New Technology TV

For years computer manufacturers have been trying to get people to integrate computers into their home entertainment centers. Originally the idea was to use media adapters to display computer content on a living room TV. This isn't a new idea, in fact it's been around since well before the Internet existed in any recognizable form. The original idea was that people could save money by not having to buy a computer monitor in addition to the TV screen that they presumably had anyway. In addition to that, a media adapter would allow computer owners to work on their computers and play video games in the comfort of their living rooms. Unfortunately for computer manufacturers and possibly for consumers, this trend didn't catch on. Later, the Internet provided new impetus for the idea that media adapters could marry the TV with the computer because in addition to word processing, spreadsheets, and gaming, people could also surf the web and send email from the Lay-Z-Boy or the couch. Despite the growing popularity of dedicated video gaming systems that tied into TV sets during this era, the idea of a personal computer in the living room still didn't catch on.
In general, the public has put up a fair amount of resistance to the idea of hooking up a computer to the TV, but there are a number of factors at work now that could change that. One of them is the increasing popularity of Internet video. This can be attributed in large part to the increasing prevalence of high speed Internet connections, the growing number of devices that can digitally record video, and the increasing ability of computer software and hardware to handle video applications. Although the public still generally doesn't have the patience to download full length feature movies or even normal TV shows, watching short news clips and amateur videos that have been downloaded from the Internet is relatively common.

Another development that's blurring the lines between computers and televisions is the increasing computerization of television equipment. Over the past decade and a half television and computer technologies have gradually been converging. It was first seen with the introduction of digital TV back in the early nineties. Digital TV used computer technology to produce pictures with a clarity that the older analog signal simply couldn't rival. Then in the late nineties, the DVD player came about. The DVD player was a big step in the right direction when it came to merging the two technologies. After all, it wasn't at all uncommon at that point for computers to have optical disc drives and then optical discs could suddenly play movies too. Since then there has been an explosion of television technology that takes advantage of computers including digital video recorders which have hard drives, CPU's, and even operating systems closely related to Windows and Linux.

Now it seems that the computer industry has given up on the idea of physically putting a computer in the living room and instead is concentrating on devices that can transfer video from the home computer to the TV over in home networks either wireless or wired. If this technology functions as promised it may create a new era in home entertainment where people may bypass the trouble of TV service providers and fixed subscriptions by downloading and paying for only the TV programming that they want and watching that programming whenever they want. If this happens, it will turn the TV industry on its head.