Intel would like you to start using their CPUs while watching TV.
No, I don’t mean watching TV on your computer, or using your TV as a substitute monitor, like WebTV. I mean while watching TV on your TV.
Let’s say you’re watching a football game. If you want to IM a friend about the last play, you could do that. If you want to see certain statistics or biographical details about the game or the players, you could go to a website and get that. Most importantly, if there’s a commercial break and some kind company explains why you need a pizza or whatever now, you can order one without making that long, exhausting reach for the cellphone or trip to the computer.
I don’t know about this, for a couple reasons. First, while I don’t doubt that some people could find some reason to use this sometimes, would enough find enough reasons to use it enough? How often do people want to be active watching TV? Yes, I can see teens and postteens IMing and social networking and Tweetering up a storm with such devices, and older folks finally finding something easier than AOL, but is those enough for this to be a success? OK, those functions probably would be the killer apps for this, but what else might make this appealing?
It seems to me you would eventually also need some interactivity between the computer software and what is happening on the TV set. Let’s say you’re watching a movie and you see an appealing actor/actress on the screen and you want to find out his/her name and more about her. Seems to me you might like to point to him/her, press a button, and find that out. Taking the concept of hypertexting to the level of moving objects sounds really cool, but how hard/expensive would it be to do, and would it be used often enough to be worth doing?
I must be honest. I’m not too qualified to judge this simply because I watch little TV; I spend my screen time in front of a computer screen. It’s the opinion of those grizzled veterans of the couch that matters here. What do you think? Intel is supposed to come out with prototypes next month at CES, but forget about that, play with the concept. How do you view this mixed marriage. What would you like to see, what can you imagine coming out of this? If you network all the time, would you do it from your TV, or am I wrong about that? Have you been wondering throughout this article, “What’s a TV?” Help me out, preferably by posting a comment below, but sending me an email is OK, too.
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