Last week saw an explosion of new product introductions in the area of home networking and two-way connectivity between the personal computer and the TV set. At CES, Sony Electronics, Sling Media, Hewlett-Packard, NetGear, SanDisk and others showed new devices that championed the TV-PC marriage.
At the Macworld conference in San Francisco, Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced Apple TV, a 40GB set-top box that will be in stores next month. Apple TV displays the computer user’s iTunes library, including movies, TV shows, music, podcasts and personal photos, on a TV.
The reason for the new devices is simple: Much of the most popular new video content is coming not from TV broadcasting, but from the Internet. This new category of consumer electronics allows Web-based video to be watched and merged into the traditional living room TV display.
