The Future Of The Home Computer
By Jeffrey | June 26, 2007
I am writing this right now while using my television as a my monitor.
It’s at 720p - 1280×720 resolution - and looks absolutely gorgeous from my comfortable distance of around 6 feet.
I’m relatively comfortable - no couch to sit on at the moment - and I’m not getting any eye strain from staring at my desktop like I normally do from 10 inches away.
In fact, if this keeps up, I may just keep it that way.
And after using it, I’m predicting most of the world will too.
Using a television as a computer monitor is nothing new.
Arcade cabinets ran, and run, using normal 640×480 display television - albeit slightly modified - and the home computer user has been able to use a video out cable from their video card for over 10 years.
And let’s not forget Microsoft’s old baby, WebTV. The not-a-bad-idea-in-theory-but-failed-in-practice application that allowed basic web browsing and internet features on a plain ol’ television.
That idea was in the same vein as the various internet-enabled appliances that were all the rave a few years ago, and still are in some areas. Anybody want their fridge connected to the Web?
Those examples, and countless others, are proof that the average consumer has desired to make home computing more slick and less nerdy for years, and businesses have attempted to provide it.
But they have more or less failed. And the reason for that is that they were either still too geeky: the average consumer was not interested in connecting a video-out cable and configuring resolution options. Or they were too simple: sure, browsing the web was nice, but what about managing my budget, or doing some image editing? WebTV couldn’t do that, and none of the internet appliances could either.
So now that initiative has hit a virtual brick wall.
Instead of basic, simplistic appliances that do nothing, and too-high-tech-for-grandma computers that look nice but don’t connect with John Q. Citizen, we need to have a combination of the two.
As HD television continues to catch on, and more and more people want to take their daily browsing and computer tasks outside of the home office, computers will continue to move towards the living room and off the desktop.
Imagine a system that isn’t just a web browser, but a full fledged system with a full fledged operating system, sitting in a visually pleasing case right next to your Blu-Ray player and your receiver. On first glance, it won’t even look like a computer, but it will have all the power of the system you’re typing on right now.
A few years ago, that idea would sound crazy. As any of you who have tried connecting your machine to your television before can attest, the visuals were horrible.
Let’s face it, computers of today are just not meant to run at 640×480 resolution. And even more than that, standard televisions can’t even display that resolution well.
But now we’ve hit a jump. Resolutions of 1280×720 or even 1920×1080 are possible with the sets that exist today, and will probably jump higher than that in the next 10 years.
Now you can plug your machine directly into your TV and have it look gorgeous. Breathtaking even.
Finally it will be possible to give the non-geeky crowd what they’ve always wanted from the computer market: a machine that can run Excel, process their taxes, e-mail their grandchildren, play their movies, and so on, without requiring an entire desk space and looking like something out of Space Age magazine.
It’s possible to do this all right now, as I can tell you while writing this, but it will take a company or two to start cranking out genuine media PCs before it will hit.
The result will be able to compete with gaming consoles, home theater PCs, DVD players, and anything else that traditionally plugs into the back of your set.
Those of us in the geek and nerd crowd can already do all this, as I am proving right now, but give it a few years and our non-techy friends may be joining us.
They’ll write an e-mail, then switch over to The Tonight Show, and all from the comfort of their couch.
Topics: Rants |
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