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Comment by aditya | Hacker News Reader

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aditya·

People may still watch things they call "TV shows," but they'll watch them mostly on computers.

Is that really true? Source?

(Uhh. I have no idea how to quote things correctly. :)

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Yes, I think it's clearly true. However, I don't think pg means people will be sitting at their desks to watch shows or movies. In many cases watching TV is a communal activity. People will just start getting media boxes or otherwise hooking their computers to the TV screen, as many geeks do today.

The reason why doing this isn't more common is because regular folk don't know where to get the content from. Bittorrent is far from mainstream.

Frankly, they're doing it now. As it is, the cable/satellite box is a computer. IPTV makes the packets conform to what we think of as "internet traffic". And there's OTA television to mobile phones in Japan. Boxee is nothing more than a purpose-specific browser.

Your tv may already be a computer, as well. Recent Samsungs run embedded linux, for example.

Hmm... by computer I was assuming pg meant general purpose devices connected to the Internet, but I see how that line is blurring since the backbone for everything is the Internet as opposed to a proprietary cable network.

(Please forgive the plug, but I think it's relevant to this discussion.)

We recently announced NthCode Player, an embedded Linux-based software product electronics companies can embed in their DVD players, TVs, etc. to connect them to home networks and the Internet.

It's a bit rough, but we're making fast progress. There's a Youtube video up, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DHu_nEy6Ew

Check it out and drop us a line.

Paul is clairvoyant and has a crystal ball, so YES, definitely.

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