The Living Room is About to Change
Entry posted by Josh ·
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Miniaturization has been a big trend over the last five years, but it isn't limited to mobile. It's impacted other areas of technology that I find much more interesting than cell phones. Previously, I wrote about the changing PC form factor, and how my current rig is a no-compromises full-size PC packed into a form factor about the size of a bread box.
I happen to have my hands on a few pieces of technology that are brand new, unreleased, or things I myself am creating. All these technologies together make the living room experience really different from anything we've seen in the past.
Before I talk about the new stuff, let's review your common living room setup. This will consist of a big-screen television, some kind of home stereo, and a game console. They were huge, heavy, and still couldn't compare to the experience of seeing a movie in the theater.
Optimization of size means that the processing volume of a device decreases and the interface elements become larger, or stay the same size. My PC today has a smaller volume than ten years ago, but my big 27" monitor provides a larger visual interface. This is the evolution of devices. Based on this rule, we should expect the same to occur in the living room. And it quietly has.
Pico Projectors
Texas Instruments has pioneered a technology called DLP. DLP stands for Digital Light Processing, and it allows the development of very small "pico" projectors. Although the technology has been around for a while, it's made big improvements in recent years. You can now purchase a mini projector that fits in the palm of your hand and can throw the equivalent of a ten foot screen (about three meters) up on a wall. So the visual interface has increased by about twelve times in size versus most HD TVs, while the actual mass and volume of the processing unit has gone down an order of magnitude or two. The resolution of this unit is 1280 x 800 which looks great with a huge picture.
Sound Bars and Players
Computerized music has brought about the rise of sound bars and mini-sound players. These have basically just been reduced to the volume of the speakers, with very little else there. Although the sound quality is not as good as a high-end system, small music players like the Bose SoundTouch give you 80% of the quality at 10% the size. You can also connect the output from a projector into the line-in jack to get big sound in a very small form factor. I'm a bit of an audiophile, but even I have to admit convenience is king.
Steam Machines
Finally, SteamOS is set to revolutionize console gaming. With form factors much smaller than current-generation console, SteamOS wins on all fronts: Performance, size, and costs are all better with Steam Machines.
Pull all these technologies together and what do you have? Big sound, a giant theater-like picture, and superior gaming performance, all in a package you can easily fit into a backpack.
Publishing to the Living Room
Finally, Leadwerks Game Launcher is about to open up the living room for content creation for the first time. You can publish your game straight from Leadwerks Game Engine on the PC, then sit down and play it on a big screen with the Steam Controller. Ever since the days of the Nintendo Entertainment System, game consoles were strictly a consumption activity, It's literally taken twenty years for the living room to open up so you can play your own games in a relaxed and casual atmosphere. A new era of creativity is upon us, and the living room is about to get a lot more interesting.
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