Occasional Observations

I've been thinking about buying a living room PC for more than four years - every time I get close, something gets in the way. Originally I wanted a model with a small display panel built into the front, and I saw a few interesting prototypes at CeBIT 2006, but never followed up.

Since then, living room PCs have all but died out - in favor of home storage servers. My first attempt at this was a bit of a disaster, and my Netgear SC101 "toaster" is a nice NAS backup device but doesn't work with x64 architecture, which is disappointing. So far I'm still missing the media center extender that will bridge the gap from IT to TV ... and because we're remodelling at home I'm holding back, as we also soon need to upgrade our analog satellite TV system in favor of something a bit more up-to-date.

This weekend I did take a small step, though - moving my 500-or-so CDs out of the living room and into the basement. This means that if I want to listen to a CD in the living room, I need to go downstairs and dig one out - but since I'm more likely to reach for my iPod, this is a minor inconvenience.

Labels: tech