AMD: Vista only a tiny step to convergence

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Metaphor

It is not, and has never truly been about having a literal PC in the living room.

What the term means is having something in the living room that offers what the PC does, e.g. instant news or weather, email access, some light Internet browsing, etc.

Listening to music, viewing photos or watching video from assorted sources like the Internet, local dvd or hard drives or local cable services, all chosen as simply as simply as pressing a remote control button.

It is inarguable that a device with PC-like capabilities can handle such tasks far more readily than any other current entertainment hardware solution.

The holy grail, of course, is the 1 inch box referred to in another post (although 1 inch translates to 2.5cm, Loverock). It would be entirely solid state, with petabytes of storage, a multi-terahertz Internet connection, and would double as an air-conditioner because it runs so cool. It would be so quiet that it would actually absorb all noise made by teenage children. Local media providers would pay you to use it and preload it with every song and movie ever recorded for free.

Today, somewhat more realistic solutions do exist. Computer cases designed for use in entertainment center-type applications are available, complete with reasonably cool and quiet power supplies. Other cooling and sound-baffling techniques can be applied to make this unit quite viable, albeit far from cheap.

Even more viable would be the remoted option: have the full-blown media blaster PC up and running, but not literally in the living room; perhaps in a dedicated room, basement, large closet or whatnot.

Such a beast would be connected to your living room only by the small selection of necessary cables running to your tv, stereo, home theatre system or whatever you'd like.

In either case, to address a specific concern you raised: there are many perfectly enjoyable wireless keyboards and mice available that would more than adequately add to the capabilities of your favorite remote control, even replace it if such was your choice, though that would hardly be a requirement.

The only downside to these aforementioned solutions is that they are not produced in a quantity large enough to make them inexpensive. Cheap, more to the point. Nonetheless, they are all real and in use today and can bring the world in the form of the Internet into your living room the same way that a PC does.

Throwing in my two cents on the software side: Linux rules, windows drools. Has anyone else ever noticed that windows has no equivalent to the Linux "uptime" command? Give me a Debian box ala Knoppix running MythTV and I'll be a happy puppy.

Cheers.

Posted by: sjpatrick   Posted on: 05/24/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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