jr conlin's ink stained banana

Today, i ended the media hub experiment.

i pulled the living room PC out of the entertainment center, and reformatted it with Kubuntu. There's a few reasons for this, but ultimately it boiled down to one big one. i wasn't using it.

See, the original idea was that having a PC in the living room would allow me to do things i was currently unable to do. Things like watch movies, see pictures and listen to music. Granted, it did do that, but in the end, so did my laptop, and that's where things started to fall apart.

What i've found is i really don't need a dedicated box, or more appropriately, a less dedicated box. Like i mentioned earlier, my living room already has a suite of appliances that pretty much do what i need. i don't need a box that tries really hard to be something that already works exceptionally well.

When the folks that promote these sorts of things talk about them, they talk about building for the 10' screen (since that's about how far most folks sit from the TV). Having a dedicated computer wired up to the TV was ultimately a broken experience. A TV (even a HD one, doesn't have the sort of resolution that a 27" monitor does. For that matter, a 27" monitor isn't really all that legible from 10' away either, a remote makes a lousy keyboard (as does a keyboard make a lousy remote) and so anything you see has to be seriously customized.

That's one of the really bad parts. You see, with things being seriously customized, behaviors and functions have to be sacrificed, what was once on a single screen now has to be divided up onto several dozen because it simply doesn't fit otherwise. It really is so much easier to simply drag out the nice, 17" laptop and run some photo gallery at full screen for a bit. (Heck get a mouse that can do long distance and you can even sit at the other end of the table.)

That's great, except there's less and less reasons to have your computer console 10' away from you. Smaller, more useful devices are becoming more the norm. Sure, i've got an Archos, but honestly, an iPod is just as good for showing video. Plus (unlike some hulking box permanently wired into my living room) those devices are cheaper and more portable. For a few bucks, i can get cables to plug said device into the TV and i'm back at showing videos on my TV. Yeah, getting up off the couch to pick a new movie is a pain, but Americans need more exercise anyway. Plus, as i demonstrated to myself last night, i sat with the Archos on the wireless net surfing around while Anne Marie watched TV. i had a separate screen that didn't interfere with what she wanted to see, and was able to look up TV listings for a show we both wanted to watch later.

That really was the final straw for me and the moment the lightbulb went off. i'm exceptionally geeky and wanted to make this work, yet it didn't. It certainly didn't work for Anne Marie. If it wasn't really working for me, why would any of my non-geek friends, relatives or relations be bothered with this?

The box is going up for sale tomorrow at work. i'm figuring maybe $250 for it since it's still in good shape (Heck, "hardly used" seems appropriate.) and possibly someone else might find it far more interesting to play with than i did.

Kinda sad, but in many respects, the most interesting experiments are the ones that don't turn out the way you expect.