The Difference Between TVs and PCs

Michael Gartenberg | January 08, 2007, 11:53 AM

Dave Winer says "No reason to think of your TV set as anything other than a PC.". Hmmm. not sure I agree. Of course it all depends on your definition of a TV. Certainly the device in my home bears only some familial relation to the TV that my father would have referred to. And it's important to differentiate the TV from the other high resolution screens in my home.

For most folks, a TV today would correctly be defined as the largets (and probably highest resolution) screen within the home used to passivly consume content. PCs on the other hand are inherintly interactive by nature. That's the essential difference between the two foot PC expereince and the ten foot TV eperience. It's not to say that PCs can't be connected to TVs. I of course have PCs connected to "TV" screens in my home but they function primarlily to deliver passive entertainment experiences not interactive creative ones. While it's possible to deliver a ten foot UI on a PC, it still hasn't been done well (for those of us that don't write our own software). Mice and keyboards don't work too well from ten feet away in an easy chair. Likewise, the PC UI which works quite well at two feet is hard to work with across the room.

What we will see is tighter integration between these two diverse platforms and allowing for contextual flow between them as needed. But that's another post.