{"id":135,"date":"2009-01-07T08:48:37","date_gmt":"2009-01-07T12:48:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/2009\/01\/07\/home-theater-pc-getting-close\/"},"modified":"2009-01-07T08:48:37","modified_gmt":"2009-01-07T12:48:37","slug":"home-theater-pc-getting-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/home-theater-pc-getting-close\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Home Theater PC&#8221; &#8212; getting close!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.payne.org\/2008\/03\/27\/2008-is-the-year-of-ip-video-crossover\/\">written before<\/a> about how the future of TV is IP-delivered.\u00a0\u00a0 As more video comes on-line, cable packages will get unplugged just like analog phone lines.\u00a0  It&#8217;s no longer &#8220;if&#8221;, but &#8220;when&#8221;, and 2009 is looking like a good year.<\/p>\n<p>A few weeks ago, I finally set up a &#8220;real&#8221; computer for our main TV:\u00a0 a dedicated Mac Mini, wireless keyboard &amp; mouse, and video camera, all hooked into a large LCD flat panel.\u00a0 It&#8217;s great for family video conferences, viewing photos and videos, and watching Internet content (e.g. Hulu, TV networks, Comedy Central, etc.)<\/p>\n<p>The missing component is software: \u00a0 a classic desktop UI with a mouse and keyboard works, but isn&#8217;t ideal for a living room.\u00a0 On the Mac, for example, the screen fonts are too small and the only way to make them larger (I can find) is to lower the screen resolution, which defeats the purpose of a high resolution display.<\/p>\n<p>I really want a UI optimized for &#8220;living room apps&#8221; instead of &#8220;desktop apps&#8221;.\u00a0 I want to use a single <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Wii_Remote\">Wiimote-like<\/a> pointing device to navigate, with optional use of a keyboard and mouse.<\/p>\n<p>Apple&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Front_Row_(software)\">FrontRow<\/a> has a clean design, but is too limited and isn&#8217;t 3rd party expandable.\u00a0 I&#8217;m testing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boxee.tv\/\">Boxee<\/a>, which comes very close to ideal but still has rough edges.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s all coming together!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve written before about how the future of TV is IP-delivered.\u00a0\u00a0 As more video comes on-line, cable packages will get unplugged just like analog phone lines.\u00a0 It&#8217;s no longer &#8220;if&#8221;, but &#8220;when&#8221;, and 2009 is looking like a good year. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/home-theater-pc-getting-close\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ramblings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/payne.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}