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

Gateway had this idea several years ago

[KarmaBlackballed]

Gateway was ahead of its time. About 5 years ago they sold a home entertainment package built around a PC and a large screen TV. Price was steep and it did not catch on at the time.

Perhaps now is the time.

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.

Re:Comprimise

[KernelHappy]

Your pretty quick to just dismiss the value of a PC in a home theater system. Your points are valid but only because the better solutions are not obvious. I still firmly believe that you're better off purchasing a dedicated DVD player but the experience of using a computer on a TV can be greatly improved as follows:

1) Remotes
There are many options here and many of them are better than kludgy. I personally use a cheapy Packard Bell Fastmedia remote that can be purchase for between $9-15 online or at computer shows. It consists of a cheapy receiver and a remote. There are even better solutions out there especially for a geeks home theater. Some contain IR receivers and transmitters, allowing you to customize macros and control more than the computer and the components. The biggest problem with these solutions are not the remotes themselves but A/V equipments general lack of a singal standard for connecting multiple devices together to act as one devices (would be nice to power on the DVD player and automatically select the input, audio configuration and picture adjustments).

I personally use a program called Girder to control my win box. Another popular program for linux is Lirc.

2) Sound Quality
Newer sound cards have improved drastically in terms of SQ but you are correct, the minijack is less than ideal and computers in general add noise to the mix. For a better solution connect you computer to your A/V receiver using one of the digital audio inputs. This removes the possibility of the minijack or the computer itself adding noise to the analog signal (most newer A/V receivers have digital inputs that use an internal DAC). Mp3s may not be the ultimate in high fidelty, but for most pop music its good enough and having a huge library online for casual listening is worth the trade off.

3) Video Quality
This is as much a fault of the computer as it is the fault of the TV. Most TV-Out capable video cards have pretty crappy picture quality, in fact I've yet to see one that knocked my socks off. Dedicated VGA converters generally do a better job, but are expensive and probably still won't give a picture as good as a $200 DVD player. But for the lucky few who have HDTVs there is hope. Some HDTV's come standard with a VGA or RGB interface and this is the ideal solution for hooking up your computer to such a set. For me, my HDTV doesn't have a VGA connector so instead I have to use a VGA->Y/Pb/Pr (component) transcoder. Using one of these transcoders provides a signal cleaner than any VGA out I've ever seen plus it allows me to use HD resolutions.


I don't recommend using a computer as a primary source in a home theater, but having a PC in the mix can be quite useful. Being able to control an entire home theater, being able to play mp3s and being able to play mame on a large tv make pretty compelling reason to throw a CPU into the cabinet. The AVSForum - HTPC (Home Theater PC) forum has many people who have a PC connected for various reasons.

we're in a transitional phase...

[turbine216]

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.

You're right about that, but I think that this merely marks a transitional period between the "multimedia pc" era (started about 7 years ago) and the "wired home" era (3 years down the road?). Eventually, I think what we'll see is more of a decentralized structure in the home PC area. We're already seeing it today, with wireless e-mail terminals and MP3 audio components for home stereos (a la the RIO Receiver and its bretheren). Look for more integrated versions of these in the future (i.e. wall-mounted touchscreen panels, linked to a file server that pipes MP3 music to any single room in the house).

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

.

Re:Not very insightful

[renehollan]

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.

Bingo!

Until people have a need/use for a home server, 24/7 applications (like answering machine, possibly alarm system, home control, etc.) aren't going to happen. Of course, there is no need for a home server if there are no apps to run on it 24/7 so you have a chicken and egg problem... what is the "killer app" for the home server?

email

The thought of connecting and polling some remote POP/IMAP/whatever server for email periodically sucks: I (or some application) wants to know I have email the instant it is delivered to my mailbox. This is kind of a pain with a dial-up connection (and keeping it up is likely a violation of the terms of service unless you have a dedicated connection), but very easy to do if you have a cable or DSL connection. One of the first things I did when I got my DSL connection was configure my PC to sink email for my domain (yes, I have a remote backup MX; no, I do not relay) and adjust my DNS records accordingly. This humble P200 PC will soon be relegated to the headend where it will serve as an email/media server.

Of course, an answering machine is little more than a repository for email with a voice attachment in disguise, so, with the right modem, this becomes a slam dunk. Remote monitoring of the house (sensors, webcams, etc.) is the next logical step. While we're at it, might as well provide remote ssh-tunneled access to that email and voice mail.

This is just the start, really. For example, why do TiVo and ReplayTV need hard disks? Shouldn't they just stream to local home storage (perhaps encrypting the content to keep the MPAA sharks at bay, not that I'd like this)? I see a potential revival of "push" technology services, when the possibility of caching, i.e. time-shifting, content becomes the norm.

Hard drives are noisy, and frankly computers are ugly in a family/livingroom setting. It might be reasonable for streamed media playback devices to accept local CD, DVD, or other media, but it makes little sense for them to cache locally -- cache on the home server. With less as opposed to more integration in such devices, planned obsolescence becomes easier: you aren't throwing out a whole computer when you upgrade an essentially integrated component. A plus: storage becomes independent of content -- you grow storage as you want.

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!