Let The Convergence Wars Begin
For years we have been pitched on the idea of technology convergence in the family room. As Naval has pointed out here before, he's a true believer. And I must say, having finally gotten a chance to check out Naval's Home Theater PC, it is awesome. My favorite feature is his integration of MAME -- instant 80's video games at your fingertips. To my mind, convergence is a foregone conclusion.
Perhaps the first mass market converged device has finally made it to the marketplace. Sony released details today on the PSX. PSX is Sony's CD-R, DVD-R, PVR and PS2 (with 100Mbps ethernet port for online gaming) all in one. It will come with either a 160GB or 250GB hard drive. And Sony is planning to sell it in Japan by the end of this year for as little as $700 or so. But for the fact that I've already got a DVD-R, CD-R, PVR and PS2 in my family room, I would be all over it. I am thrilled that the convergence wars have begun -- consumers will undoubtedly be the beneficiaries.
Everybody's busy trying to control it, though. If you put together your own package like Naval did, you can have everything you want but you need to be an expert.
If you use Microsoft's Media Center or Tivo or any number of other convergence devices, they all work very hard to limit what you can do in the name of DRM. That makes it less interesting than boxes already out there.
I'm waiting for the Red Hat of the MythTV/FreeVo world (free versions of Tivo-like functionality that sit on Linux) -- somebody that will cheap, mass produced, media PC's already configured to do everything.
MythTV is proving to be (yet) another opensource project worth watching. In particular one interesting offshoot project I've paid attention to is MiniMyth -- http://linpvr.org/
The elimination of the mass storage and fans in the lightweight front ends are really compelling. It seems the mini-itx formfactor is going to help appliances make it from the hard core hobbyist to the mainstream. Two vendors have come to market with the packaged platform:
Hush Technologies - http://www.hushtechnologies.com/default.asp?PageID=10
and
mini-itx.com -
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/tranquilpc.asp
Couple this with suitable VOIP software like:
Asterisk -
http://www.asterisk.org/
and handset for the thin clients, and two of the biggest purchases in the lodging industry that generate high margins just got a lot less expensive to acquire and operate.
Throw in some wireless and you're able to retrofit without construction.
1 year to market? 6 months to trial?