The Best Media Center is Not Only A Technical Challenge
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For most people the term media center does not necessarily refer to a computer powered entertainment hub, but a busy news room where reporters edit and broadcast daily news. Home Theater PC (HTPC) or Media Center PC is often viewed as a powerful device capable of managing a variety of digital content in the living room or around the home. Advertisements and other marketing messages from technology companies have made many people thinking that buying a device like Apple TV, Xbox 360 or PS3 is the solution to turn their living room into the digital age, but they miss the other important dimensions that together contribute to their media experience.
According to my experience, today’s discussion in the media is too much focused around the Play aspect (media players, media centers, etc.), but to make it integral part of your living room, you need to go beyond the “Play” dimension. These other dimensions of your media experience contribute all together how user friendly and pleasant you feel using your media center. To my mind, these dimensions can be grouped into the following 5 categories: Connect, Play, Entertain, Control and Share.
- Connect: how to connect your devices together and create a home network to connect to the internet.
- Play: how to play your media using a computer, media player or other device
- Entertain: which software you use to show your photos, movies, etc.
- Control: how to control your devices from your sofa
- Share: how to store your media files so that they are available for different devices or for friends over the internet
The challenge is not how to connect the TV to the Internet. That technology already exists. The challenge is how to combine the media experiences without compromising them. Combining these experiences is more than simply putting components together. We should remember that we are talking about the living room, the center of the home. It is a cultural change to bring the TV into the Internet era rather than a technical challenge. For example, you might be used to control your TV with a remote control rather than mouse and keyboard. Or you feel intimidated about all the different cables and devices that you need to bring to the living room. Or you are watching the TV much further away on your sofa compared to your desktop monitor or laptop, which makes viewing the text sometimes too challenging.
As there are several complicated matters to take into account when building your digital living room, most people just find it too difficult or intimidating to get started so they rather stick with their old dvd-players and digital tv-boxes. To my mind, turning your living room into the digital age is not really a technical challenge, but a cultural and behavioral change. Suddenly, you find yourself controlling your TV with a mouse in your hand rather than the good old remote control. It will take a lot of convincing and selling before your whole family is fully converted to use a home theater PC as the media center of the living room, but once you get devices play well together and people familiar with it, there is no going back. Afterwards, you wonder why didn’t you make this transition earlier. As I have walked the same path many times, you might find it useful to read from my experiences to discover shortcuts how to simplify your media experience without putting too much time or efforts on it.