What Happened to Media PCs?

timrichardson writes to tell us that Slate is asking what happened to the promises of a living room PC? The lack of any news at Apple's WWDC prompted the author to look at the promises made at the Consumer Electronics Show a la Viiv and other "uber-consoles" in addition to the launch of Apple's downloadable videos and "couch-surfing remote." While some pundits blame the state of the technology this article claims that the PC and the TV provide two very different roles that aren't going to converge anytime soon.

Comments

Simple

[Hawthorne01]

Computer = active entertainment.
TV = Passive.

TV in the home is essentially radio with pictures. When's the last time you made a point to listen to a radio program, and only listen to a radio program in your home? I'd stop everything when I was younger to listen to Royal Canadian Air Farce or my tapes of Eclectic Circus, but other than that.

Computer's can't do that. Even the most banal of websites requires more of your attention than a TV show or radio, and then there's gaming, which is a 100% immersive, active experience.

TV out

[p0tat03]

While I agree with TFA that people simply aren't ready to turn PCs into TVs and vice versa, maybe they're overly harsh on the Mac. It doesn't have video in/out features, nor do any Macs have integrated TV tuners... The remote is the only media-center-esque feature on the Macs, but that hardly means Apple meant to make it a media center machine.

The problem is really one of cost and usability. An HTPC costs too much. When confronted with the option of the $100 set top box provided by the cableco vs. a $600 HTPC, what is the obvious choice for the average user? Not to mention the set top box is plug and play, and requires no finangling with software (or God forbid, Windows).

I'm sure many home users would love to have the power of MythTV, but until we can build a MythTV box for $300 and make it plug-and-play and config-free, it simply won't take off in the mainstream.

Re:What happened to MP3 phones?

[p0tat03]

Actually, while MP3 phones have flunked the general market, enthusiasts have totally bought into it. I can't count the number of mobile-nut friends I have that drool over their W810's. The early-gen MP3 phones really really sucked, but the W810 has a really slick interface (and an airplane mode... hint hint Motorola) and it's quite nice to have an integrated device done RIGHT.

Until Corporates "get" oss it will never happen

[DNAtsol]

Content. Content. Content. Just like in real estate (location location location) these are the three things media corps care about the most. Until they make it easy (i.e., open standardized protocols) for information to be moved around, any media center is going to be locked in to proprietary difficult to use formats and only /. esque users will really be able to take advantage of these possibilities. The average user will never pay for something they need to spend more than 5 min trying to get to work. Trying new approaches to media delivery and exchange is veerrryy scary for corps that think their livelihood depends on "owning" the rights of Green Acres and Two's Company.

I have a Media PC.

[SURsys]

I use my MPC for my personal music collection, radio, movies, as well as TV. It plays DVD's as would be expected and after installing the codecs also plays xvid, divx, etc. The remote I use interacts with it like a normal TV remote. Also works on the DVD menu's and such.

Realize, they're called MEDIA PC's, not TV PC's. Of course, for the average TV watcher, the cable company's set top box will work quite well, but, for those that understand the potential and have a use for it, the MPC is a big step above.

This is more of a niche than people thought it was going to be, it's not turned out so much to be for the average user. In regards to price, setup, maintenance, etc, it's just not worth it for most people.

Re:Demand

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true. Well, not if my recent experience is anything to go by. Like many of the rest of you I suppose, I get frequent requests to help friends and neighbors buy a PC. More and more I am getting the older generation asking me for the following:

1) A small quiet set-top box type PC
2) Records cable/terrestrial TV to HD like a TIVO/VCR
3) Has a simple kiosk type menu with a remote
4) Low power so it can be always on
5) Does internet radio
6) (*and very tellingly added as a last afterthought) Can browse the web

Since I cannot buy such a device I build and configure them myself. I use P4/celeron mini-itx boards, a good TV/capture card, 300GB SATA drives,
The OS I build (by hand, though I now have an image I burn) is a minimal GNU/Linux based on LFS which is similar to distributions like Dynebolic. It has low latency kernel, carefully tuned disk access using hdparms and carefully tweaked afs for very large file support. I buy the cases from a custom manufacturer in the UK and they are built for very low noise and low temperature operation using a rear external heatsink.

In the last month I have had requests for 5 such devices, not much you may think, but a year ago nobody wanted such a thing. What I think has happened is that the demand is there, it's been planted in peoples minds that that's what a PC should do. All the hype by major corps has led to widespread disappointment because they can't deliver what they promised, and it's left to us independent hackers to come up with the reality.

I'm not complaining though :) I expect to get double the orders next month, and I will rinse out this situation while the going is good. It won't last forever, I expect within a year Sony or somebody will deliver what I am building now at a fraction of the cost in a stylish plastic box. On the other hand maybe it will be so crippled that my customers will keep coming back for more of the real deal.

Re:'Windows MCE sucked' is what happened

[PDAToday]

Actually you don't need an uber system for Windows MCE. Intel makes a great 945 chipset Media Edition motherboard http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d945gnt/ index.htm/ as do a couple of other vendors. You can get a DVI daughter card for less than $50 for your digital out, but I even skipped that for a better solution.

I have my MCE server set elsewhere in the house and use my XBOX as the head unit that's plugged into my home theater system. It was really easy to do and now I don't have to pay a monthly subscription fee to Replay or Tivo anymore.

The original XBOX 1 worked just OK at this but the XBOX 360 really shines as a MCE extender providing in Microsoft's promise of being a home entertainment hub...no I'm not kidding, I was really amazed at how I could play Uno on Live, listen to music from my MP3 collection and them jump out to watch a recorded TV show, all from my remote control.

My MCE server has a dual tuner card and several hard drives set up as RAID5 using the Intel motherboard. I also have two HDTV OTA cards but have not had a chance to get an HD antenna hooked up yet so I use those cards for my security cameras.

The whole thing was easy to build and set up and it integrates into my home theater very nicely.

We are indeed building them ourselves, with MythTV

[Yeechang Lee]

From the Slate article:

Very savvy consumers will hack together ["PC-TV hybrid"] setups themselves.

Yes, we are indeed building them ourselves. However, we are doing so primarily because we can't find what we want on sale anywhere for any price. The below is an adapted version of a recent Usenet post of mine describing what I have come to daily take for granted with my high-definition MythTV setup:
------------
. . . MythTV works, and works well, for those who are interested in a "HD TiVo" without any of TiVo's limitations. I must admit to chuckling whenever I see a question in alt.tv.tech.hdtv or elsewhere asking how to record from a HD video source with a computer in terms that make it clear the poster and the respondents view the task as something akin to cavemen discovering fire.

I work long, long hours and, when I get home, often don't have any more energy left to do more than want to just relax in front of the tube. When I do so, I want to have as much choice in what to watch as possible. Let me tell one and all of what I with 100% reliability do with my MythTV setup every day:

• Push a button on the remote[1] to wake the 47" 1080p[2] LCD panel[3] from its DPMS slumber.
• Pick from a gigantic library[4] of high-definition programs that MythTV constantly adds to[5] based on my choices.[6]
• While playing the program, rewind, fast-forward, and jump to arbitrary points as desired. I can also adjust the playback speed anywhere from 0.5X to 2X without affecting audio pitch.[7]
• I can push a button to instantly and accurately skip over commercials.[8] If I've gone too far, another button will skip me back to the previous spot.
• If I exit a recording, the next time I watch it the playback will continue where I left off.[9]
• If I ever need to restart MythTV, pushing a button on my remote twice within three seconds will cause it to do so.[10]
• If I want, I can run MythTV on my MacBook and watch the exact same programs[11] with the exact same elegant and attractive user interface.[12]
• All this time, MythTV is silently recording yet more for me to watch.[13]

If any of this intrigues you, I recommend visiting:

• The MythTV Wiki and the mythtv-users mailing list archive, the two largest repositories of MythTV knowledge.
• The terrific Fedora Core-based installation guide I used.
• A well-regarded MythTV reference design for those who want to either buy it off the shelf from the vendor or build it themselves. I'm neither a customer nor an employee; all I did for my own setup was buy a Sony Pentium 4 system on sale at Fry's then add the video card, ATSC capture card, gigabit Ethernet card, remote, and NAS. However, in retrospect, there's something to be said for buying at once all the parts except the NAS in one convenient, already-integrated form.

[1] Home Theater Master MX-500 universal remote. I programmed it using a $30 infrared keyboard/mouse combo.

[2] MythTV does an *excellent* job of deinterlacing 1080i recordings into 1080p for those displays that can handle it. Any Nvidia video card from the FX5200 to the present will work.

[3] Westinghouse LVM-47W1. Under $2500 from Crutchfield for 1080p LCD goodness.

[4] MythTV tells me that I have "242 programs, using 1.7 TB (427 hrs 33 mins) out of 1.8 TB (54 GB fr

Re:What happened to MP3 phones?

[baker_tony]

I take it you're only talking about the USA when you say "What happened to the MP3 phones"? While iPods are prevalent over here in the UK, the next most common site is people listening to their phones. I actually watch episodes of Seinfeld and Futurama on my phone (k750i, getting damn old now but does its job very nicely) during my commute home (via public transport here in London, not car).

P.S. I use mpegable to encode any video files for my phone.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Joe Sixpack doesn't like DRM!

[big ben bullet]

The biggest drawback is DRM.

If JS (Joe Sixpack) can't record what he wants, while he could do that with a normal VCR, he's not going to buy it.

JS also wants to share his recordings or the media he bought with his friends (again, this could be done with a VCR).

Offcourse, there are DRM-less solutions (like MythTV 'n stuff) but that's just too complex for JS.

Industry killing them

[MobyDisk]

They are being killed by the industry and the techno-fetishists. The Slashdot reviews all talk about $3000 machines with 4-way processors, RAID drives, multiple tuners, and big 3D cards. Those are not media PCs, they are high-end gaming and video desktop.

I built a media PC that IMHO does the job:

• Low power so you can put it in your entertainment center without it overheating
• Nearly silent
• Software optimized for browsing (Opera with 180% magnification)
• Good quality wireless keyboard, mouse, and remote control
• Uses HDMI outputs so text is readable
• Inexpensive

The industry needs to change in two fundamental ways:
1) Accessibility - software needs to work in a greater variety of environments. That means high-DPI and low-DPI displays, and low-resolution displays, multiple aspect-ratios.
2) TVs and Video Cards: non-interlaced, DVI/HDMI, no overscanning, >60hz, standard aspect-ratios.

P.S. Also, I have yet to see a media PC with surround sound. That's because sound cards use 3 stereo cables, while receivers use Dolby encoding over one pair of cables. This is just one of those cases where computers do it differently than all other consumer devices (although they do it better).