PC that acts like a TV

An anonymous reader writes "CNN is reporting on the newest HP Media Center PC, a PC that "acts like a TV". Seems to me it is a TIVO with some additional features, like storing and displaying pictures and music files. Runs on some sort of Windows XP." The real killer with this whole genre of device is cost and confusion. Users don't know what they do, so its not worth the cost. Anyone who has used a tivo for a week knows what it means. Business just needs to get the costs down. I think including functionality like pictures and music is a good step towards increasing value, as long as it doesn't add to the confusion.

Comments

Convergence - again!???

[The Mutant]

Apple has tried this several times, and Compaq has as well (tellingly, Compaq doesn't off this product / capability any more).

I'm not sure folks - and by that I mean the mass market, not geeks - are ready for this. I understand the HP product can record, unlike the MacTV (I own one, btw, as well as one of their 5500's which has a TV tuner card) or the Compaq machine but it seems like most people park their PC in one room and the TV in the other.

PC / TV convergence? Well, your toaster has been next to your refrigerator for 50+ years, and they haven't converged yet. I don't see a mass market for this now, and there clearly hasn't been in the past.

Nice box though.

Ouch!

[AntiFreeze]

This thing scares me. It costs $1,400, and a monitor is *extra*. In other words, they're just selling a computer preconfigured to hook up to your television.

The article is short on details about the computer, this is what it says:

The HP computer, which will be available by the end of October, comes with a remote control, television tuner, and can record and play television shows and digital music. A monitor is extra.

Nothing special whatsoever, but what really scares me is what the executive VP of CompUSA says: "The remote control could well become the next standard PC peripheral". Huh? Is he saying that computers are heading down the path of glorified televisions and that in the near future all that you will need to operate your computer is a remote control?

Something's very fishy. This thing is a computer with a tv tuner card, it shouldn't approach $1,400, even with a monitor included. There have to be some other gimics, otherwise this thing seems to be one big rip off.

If someone's got real information on this thing to counteract the lack of information presented by CNN, that would be greatly appreciated.

Mac TV

[mekkab]

Yeah, a friend of mine had one of those "sears macs" from 7 years ago... (a quadra? performa? all the names meld together after a while) and she didn't have a tv but she did have a coax connector in the back, so she'd watch tv on her mac. IT was a nifty trick.

However her system had 1 SIMM slot (WTF?!) so it wasn't as if you could run permier and make some captures and put them in movies.

Without a killer app it isn't going to be more than a parlor trick. But then again, without having these parlor tricks around you don't give anyone the opportunity to create a killer app!

But given the inherit difference in the user interaction model:
TV: Sit. Watch. Enjoy!
PC: Sit. type. click. read. type some more. enjoy!

Don't get me wrong, there are spectator aspects to a pc- why, look at console gaming (the best example of TV/PC convergence yet)- even in games that aren't head to head I can watch my wife play and still have a good time.

freevo?

[nico_le_blob]

Anyone checked freevo.sf.net ? Reads divx/dvds, mp3/ogg, image files, watch tv... and is free software of course...

Re:P4 1.8GHz?

[fiffilinus]

Ah yes, what about all this neat DRM functionality? Do you really think the encryption stuff for keying files to the media pc in question won't take cpu cycles? :-)
You really think those wonder machines will let you burn CDs for your car stereo?

Re:Tivo-wannabes don't get it

[Fnkmaster]

Not quite true. Check out XMLTV. I think you might find that all the guide infrastructure in available in a nice, Free package. So given that much of the backend work has already been done, you just need a nice guide program to use XMLTV guide data (i.e. parse XMLTV's XML format) and implement the relatively simple logic of tracking shows and making sure to schedule recording of them.

I actually started working on this a bit for the excellent DScaler TV tuner card app (this is a Windows app), but I haven't gotten very far yet, mostly due to having lots of other more pressing projects, but I wrote some hack-job code to display current guide data in a simple box overlay drawn on top of the DScaler TV window. It really needs a much more comprehensive treatment than that, but the point is this is a couple of week project. If you are interested, get in touch.

Re:problems

[Twirlip of the Mists]

display: Most Tvs are not of sufficient quality for displaying text clearly which makes them unsuitable for general computing.

Keep in mind, though, that this is gradually changing. Mine is a 34" HDTV that can resolve 1280x720 very nicely. (I can drive it at 1920x1080 as well, but only interlaced, and interlaced makes for unpleasant viewing of static material like text.)

I paid out the ass for my TV earlier this year, but smaller televisions with similar capabilities are getting cheaper and cheaper. As the deadline for various FCC mandates approaches, expect TVs with 800-or-more lines of resolution to be the rule, rather than the exception.

Re:P4 1.8GHz?

[ergo98]

While it doesn't explain the GF4, the CPU can be explained as necessary if they haven't integrated a coprocessor for video compression: Even 3Mbps (ok quality) MPEG2 has my Athlon XP 1800+ gasping for air. I don't know what sort of video codec they're using, but if it's WM9 (a sort of super-MPEG4 supposedly) then increase the CPU usage accordingly. The desired goal is that they'd put actual integrated video compression hardware on there.

Personally I think this is a product area that will get huge: For everyone who's talking about how expensive it is, realize that people buy TV systems exceeding that cost frequently: This isn't a surprisingly high home entertainment cost. Hell, the home theatre market continues to strive, selling five digit projectors and similarly priced audio gear. I personally have been having a debate regarding my own entertainment system: My DVD player was one of the early ones, and I want to replace it with a progressive scan player. Additionally I want something to play MP3 and WMA, preferably over the network from one of my other PCs. What I end up needing, of course, is a computer at my TV, and that's the direction that I'm headed. My biggest problem was software (i.e. I would rather super simple, can't-screw-up, software for family and friends), however the Media Center software seems to fit the bill perfectly.

Re:TiVo doomed? Hah!

[Dark Paladin]

I'm sorry to disagee, but I think Tivi is becoming a part of the public consciosness. When I hear a local radio dj ralking about how he used his tivo to record a show he wanted to check out, a huge chunk of the local population just went to tivo.com.

Tivo has mindshare, is simple, cheaper, and does one thing very well. I actually predict tivo will gain more mind and market share.

The more things change

[Joe U]

The more they stay the same.

Commodore annouced something very similar years ago.

They went out of business shortly after. I don't think anyone ever understood why they were supposed to buy the computer for your tv, it wasn't a Commodore 64 or Amiga, it wasn't a game console and it wasn't a VCR. It was something in-between all of that.

Who knows, maybe music will be the feature that saves this one.