Vision of Personal Computers as Heart of Home Entertainment

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:13:21 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>

[Note:  I think that Markoff missed the boat with this article. There is a 
revolution taking place in the home and its with the gaming console (XBox, 
PS2, etc.).  I just read on a list that I'm on that is populated with CIO's 
of universities, that at one college 95% of the students are showing up 
with gaming consoles that they're connecting to the campus network.  Not 
that hard to figure out what those kids are doing at home given that one 
bit of data.  DLH]

November 17, 2003

Vision of Personal Computers as Heart of Home Entertainment
By JOHN MARKOFF
 <http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/technology/17home.html?th>

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Nov. 15 - If Intel and Microsoft have their way, the 
personal computer will soon be moving out of the office and den into the 
living room, kitchen and bedroom.

The two companies have been thwarted for more than a decade by Hollywood, 
as well as the cable and satellite television industries, in their efforts 
to put a wired PC at the center of home entertainment. But now, competing 
directly against many companies in the consumer electronics industry, Intel 
and Microsoft are mounting a new charge to try to make the personal 
computer the hearth of the information age.

That vision is on display here in a faux teenager's bedroom just off the 
lobby at Intel's headquarters, where the sleek all-in-one PC has become 
part television tuner, part video game machine, part stereo jukebox, part 
DVD player, part digital photo archive - and the great hope of the nation's 
computer makers, who are looking for a bright Christmas sales rebound to 
help lead them to a longer revival.

"This is not your grandma's PC," said Louis J. Burns, the executive in 
charge of Intel's desktop computer division.

The arrival of the more flexible personal computers, Silicon Valley 
executives argue, is aimed at permitting the industry to make big inroads 
into the consumer market as digital television replaces conventional analog 
TV, a move that is expected to lead Americans to spend hundreds of billions 
of dollars over the next few years on things like new big-screen displays 
and home-theater-in-a-box sets.

"It will define a whole new category," said Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive 
of Nvidia, a maker of PC video cards also based here. "In five years it 
will absolutely reshape the consumer electronics industry."

Leading the computer industry's invasion is a new device known as the Media 
Center PC, with a processor designed by Intel and software created by 
Microsoft. It was introduced last year, and new and improved versions are 
being marketed this season by personal computer giants like Gateway, Dell 
Computer, Hewlett-Packard and Sony.

Microsoft's chairman, Bill Gates, in a speech prepared for delivery on 
Sunday evening at the annual Comdex computer show in Las Vegas, underscores 
the company's Media Center strategy; Mr. Gates describes the idea of 
"seamless computing,'' emphasizing the importance of software to tie 
together different consumer and office systems.

The new machines are not just the biggest hope for a computer industry that 
has been plagued by flat sales and eroding profit margins. They are also 
the standard bearers for an all-digital crusade the PC industry is waging 
to break open the satellite and cable industries, undermine powerful 
consumer electronic giants and restructure both Hollywood and the recording 
industry.

But consumer electronics makers question whether the PC industry's grand 
vision is one that many Americans will want to embrace. Even 
family-friendly personal computers are still far more complex than today's 
home electronics devices, they argue.

Others challenge the PC makers' centralized "mainframe in the home" vision 
of the personal computer as a hub for controlling all of the data expected 
to be flowing into houses to provide information, entertainment and other 
digital services in the years ahead. Instead, they say that wireless 
networking will level the playing field by letting any electronic device 
communicate with any other, allowing the current cable and satellite 
providers of television signals to control not just how movies are viewed 
in the home but also to some extent how video games and music are played.

"The seminal change in the home hi-fi market is not whether the console 
will be replaced by the PC," said Andrew Lippman, associate director of the 
M.I.T. Media Laboratory. "The real change will be a home wireless network 
that will make it possible to put computer intelligence in every device."

And not surprisingly, many consumer electronics companies have a very 
different vision than Microsoft's and Intel's PC-at-the-center world view.

"PC's come in all sizes these days,'' said Rob Fish, director of the 
Panasonic information and networking technologies laboratory in Princeton, 
N.J. "The view that every application in the home will rely on one box, it 
seems, does not really match the way most people live their lives."

The new computers have yet to win widespread endorsement from digital 
content providers. Despite extensive additional copy protection features in 
the machines, Hollywood studios remain worried that the systems, because 
they are connected openly to the Internet, could lead to widespread 
pirating of movies and songs.

<snip>

Archives at: <http://Wireless.Com/Dewayne-Net>
Weblog at: <http://weblog.warpspeed.com>

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