From TNPC issue #4.01...

Computers vs. Consumer Electronics

by T.J. Lee
January 11, 2001

Lots of announcements and debuts at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week. It seems that the division between computers and computer-powered consumer electronics is blurring and I thought I'd take a quick look at some of the cross-over technologies.

First came Sony's PlayStation 2. The PlayStation 2 hit the streets in time for the Christmas holiday shopping season and sold out at the places lucky enough to stock them. But in its first incarnation the PlayStation 2 is a straightforward game console that you hook up to your television for playing video games. Not a threat to the venerable PC. Right?

Well, consider that the PlayStation 2 is powered by a 300MHz 128- bit processor, comes with 32MB of system RAM, 4MB of graphics RAM, that you can now get a 56kbps modem add-on, and that a hard drive option is planned and will be available later this year. Starting to definitely sound more computer-like. Plus the PlayStation 2 will double as a DVD player for watching DVD movies on your television.

Microsoft is trying to become a player in the game console market with its new Xbox, which it unveiled but which won't ship until late this year. The Xbox specs call for a 733MHz Pentium III processor, 64MB of system and graphics memory, and a 100Mbps Ethernet connection built in.

Toshiba debuted their new NUON DVD player at CES and I found it to be one of the most interesting of the new product announcements I came across this week. NUON is a chip set technology developed by VM Labs Inc. of Mountain View, California, and gives a DVD player some nifty new potential. Consider that the Toshiba NUON DVD sports ports for adding game controllers so you can play DVD based video games. It also lets movie makers program a plethora of features into a movie DVD. 16X zoom with easy panning, multi-picture strobe, extremely smooth forward and reverse, and more become possible (although DVD content providers have to take advantage of these features). And of course there's an add-on planned that will let you surf the Web using the DVD player and your television.

While I don't consider any of these a replacement for a PC they do present a problem for those of you out there thinking of getting your first DVD player. Should you go for a straight movie-only player or a player with more future potential like a NUON-enhanced DVD player? If you like games a PlayStation 2 doubles as both a game console and a DVD player. And the Xbox is still looming on the horizon...

You can reach T.J. Lee at:
mailto:tj_lee@TheNakedPC.com

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