Tom's Hardware > All Reviews > Special > Miscellaneous > CeBIT 2005: Is PC Entertainment (Finally) Ready for the Living Room?

CeBIT 2005: Is PC Entertainment (Finally) Ready for the Living Room?

06:00 - Tuesday 15 March 2005 by THG Reporting Team

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Once upon a time before 2000, office applications, games and surfing the Web represented exciting computer applications. Of course, the PC experience also involved sitting at a desk by yourself. Way off in the living room was home entertainment - TV, video and music. Photography was essentially independent, with photo labs developing your prints.

But then home entertainment activities and photography began to use digital media. And the PC became, de facto, a part of those activities. And meanwhile digital photography, music and video took on a popularity that nobody had foreseen. And so, little by little, the more entertainment-oriented activities began moving from the PC to the home entertainment center.

However, the computer so far hasn't done a great job at handling entertainment applications previously reserved for the living room. And so home-entertainment equipment vendors have tried to adapt and fill the gap.

DVD players can show photo CDs. TV sets can be used for slide shows. Audio equipment can read MP3 music files. But all these examples are only partial solutions. The reality is simple: Consumers have massively adopted digital content, while the vendors have not been capable of providing complete solutions that are really suitable.

What Do We Really Want?

On the one hand, we still want our PCs, to which we connect our camera and camcorder to offload photos and video. The PC is linked to the Web to download other content (movies, music, etc.) Then, it would be good if it could serve as the storage center for all audio and video content. Then we need to be able to send all this content to the living room for viewing/listening under the best possible conditions. TVs, video projectors, stereos and home theater setups are perfect for this. For TV, the best solution is to receive content on the PC so it can be recorded and stored while it's being watched in the living room. But the problem arises in the exchange between the PC and the viewing/listening equipment.