HTPC - HD1080i on convergence

- everywhere you look in the geekzone of video the term HTPC seems to crop up, it means Home Theater Personal Computing.

really? you say what? We have been plugging video cards into HD TV and Widescreen whatnot for over 4 years now, and frankly, i do not see yet another need for yet another term, but so be it. I am waiting for the HDPC next ... right. Meet the paperless virtual HD magazine.




At HD1080i-labs here we have been noodling with some higher definition web content, in one case its a magazine that "authors" can insert choices for pages and collaborate.

A public version is here at http://ctngreen.com/mag/ and http://www.ctnluxe.com/mag where real virtual magazine stying and interactive elements testing is happening right now.

( It works on 1280, 1366, 1680 and 1920 screen resolutions ) Requires a mouse, remote control buttons left - right or basically your laptop touchpad. The Remote control arrow keys on some Media Centers turn the page also.

Clicking into a page may offer a click or launch a decent sized video.

My personal take on all this is that the personal computing engine should connect to the big screen and the web, and allow for family time in a way that is usually not done on a PC. From what i see the PC is a one-on-one device, we have 7 here and from the outside looking in it would appear that there are rooms full of zombies staring into screens and connecting with people that are not in the room with them. Its good in that everyones tastes are enough different that they are infact rapidly consuming content in thier own channel so to speak. Not so good in that you have to call them on thier cell or IM them to get attention, standing behind them gets you ignored. There is more going on when everyone is interacting with the same thing on the big screens, be it video games or movies or whatever.

HD1080i will have a portal soon with focus group membership for convergence experiments, so if you have a widescreen HD system, save this page, we will hook that up in a bit.