Digital Entertainment

In my previous post I talked about my trip to Best Buy on the weekend. For the first time I saw Microsoft Media Center in action. It was on a 52inch flat DLP, with surround sound, the computer was an HP Digital Entertainment Center. I was pretty impressed. It was great to have one central access to your computer, along with dvds, pictures and recorded/live tv. The resolution must have been 1280 pixels across it was great.

It seemed to work great as a computer - XP, easy to navigate with the remote keyboard, quick access to web, email, IM no problem. It would be great to work/play on this at night or on the weekends. Sitting on your couch and being able to multitask everything – convergence is here – where is AOL when all this is happening?

But then again, having a nice wireless laptop and a sweet TV is still probably better. Computer stuff is always better close up anyway, changes when it’s on a big screen and multiple people using it.

Having said that, it would be great to have a laptop with media center and use the dvd on the laptop to “broadcast” to the flat panel. This would be just like Apple’s Airport and Air Tunes expect for video that would be very cool.

A while back I was at a conference where a guy from HP was talking about the next wave for HP being the media center and the idea of digital entertainment. HP had started with digital photography and would be extending into what he called the “digital entertainment”. The concept being having all your media accessible from one system and through your flat panel, all your photos, music, home movies accessible in the living room.

Was this Carly’s vision for HP - to own digital entertainment?. HP certainly is leading the push – but it’s still early adopter. Was this her downfall? Being too early in an emerging market? We all know how long that strategy lasts…turns out she only got $45 million in severance – rough being a CEO these days.

About “digital entertainment” I certainly think it’s the future, but it will take time. The missing piece for me at the moment is that it is about storing data locally on your system. These systems have not incorporated the ability to share files across the web but things like slingmedia are changing this.

I think I need to buy a new TV soon. So now that’s a new phone and a new flat panel. Man oh man - I have to stop visiting Best Buy for a while.