Actually, they tried to reinvent the wheel and somehow came up with a square design. At least they were smart enough to realize their mistake and partner with tivo.
Hopefully tivo realizes this is where their best future lies, with licensing their software/inferface and letting other people deal with the hardware (though keep the remote design!).
Just a minor correction, the research did not indicate that one to two drinks a day was a healthy practice, but that the people who did drink like that were healthier than those that didn't. I know, sounds like the same thing but the difference being that people who drink lightly already, are on average healthier which could be from being less stressed, other lifestyle factors, etc.), not that drinking lightly will increase your health (which it might but that's not indicated one way or another by the aforementioned study).
The problem isn't necessarily one of processing power (although specialized is definitely faster than generalized), but of bandwidth. Separate processors and addons (usually) have dedicated memory, cache and lessen the calls to system memory and hard drive access. Even new system memory doesn't have as much bandwidth available total as the specialized memory for graphics cards.
Also, your example of pricing does not reflect that by not having a separate graphics card you are giving up the ability to play most games. Lacking a separate sound card/physics card etc does not currently mean giving up this ability completely. Price per performance has to be equivalent for the comparison to be valid. If you don't want to play games then buy the cheapest thing you can find as it'll do office work, internet just as well.
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Actually, they tried to reinvent the wheel and somehow came up with a square design. At least they were smart enough to realize their mistake and partner with tivo.
Hopefully tivo realizes this is where their best future lies, with licensing their software/inferface and letting other people deal with the hardware (though keep the remote design!).
Just a minor correction, the research did not indicate that one to two drinks a day was a healthy practice, but that the people who did drink like that were healthier than those that didn't. I know, sounds like the same thing but the difference being that people who drink lightly already, are on average healthier which could be from being less stressed, other lifestyle factors, etc.), not that drinking lightly will increase your health (which it might but that's not indicated one way or another by the aforementioned study).
The problem isn't necessarily one of processing power (although specialized is definitely faster than generalized), but of bandwidth. Separate processors and addons (usually) have dedicated memory, cache and lessen the calls to system memory and hard drive access. Even new system memory doesn't have as much bandwidth available total as the specialized memory for graphics cards.
Also, your example of pricing does not reflect that by not having a separate graphics card you are giving up the ability to play most games. Lacking a separate sound card/physics card etc does not currently mean giving up this ability completely. Price per performance has to be equivalent for the comparison to be valid. If you don't want to play games then buy the cheapest thing you can find as it'll do office work, internet just as well.