When I first announced to my wife that I was going to turn her desktop PC in the kitchen into a TV, she looked at me like I had two heads. After all, that PC was her lifeline--an e-mail-sending, Web-browsing, check-balancing workhorse that played a vital role in keeping our home running smoothly. But with our primary TV in a den downstairs, there was no place at all in the kitchen area to watch the news or a children's cartoon show.
That all changed when I dropped an ATI All-in-Wonder video card into her aging Compaq desktop PC. Just like that, Anne could fire up the TV with a click of the Windows Start button. I had just put the equivalent of a 15-inch TV in our kitchen, without consuming an extra inch of desk space.
In fact, there's a host of reasons to TV-enable PCs. Office dwellers can monitor news and financial channels, or keep an eye on sporting events and favorite programs while working late hours. College students and people in small apartments can save space by combining the TV and PC into a single unit. And harried home owners like us can put a TV where there really wasn't a place for one.
In fact, more and more people are gong to the opposite extreme, replacing dedicated consumer electronics--such as DVD players--with video-savvy PCs called Home Theater PCs. These systems pack everything you need to display stunning DVD-based video and 5.1 digital surround sound in a home-theater environment. Perhaps more importantly, they can be incredibly flexible, allowing you to access MP3 music collections, DVD-based video, and hard disk-based videos and photos--all from a convenient on-screen interface.
There are, of course, issues. Powerful PCs tend to be very noisy, thanks to the fans needed to cool them. The constant buzz can be a real distraction, especially during quiet scenes. In addition, HTPCs can be difficult to set up, requiring a lot of tough software and hardware choices before you get down to the challenge of wiring everything together.
So is a TV-savvy system right for you? If you don't mind inviting a little extra complexity into your life, absolutely. Once you get the TV signal streaming through your PC, the possibilities are endless. You can use software to ship that programming over your local area network. You can remotely schedule recording. And you can record video directly to a hard disk for further editing or hands-on review. Now that's utility.
Michael Desmond
