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[IP] Vision of Personal Computers as Heart of Home Entertainment




Delivered-To: dfarber+@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2003 07:13:21 -0800
From: Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

[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>

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