Blurring the lines between the screens

By Brandy McDonnell

Published: April 20, 2008

Shortly after Brad Hendrix buys a new DVD, the disc goes into storage.

"I may that evening when I buy a DVD ... I may just stick it in the DVD player. But sometime that week, it's going to get ripped, and it's going to be on file. And I'm going to put away the DVD in the attic and never see it again,” Hendrix said.

Once he converts a movie to a computer file, the Norman resident just picks a screen where he wants to watch it, whether a television set at home or his laptop or iPod on the go.

"More and more people my generation and below, there isn't a difference: screen to screen to screen more and more,” the 26-year-old said.

"My personal opinion is that we're coming toward the phasing out of optical drives such as CD players, DVD players, Blu-ray.”

For the information technology professional, those devices are virtually obsolete. While Hendrix does most of his movie viewing on his laptop — "I've even got a remote for my laptop. It's that level of nerdiness,” he said with a laugh — he uses the same computer files to watch films on a television set.

At home, he connects the television in his bedroom to his laptop, giving him instant access to his movie collection.

When he chooses to watch something on the living room television, he either hooks up his iPod or uses a media extender such as his Nintendo Wii or Xbox 360 — using a network connection — to play a movie file on the larger television screen.

"It's becoming to where it's more of a monitor anyway.

"Everybody will have their own big screen, but instead of having a computer in their own room or having a computer to take with them, you're looking at more the unification of the two,” he said.

Hendrix may be a self- described "uber-nerd,” but he isn't the only one who believes that the line between computer and television screens will become increasingly blurred.

Steve Koenig, senior analyst with the Consumer Electronics Association, predicts that the definition of the computer screen is going to change.

"I don't think that the current definition is really going to apply in the near-term future as we know it today. Any screen in the house virtually could be a computer screen if you're framing that definition in the type of content that it accesses,” he said.

Russell Kim, president/owner of Audio Dimensions, thinks that for now, televisions will stay the focus of the living room — and the home entertainment center — for most people.

"It's important to point out that everything that's in the consumer electronics world, including TVs, is in fact a computer. Now, the only difference is that it's not an open platform, meaning it cannot accept new software like a personal PC can,” he said.

"The word ‘computer' is getting fuzzy.”

Kim said that Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard have tried twice to introduce PC-driven media centers and failed, mostly because the customers preferred simpler interfaces, especially using a remote control rather than a mouse to control their entertainment systems.

"Though it may be one professional's opinion, I think that right now I would say that PC is not taking over the living room. It's still relegated to the study for the foreseeable future, like as in the next, say, three to five years, which in our industry is a millennium,” said Kim, a member of the Home Theater Specialists of America trade group.

But Koenig said consumer research is starting to show that people want to browse the Internet, instant message and even send e-mail from their home televisions.

It is part of a "mega-trend” of people wanting to stay constantly connected and able to continually access their content.

For Hendrix, that means carrying a 160-gig iPod that holds all his music, many of his movies and every episode of "Battlestar Galactica.” It means skipping the DVDs when possible and downloading movies from iTunes.

Though he doesn't expect computers and televisions to become completely integrated overnight, it means seeing progress in that direction.

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