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

Demand

[jazir1979]

I think the demand simply isn't there, I wouldn't blame the technology. The majority of people wouldn't see the point, or understand the possibilities. Many people still struggle with TV remotes...

By and large, people want to spend money on their plasma displays, not "uber-consoles".

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:Demand

[nmb3000]

I think the demand simply isn't there, I wouldn't blame the technology.

That's a big part of it I think, though I believe that the demand for what media PCs offer exists; however, instead of buying a PC that's dedicated to the TV, I think consumers are going more for the TiVo-like boxes which offer most functionality for fewer dollars and simpler setup. I can attest that there's less a chance that grandma will bork the TiVo than the Windows Media Center PC.

In addition, I'd bet that most people (except those geeks among us with a few extra computers laying around who know about extras like old video game ROMs, MythTV, weather forecasts, etc.) would just assume leave the PC out of the family/entertainment room. By placing it elsewhere it means that somebody can use the computer without monopolizing the TV and vice-versa. Until it becomes standard to have two new computers in the average home, I think you'll continue to see a separation of PC and TV.

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.

I'd rather have a laptop

[davidwr]

For computing in the den, give me a laptop.

For my entertainment-center, give me a DVR or something similar.

Sure, they are both computers on the inside, but for most "computing" tasks like email, office work, etc. I'd rather use a laptop or desktop, not stare at a screen several meters away.

I can think of one major exception: anything that involves two people sharing a single physical display, such as videoconferencing or playing a multi-player game.

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

All-In-Wonder?

[ben there...]

Start off with the latest and greatest ATI All-in-Wonder. That can cost at least $300, usually more towards $500. Sorry, Nvidia can't compete with ATI in the multimedia realm. Not yet, anyways. People are going to want to play games, and impress their friends. And you need that video input/output functionality. Sure, you could use seperate cards, but this solution is more elegant.

Why would you get an ATI card? ATI is not the leader in either TV Tuners or Video Cards.

For TV Tuners, you can get an equivalent Hauppauge PVR150MCE for $30, or go with the Fusion HDTV if you want digital. And as far as nVidia in the TV tuner market, they recently released the DualTV, with 2 tuners, which beats anything ATI has produced, and gives the Hauppauage PVR500 a run for its money.

For the video card, nVidia has all the hardware accelerated MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 decoding, starting with 6xxx (fanless, silent, low profile 6200 is $30).

Irritation Tolerance

[EEBaum]

When you turn on a TV, you expect it to work. Immediately. No loading screens, no choosing applications, and a relatively minimal amount of button pressing and stuff to figure out.

Computers tend not to deliver on these sorts of things, and will most likely only make the TV experience MORE complicated.

Take the "MOXI" DVR for example. I've had some experience with this atrocity. Some particular things about it that bother me, that really aren't an issue with simpler set-top boxes (or with a lack of a set-top box entirely), and that seem to be the way things are going what with the pretty interfaces...
- Very long channel-changing lag
- Necessity to hit TWO buttons (with a pause of up to 3 seconds between) to choose a program from the listings
- Pretty pictures of the channel names, but no actual station name text (making it anyone's guess which local channel is assigned to which)
- V-Chip lockouts that take non-rated documentaries, independents, and foreign films as collateral damage
- Sound effects (thankfully they can be disabled)
- The interface is so pretty, why put a program grid in? Instead, you can only see at a glance what is showing at this exact moment, needing to hover and wait for a load to see what's next on each channel.
- Cooling fan that runs 24/7
- 3-5 minute reboot time, should you need to reboot (what, reboot a system that's been on for months straight?)
- Lack of a "close on-screen displays" button or mechanism... gotta just wait for it to go away.
- Very deep menu-digging necessary for some features

My point is that as TV stuff makes its way toward greater computerization, it is very easy to lose the easy-access TV mindset and make a totally user-hostile experience in the name of gradients, pretty buttons, lots of options, and "oh cool!" features. I get upset with the channel-change delay of digital cable compared to analog cable... adding a computer to the mix will almost always compound the problem. It's irritating enough using different TVs with remote control buttons in slightly different locations.

Technologically informed != Techo-fetishist

[Moraelin]

There really is a fundamental disconnect between most of America (world) and the technologically informed.

No, the fundamental disconnect is between techno-fetishist nerds and those still anchored in reality.

The mistake that techno-fetishists make is assuming that "technologically informed" inherently equals being some techno-fetishist nerd. You know the kind. The kind that thinks that a computer automatically makes everything better, for no other reason than being a computer. And thus actually thinks that it's a good idea to have a web server on his fridge, so he can check the temperature in it from work. Or than it's a good, nay, a _great_ idea to slap a browser and an LCD display on a microwave oven so you can surf on it (supposedly for recipes) while you heat your TV dinner in it. (Don't laugh. Some company came up with just that product. Literally.)

But mostly just because. Because in their mind the computer is a purpose in and by itself, and everything else is just a means and an excuse to interact with the oh-so-cool computer.

It doesn't equal. There are plenty of us for whom the computer is just a tool, like any other tool. And just as you don't need a hammer to cook your dinner, you don't need a web browser for it either.

There are plenty of cheaper gadgets which do one job well, and which don't really need a pimped-up gaming rig to do.

E.g., a fridge is just a fridge. All it needs is a thermostat. I don't need to check its temperature over the internet every hour. I just need the confidence that it has a simple and robust thermostat that will work for years or decades without any need to babysit it. The simpler and lower tech, the better.

E.g., a microwave oven is just a microwave oven. I don't want to browse for recipes on it. Any recipes I might have in mind have been (A) researched _before_ even buying the ingredients, and it's by definition too late for that at the time of cooking them, and (B) cooked in the normal oven, if it's a recipe worth researching and not just a TV dinner. It doesn't need a web browser and LCD display driving the price up. All I want from it is the peace of mind that if I set it to 15 minutes, it will stop after roughly 15 minutes. It doesn't have to be synchronized to NTP and it doesn't need micro-second accuracy either. As long as it stops somewhere between 14 and 16 minutes, it's ok.

And so is it with "media" computers or "home theathre" computers too. It's not that people are somehow not "technologically informed", it's that it's such a techno-fetishist use of technology. To record a show, even an ancient VCR is enough. (Though you might go for a DVD recorder nowadays.) To watch a rented DVD with your family, you only need a DVD player. (If you got a DVD recorder at the previous step, it will have that included.) To have some music in your living room, you just need a CD player. (And again, the DVD player or recorder from the previous step, it might have that included.) You don't need an expensive renamed gaming rig to do those, and you don't need the whirring of its fans and hard drives while you watch a movie.

Even with TVs, it's not that anyone is "technologically uninformed" and doesn't know about HDTV. Trust me, everyone has at least heard that they exist. It's that normal people have other priorities to spend their money on. Sure, a big LCD HDTV screen is nice, _but_ you could use that money on something else instead. That's where those nice big TVs fail for the majority of the population. The improvement exists, but it just isn't worth the cost, or more precisely giving up something else you could use that money on. You can spend the evening in front of an old-fashioned 60 Hz interlaced idiot-box just as well, for a fraction of the cost, and from 10 ft distance it won't look that much worse.

They're currently just a conspicuous-consumption status-symbol thing. They're like gold watches or pimped-up sports cars at mid-life crisis: something you buy just to show everyo