Future Trends In Home Computing

James Bell writes: "I just read an interesting article over here that talked about future trends in home computing and what is and isn't driving the home computer market. I thought it was interesting that the author said that more people where adding DVD players and surround sound speakers to their home computer in hopes of makeing it their new home theater. I think a lot of people are bringing their computer to the home theater in the family or media room and converging it that way."

Comments

Comprimise

[vought]

"Many people" may be bringing their computers into the living space to use as media players, but that doesn't mean that they are well-suited to that task.

Remotes? An optional, kludgy addition to a computer.

Sound quality? I'd rather not use stereo miniplug -> RCA jacks for sound, thanks. But that's what's on the majority of PCs.

Video quality? Acceptable, I'm sure, but what about the aforementioned remote control of all thos nifty features?

Stick with components - replace or upgrade pieces as needed - just like with your PC.

Not very insightful

[Rupert]

I stopped reading when the author started talking wbout integrating the telephone with a home computer. I know a number of people who tried this years ago, but all are now using standalone answering machines or telco answering services. It seems to me that the reliability of PCs has actually gone down since then. I can't imagine changing something that just works, to something that often doesn't, for some nebulous benefit of integration.

Re:Not very insightful

[JoeShmoe]

I know what you are talking about. Compaq Presario computer came with the same kind of stripped down answering machine software. I never met anyone who actually used it.

But the idea isn't a bad one. I personally think it is a great idea. Answering machines are a pain in the ass to program, have the crappiest recording quality, store abismally short messages (unless you want to go back to the 80's and get tape) and are pretty darn insecure (two digit security codes? C'mon, that takes under an hour to wardial).

Here's why it's never caught on:

1) Most family types don't want to leave their computers on. We power users and techies are used to having everything running 24/7. At most we'll put our monitors to sleep. We either don't care about power savings or we have an overriding need to be able to access the box without some silly remote power-on device. But this is not how Mom/Dad/Grandma/Grandpa view a computer. They turn the darn thing on and off a hundred times in the day. So the idea of leaving it on just to answer the phones is a contradicting idea to them.

2) There's never been a home operating system that could stay up long enough for the function to work. Cheap 95/98/ME OS plus cheap voicemail software plus cheap winmodem means the only messages you get are written on a bright blue screen. But now there is XP, which is at least a passing attempt at a stable platform. Now if they just get some software to run as a service (IE, sitting there quietly in the system tray where it is unlikely to be closed) then perhaps home users will see the value in it.

I like it because the next step is to merge in VoIP services or videoconferencing or other power features. If we can get a large base of people using to thinking of their computers as telephony devices we can hopefully open a market for some real digital phone services.

Not to mention, it gets people adjusted to the idea of having a home server, which I think every home needs. If you leave it on all the time for answer machine functions it isn't a stretch to add other funtions like media/music server or security/webcam monitor or light/appliance controller.

- JoeShmoe

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FILTH

[LazyDawg]

The trend in home computing for the past ten years has been and will continue to be away from the WIMP interface and towards the FILTH interface.

The desktop metaphor of Windows, Icons, Menus and Programs was nice for quite some time, and does have some advantages over the console (sometimes,) but it still left too much of the work to the user.

Forms, Images, Links, Text and Hypermedia interfaces let you treat the system you're handling like a web page. These are already all around us, in web pages, some authoring tools, etc. Rather than worrying about menus full of cryptic commands and window after window that you have to cycle through, imagine navigating the OS or filesystem as if it were a web site, perhaps with a WYSIWYG text editor so people can once again "turn it on and write."

The majority of users have a hard time cycling windows, understanding the difference between closing an application and quitting it, etc. They also tend to only want web, email and word processing. Games and specialty applications can come later, but you won't see them running in a window floating around above the FILTH much.

And yet no decent cases...

[Rob Parkhill]

You would think that with the interest of using a PC as a home theatre component that there would be a lot more choice in the market for a decent looking PC case!

I mean seriously, there is maybe 2 PC cases on the market that will take standard PC compnents and looks like it actually belongs in your A/V cabinet. And these cases tend to be in the $250+ range, which is nuts for just a case.

A PC w/ an HDTV tuner card, optical sound output, a DVD drive, a software line doubler/tripler/quadrupler, and a fast network connection (and gobs of sound-deadening material of course!)is a great thing to have in your home theatre, but it sure sticks out like a sore thumb!