Although conventional wisdom would have us believe that there are still plenty of people out there who would prefer to keep their TVs separate from their computers, there can be no denying that there has been a significant blending of TV and PC technologies over the past decade. While cable was once king in the past in regards to television viewing, it would seem that cable TV and even network TV could one day be all but replaced with Internet ready TVs that function more like computers than anything else. Traditional television doesn’t look to be going anywhere anytime soon, but all one has to do is take a look at what has been done with both computers and televisions to see that there one day won’t be much of a difference between them.
It’s not exactly clear when the line between PCs and televisions truly became blurred, but perhaps the merging began with the advent of DVDs. DVDs were very similar to the CD-ROM drives that had been in computers for years, and these even later became DVD-ROM drives that weren’t all that different from DVD players that are hooked to TVs. Users could even watch movies with their DVD-ROMs, meaning that there was little difference between a TV with a DVD player and a computer with a DVD-ROM. Things started to get even more complicated when DVR became popular. This technology allowed viewers to record their favorite shows and store them on a hard drive as opposed to a VHS tape that would eventually wear out. DVR is very easy to program, and shows can be stored indefinitely. Even more recently, companies such as Netflix have been able to stream movies onto a TV or a computer via a wireless connection at the push of a button. Companies such as direct star tv feature such services as regular parts of their service packages. Meanwhile, websites such as YouTube and Hulu allow users to watch practically anything they wish. For some people, this has allowed computers to all but replace television.
It will be interesting to see how the lines become blurred between PCs and television as time goes on. We may see Internet ready TVs become commonplace in the future, while traditional network and cable television become all but obsolete.
