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TELEVISION AND PC COMBINED IN ONE, A CONSUMER BOON OR BOONDOGGLE?
On March 21, Gateway 2000 in North Sioux City, S.D., and
NetTV Inc. of San Rafael, Calif. (story far right) introduced big screen
television combined with a Pentium-based PC. Both are betting that consumers
will want to browse the Internet as a family unit. The product drew
praise and condemnation from market analyst.
Megan Robertson, a technology analyst at Smith Barney, said, “the
device is likely to complement the PC in the home ... (but) we think
it is likely that Destination could replace the television.” Duncan
Davidson, managing partner of Gemini-McKenna, a high-tech consulting
firm says the device is slow and has poor graphics quality.
The Gateway offering is the $4,600 Destination big screen PC. The NetTV
product, WorldVision, sells for slightly less, starting at $2,995. Both
companies hope upscale consumers currently purchasing big screen home
theatre TVs buy their offerings because of the additional PC (see story
at right).
However, it appears that instead of synergy from a combination of television
and PC, what the consumer is getting is a poor compromise for an expensive
PC. Instead of a high resolution PC display the user gets a low-resolution
big screen television monitor that is well suited for displaying video
but poor for high resolution graphics and text.
What may save both companies is the availability of high speed cable
modems that promise to provide users a high bandwidth pipe to the Internet.
Now, users with these systems will be able to access audio and video
content now starting to appear on some sites. In fact, such a configuration
could be the first widespread use of video on demand.
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