The past year, 2002, has seen a number of columns, articles and speeches concerning the future development of the PC and home entertainment. Bill Gates introduced a device called "Mira", that has subsequently been renamed "smart display". David Coursey, Executive Editor, Anchor Desk, has written a number of columns on the subject. And, I'm certain that there have been many others that I have missed.

Equipment manufacturers have made a few attempts at product introductions, without much success. The latest attempt by Hewlett Packard and Microsoft, a device called "Media Center PC" seems to be getting good reviews; however, a little time is required before final judgment.

I had been aware that it was possible to buy video cards with TV tuners, but hadn't spent much time considering that option until early in June. One of the respondents to a Coursey column had written about his experiences "building his PC-TV". I regret not making a note of the individuals name, but because of that response, I decided to build my own PC-TV with special concern for how my PDMSB software might fit.

The first step required the acquisition of one of those new HDTV sets. With a little help from my son, I settled on a model from RCA that supposedly contains the largest direct view picture tube ever made. It had a 16 x 9 screen, while most of the competitive models had 4 x 3 screens. I guess that larger HDTVs use projectors as opposed to the direct view picture tube; however, the 38 inch diagonal on this set is plenty large enough for me. Normal viewing is a 31 inch diagonal, 4 x 3 area in the center of the tube, with a gray bar on each side.

The next step required the acquisition of a new PC. My local CompUSA store happened to have several computer cases with power supplies and motherboards installed. Adding a 1.6 gig Pentium 4, 256 meg of memory, a 60 gig hard drive, a floppy drive and an ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500DV was quite easy.

BTW, I am purposely being vague about the details since I don't want to dig up the invoices. Besides there is a web site devoted to building your own PC-TV. The gentleman's name is Ruel Hernandez and he covers all kinds of details on his web site, http://ruel.net/pc/tv/tv.tuner.htm.

Now, I imagine that most people with these new TV sets will add a VCR, maybe a DVD player, a game box and maybe a cable/satelite tuner, to say nothing about one of those new Personal Video Recorders. That sounds like a pretty well equipped TV in my book - why would anyone want to add a PC??

Well, if you have seen anything that approximates the above setup, you will have seen an awful lot of remote controls. Industry efforts to consolidate remotes has helped a little - but, let's back up a bit and take a look at some basics.

When we watch TV, we are viewing a stream of data. While some of that data is analog now, it will all be digital in the future. When we record that stream of data to our VCR or PVR, we are actually creating a file that contains the stored data. This file can then be "played" to yield a recreation of the original stream of data. Obviously, I have over simplified, but the point is - manipulation of digital data is the primary purpose of a computer. The future of home entertainment will most likely include some type of computer. The specifics have yet to be decided.

And that's where you come in!!

You, have the power to help decide the future. If you buy an HP Media PC, you will have cast your vote for the Bill Gates/Microsoft approach. OTOH, you can build your own and install my software and you will be casting your vote for a considerably different approach. How different?? Well, let me continue this background description and I think that you will see some of the differences.

Allowing for the fact that television comes into your home as a stream of data and that you may or may not save some of that stream as a file, the experience of home entertainment boils down to one of collecting files. In addition to needing an ability to play/display a file/stream, we need the ability to store, retrieve, copy, index, etc, etc, these files. Now you can take the short sighted Microsoft approach and use the O/S directory structure to perform some of these functions, ala Windows XP. OTOH, you can install my PDMSB software and you will be performing these functions with a specially designed database. You will see the value of a database when you have accumulated enough files to fill your hard drive. When you copy them to a CD/DVD you will still have access to them through your database, while the XP approach is another story. I guess that Mr. Gates expects you to purchase a new copy of that old favorite song after you have removed it from your HD.

The next difference concerns the Operating System. The Media Center approach requires that you use Windows XP. Since most of the multimedia technology for XP is included in DirectX 8.1, it is possible to build "The Ultimate TV" without going to Windows XP. I test my software on Windows 98SE, Windows 2000 Pro, as well as Windows XP. Since I object to product activation, I am concentrating on Windows 2000 Pro. Obviously, I have no way of guaranteeing continued support from Microsoft on 2000, other than to say that if you have a copy, and it works, why change?? BTW, while PDMSB will run on Windows 98, I can't recommend 98 because I couldn't get it to interface with the HDTV. I failed to find an adjustment that would yield a normal picture, the 4 x 3 kind. Hopefully, one of you may have a chance to investigate this further.

Now, the third difference concerns, to use David Coursey's terms, the 2-foot and the 10-foot user interfaces. Two-foot for the computer screen and 10-foot for the TV screen. The answer, of course, requires two monitors and two video cards, a fairly standard setup for us programmers. This important distinction requires software designed to support two monitors, separating the computer information from the TV info.

I am using an ATI ALL-IN-WONDER RADEON 8500 DV, in my AGP slot as my primary video card. This card has S-Video, Composite and Component outputs, in addition to that necessary to feed a computer monitor. I found it best to use the Component output to connect to the HDTV, as the quality of picture is much better than the other outputs.

I have an ATI RADEON 7000 in a PCI slot, feeding a normal CRT as my secondary video card. With version 3.12 of PDMSB running and multi-monitor support turned on, I get all the computer stuff on my CRT and all the video, audio, photos, DVDs, etc, on the HDTV. Neat!!

So, let's move to the next step. Who wants to sit at the computer screen to control the television?? The answer is simple, in fact, I believe that is why Bill Gates introduced Mira, now Smart Display. Of course it isn't quite ready yet, which explains some unasked questions about Media Center PC. Without more information about smart display, I don't know how well it will do the job, so I've been working with my laptop. A simple little remote PC type program will allow the laptop to control the whole thing. I found a neat little program, free to try, $30.00 to buy, that would be ideal, except for one thing. It's called "Incredisoft Remote PC 3.0" and is available from Incredisoft, Inc., support@incredisoft.com.

The remote pc software must be able to capture the secondary monitor's view of the PC desktop. The people at Incredisoft have informed me that this capability can be added, but they won't get to it till the first half of next year. Hopefully, seeing this write-up, combined with some pressure from you, the users, might convince Incredisoft to expedite the addition.

(to be continued - soon)