Home Computer Appliances
Warning, the following contains some of my geeky ramblings about things that have been rattling around in my head, feel free to skip. :)
My friend Chris mentioned to me that news of TiVo's price increase had hit Reuters. I couldn't find the article itself, but it got her and I onto the topic of network appliances again. So I was thinking about this last night as I was falling asleep.
Now I love being able to use my computer for lots of things, listening to music, watching movies, I even at one point wanted to be able to watch TV on it. But as time goes on, I find that it isn't the best platform for all those things. It is like the phrase "Jack of all trades, master of none." A computer is trying to be everything at once, a good stereo, a good tv, a good dvd player, etc. But, a computer has limitations. Even the fastest computer out there will have issues trying to do too many things at once.
The product that brought this into my head the most lately was WinDVR, which I mentioned a week or so ago. My friend Alan brought up some good points about some of the things it let you do, specificly archive shows to CD or share shows with friends. And as I was thinking about that, I suddenly realized the product's biggest weakness. It had no way to talk with my cable box. I have digital cable and the TiVo gets around this by being able to send IR (remote control) signals to my cable box. This enable the TiVo to constantly be changing channels and recording shows I may want to watch. It becomes an extension of your TV/Cable.
This topic has also been kinda hot in my head because I just ordered an Audiotron this weekend. This is another product that does the same thing people have been doing with computers, but does it in a better way (IMHO). People have been running audio cables from their PC to their stereos for a while. The computer makes a perfectly good mp3 player. The problem is, it means you need the computer near your stereo. With the Audiotron, you just need a home network. It'll play music that is shared out from any PC in your house, it will play audio streams from on the net, and it's got a cool web interface for managing it. It also has a remote control for me to add to my growing collection.
These days, my biggest goal when I'm at home sitting on my couch watching TV and reading is not having to get up and go sit at the computer to do something. That's one of the reasons I love my laptop. I can get things done anywhere. All of these products help me get to that point.
Oh, and I do think WinDVR is pretty cool regardless. It's actually got me thinking of ways to use a computer as a kind of 'dumb' VCR/DVD burner for archiving things and it might be an interesting stepping stone on the way to achieving that.
