Oh, no, no, Joerg - you are /not/ a typical household. Yes, those particular things might be desirable (in an abstract sense) to the average Joe Couch Potato, but the cost has to be zero and the difficulty of installation has to be zero and the complexity of troubleshooting has to be zero as well, otherwise it's not worth it.
It's just like having an Internet-connected touch-screen on the refrigerator door. OK, fine, it looks cool. But it is not a feature for which most people are willing to pay.
Put another way: Your grandma might go to Epcot and press a button, see something happen, and say "wow!" - but she wouldn't then call a contractor to install the same thing in her house.
The marketplace simply does not care about home automation. It has been viable for at least 20 years, probably more (especially if you count pneumatic solutions). The uptake has never been big.
Even I would not buy such equipment - and I can understand how to install and debug it. It would add no utility to my life, since the time I spend at home is almost entirely spent in my lab or outside working on my cars.
Yes, is the only answer I can give to that without getting into employer-specific stuff :)
Google for "structured wiring" and you will see that there is considerable market for this sort of thing in new home construction, and comparatively little as retrofit to existing structures.
I remember very well in the UPnP discussions (back in the age before it was proven to be worthless), the MS guys were really surprised when I talked about retrofitting Ethernet to a home; they assumed that UPnP products would be going mainly into new homes that had wired Ethernet to every room built right into the original architectural design.