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andrewduckerIf I see one more stupid opinion piece saying that in the future we'll all throw away our TVs and just have a computer that we can watch TV on, chat via IM, play games and check our email on, I'm going to track down the idiot that wrote it and strangle them with their own entrails.
(a) Most of us share our dwelling space with others who would not be happy if we wanted to check our email halfway through the latest episode of whatever it is people watch on TV nowadays.
(b) The resolution of TVs is shit compared to a monitor and I can think of few things worse than trying to check my email on one.
(c) TVs tend to sit in central positions in shared rooms, computers tend to sit out of the way where they don't annoy people. One tends to have a straight-backed chair in front of it, the other tends to be faced by a sofa/comfy chair/futon. These are not interchangeable sitings.
I know I don't always think before I type, but then I'm not paid for my opinions on the future of home technology. It shouldn't be too much to expect that the people that are, do.
(a) Most of us share our dwelling space with others who would not be happy if we wanted to check our email halfway through the latest episode of whatever it is people watch on TV nowadays.
(b) The resolution of TVs is shit compared to a monitor and I can think of few things worse than trying to check my email on one.
(c) TVs tend to sit in central positions in shared rooms, computers tend to sit out of the way where they don't annoy people. One tends to have a straight-backed chair in front of it, the other tends to be faced by a sofa/comfy chair/futon. These are not interchangeable sitings.
I know I don't always think before I type, but then I'm not paid for my opinions on the future of home technology. It shouldn't be too much to expect that the people that are, do.
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no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 07:44 pm (UTC)...
(b) The resolution of TVs is shit compared to a monitor and I can think of few things worse than trying to check my email on one.
...
I know I don't always think before I type
... ;-)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 06:23 am (UTC)But when you go for larger screen TVs (e.g. professional projection systems, top end home cinema etc.) one of the standard devices is an interpolator which increases the number of scan lines (it's too late at night and I can't remember the proper name, but basicaly it quadruples the number of scan lines and interpolates the missing lines, so you're up into the nearly 2000 lines ...) and I've been happy enough reading email on everything from CGA onwards, so 480 lines (VGA) is reasonable enough, it's the horizontal resolution that I've been more worried about)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 05:03 am (UTC)Mild tangent
Date: 2005-02-20 08:01 pm (UTC)Re: Mild tangent
Date: 2005-02-20 08:25 pm (UTC)And I suppose that with Sky+ you could at least fast-forward the ads.
But yes. Payment supported downloading would kick ass.
Re: Mild tangent
Date: 2005-02-20 08:47 pm (UTC)You know, how some DVDS have ads at the start where the controls won't let you skip them?
Perhaps a two-tier structure, where you can pay the regular TV on demand fee to get shows with ads, and a premium rate to get them without?
Re: Mild tangent
Date: 2005-02-20 08:51 pm (UTC)Re: Mild tangent
Date: 2005-02-20 09:06 pm (UTC)I wouldn't mind ads for similar programmes, if the ads were included after the one I downloaded. It's the car adverts and beauty products tagged on to most of anything worth watching today that can fuck off.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:10 pm (UTC)Another of our friends is the same way. He doesn't bother taking up the space or money in his apartment with a television, he just uses his computer. If we want to watch television or movies as a group, we do it on his laptop. And not having a television that's on all the time motivates us to do more interactive things like playing board games and stuff when we visit him.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:35 pm (UTC)(b) The resolution of TVs is shit compared to a monitor and I can think of few things worse than trying to check my email on one.
This doesn't make logical sense.
You talk about a COMPUTER you can watch television on. -Not- a television you can do computer stuff on. I think you might want to retype some of that...
And currently TVs and computers are set up in rooms to suit their current purpose. If those purposes change, so will the set-ups of rooms.
And if you can check email on your PDA/phone etc, heck, you won't need to interrupt the film you're watching on your computer to do so...
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:39 pm (UTC)TV watching tends to be a group activity, email tends to be a solitary one. Unless you're happy having your email displayed in the middle of the living room, or all clustering around the more-private computer then I can't see how you can combine them both on the same device. And checking email on the PDA is one thing, surfing for porn something else.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:45 pm (UTC)Why couldn't you use your Future PDA in your Future Home to read email that is on your Future Media Computer while everyone else is watching a film on it?
Heck, if you were bored right now, you could set up a two-monitor desktop, and have one monitor (facing friends) be filled with a windows media player window showing the DVD in the drive that's playing, while the other half of the desktop (on the monitor only you can see) is looking at pr0n or your email.
And, if you are using your computer as a media station in a front room, why couldn't you take time out from your email to watch a film with your buddies? If I am watching a film on TV, I won't necessarily leave halfway through to surf for porn, I'll wait til the end.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:50 pm (UTC)And yes, you can watch a film with your buddies. But if you and flatmate J1 are watching a film when flatmate J2 wants to check his email then you have a problem.
The articles are generally talking about people having one display thingy which can be used to do everything you could want to do with both a PC and a TV (and sometimes a phone, picture frame, window and refridgerator) all at once. As if having one thing that does everything in one place was the ultimate aim of your household goods, instead of it sometimes being useful to have different items that functioned in different ways.
It's like the articles I was reading 5 years ago saying that films and computer games were going to merge into one, which never seemed to realise that films and games had different ways of doing things and merging them into one thing wasn't actually going to be an improvement over either.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:54 pm (UTC)Not really.
A flat with two people may well have two TVs, two computers and two stereos.
A flat in the Far Future might have two Future Media Computer Centres
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:58 pm (UTC)But at the moment I suspect we'll continue to want one viewing device in the middle of a shared public space, with lounging surfaces oriented for maximum viewage potential, and other viewing devices in private spaces, arranged such that nobody can see what your are looking at without staring directly over your shoulder and asking why, exactly, you're looking at Pokemon Porn.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:10 pm (UTC)Didn't you see Attack of The Clones?
/satire
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:36 pm (UTC)I just wish George Lucas would get someone else to write dialogue for him.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:46 pm (UTC)They filmed the first draft of the script, added effects and forgot or couldn't be bothered fixing it. The script really is the worst thing about the movie.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:54 pm (UTC)But yeah, he can't write dialogie for toffee. I want to go back to 1976 and shout "It's _student_, not _learner_" at him.
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:54 pm (UTC)It could be acting as a kind of thin client though. A lot of Bill Gates' vision for the future is about having a single central computer acting as a hub, but that doesn't mean just having a single computer.
Xboxes (which have been around for years now and have a 733Mhz cpu, a hard drive and 64mb of memory, so certainly count as computers) can already be used as media center extenders, and you'll see more of that being pushed with the next versions. Another example that hasn't taken off (so far) is something like ViewSonic's Airpanels which are really neat in principle but have been priced way too prohibitively (though I've seen them on sale for $650 less than the MSRP listed there).
Hmmm
Date: 2005-02-21 06:41 am (UTC)I can also buy rechargeable thin-client TVs where the base station plugs into the cable/satellite/VCR and I can take the rechargeable LCD monitor with me to any part of the house/garden to watch the cricket etc.
So some sort of hand held device as part of the main room setup on which you can read emails seems very possible (and yes, could be classified as a separate computer, but then so could the processing chips in my cable box, home cinema amp, projector, DVD player etc. all of which use my TV as a monitor)
In *my* house of the future, each room will have audio and video and you'll be able to contact a (house) central server to have whatever contnt you want in each room, whether it is "live" TV, DVD/Video on Demand, house surveillance or intra/internet (or video phone), or music. But you'll carry a remote with you and it will have a display screeen so you can pick the next think to play, use it as a phone handset etc.
Large screens (projectora or otherwise) aren't cheap and sharp enough for me to do my main computing on one yet (I can either have cheap or sharp, my living room projector is 1024x768 and 1000 lumens but the bulb costs etc. make it something that I don't use for general computing. For example, the bulb will last about 1500 hours. At 8 hours a day, that's six months. A new bulb is about 350 pounds. Which is about two pounds per day (which doesn't sound *that* bad when you think about it...) though compared to my 19" monitor which cost 60 quid and has lasted fine for th elast two years)
no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 08:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-20 09:35 pm (UTC)http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=47089
future shock!
Date: 2005-02-20 09:10 pm (UTC)Makes me wonder what they're going to do with that part of the bandwidth.
A.
Re: future shock!
Date: 2005-02-20 09:17 pm (UTC)Re: future shock!
Date: 2005-02-20 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-02-21 01:06 pm (UTC)