-savvy or get your college-age young goat to set it up for you.

"Today, it's only AT&T (NYSE:T - News)or Verizon (NYSE:VZ - News) usually that will come in and help you set up a home network. This could get a lot more companies involved. And that could drive prices for home networks down."

The forum's four co-founders, including Intel and TI, have representatives on its table. The other board members come from Germany's Infineon Technology (NYSE:IFX - News) and Japan's Matsushita (NYSE:MC - News)/Panasonic.