Remember those pathetic “Media PC” offerings from
Gateway that came out right around the time DVD drives, audio cards
and video cards emerged on the computer market?
Those old packages were nothing other than a TV screen and nice
speakers connected to a normal PC with a wireless keyboard.
But, good news ““ over the next year, computers are going
to grow from pimply-faced entertainment PCs to sleek, streamlined
entertainment purveyors with specially designed operating systems
and features to beat all of their stand-alone counterparts at Best
Buy.
The first iterations of most new technologies will all be making
their debuts this holiday season to make these new entertainment
PCs a reality. Once refined, they will continue to push computers
ever closer to your family room and further from your home
office.
Computers these days can just about match everything the
highest-end audio/video hardware can muster. High definition DVD
and video playback? Ha! Computers have used high-def resolutions
for years. High definition audio and multichannel audio? Ha! The
new Sound Blaster Audigy audio cards offer 96-bit audio (better
than CD quality) and multichannel decoding for a fraction of the
price of a traditional audio receiver. Digital audio and video
recording? Check.
The two most exciting new technologies that will make media PCs
an even better choice than traditional hardware are 802.11G and
Intel’s new Pentium 4 with Hyper Threading technology.
802.11g is the next iteration of the wireless data transfer
standard known as Wi-Fi, and will provide a 120-foot range at a 2.4
GHz frequency. This will allow your entertainment PC to take
advantage of online pay-per-view services such as cinemanow.com,
where for $3.99 you can currently download “Harry
Potter” for 24 hours of unlimited viewings.
Hyper Threading, to debut on Intel’s 3.09 GHz Pentium 4,
allows a computer to divide the processor into two virtual
processors, allowing the computer to, for instance, play a DVD
while simultaneously encoding digital video from the TV source. But
for now, only Windows XP can take advantage of HT.
The backbone of the new Media Center PC will be the Windows XP
Media Center Edition, available next month. The Media Center
Edition was designed to make great new hardware available for
computers easy to manage from a remote control.
The centerpiece of the Media Center Edition will be a remote
control that streamlines all the features of the enhanced media
PCs. These features include (in order of coolness) the ability to
pause live television, digital TV recording (with all the bells and
whistles to compete with TiVo), DVD and MP3 playback, digital
picture slide shows, and digital video playback.
While all of these features have been available, never before
has a special operating system been made to organize them all into
one sleek, easy-to-use package. With the touch of one button, the
computer will switch to media center mode (from the normal Windows
desktop environment).
People don’t generally place televisions near their
computers (except in dorms), but if companies start making
horizontal towers instead of vertical ones, that might change.
The first model to be installed with Windows XP Media Center
Edition will come from Hewlett Packard, and despite the shivers you
might get from the company’s bland PC designs in the past,
the new Media Center PCs are outright sleek with a black glass (or
look-alike) front, shiny silver buttons and ports.
The only possible kidney stone in our vas deferentia is
Microsoft’s Palladium and its Intel-developed hardware
complement, LaGrande. These two dastardly technologies could
be used to stamp out all traces of freedom with digital media that
we currently enjoy (i.e. ripping and burning CDs, and downloading
digital media). But Palladium and LaGrande are in such infantile
stages that we don’t need to worry quite yet.
Suffice it to say that Microsoft will be the biggest force
behind this revolution and will consequently try to mark its
digital territory like a dog on a fire hydrant.