Where's my convergence? (You promised!)

A few years ago, “convergence” raged as the in-vogue phrase describing the collision of all of our new digital media, converted from its analog form, onto a single computer readable platform. Video, music, photos - all going digital - were marching together first toward the computer, and then, like (insert your favorite military hero analogy here), taking the living room by storm as the last beach head of digital acceptance. Somewhere along the way, though, it seems they were turned back. What happened?
Clearly digital photography has replaced film for everyone – professional and amateur alike. Sub-$1000 widescreen HDTVs, inexpensive surround-sound systems, and Blue Ray players are rapidly making the living room the viewing place of choice for movies. (Personally I’m glad to leave the gum-seats, half-gallon “medium” sodas, and $12 popcorn behind.) Digital music, the original canary in the coal mine of convergence, is now in its second digital generation. The first generation - the CD - is fading to the point that Apple announced more than half of all the music sold this year on iTunes will never have been available on a CD. That’s amazing. Meanwhile, Hulu is breaking viewership records as one of the only legitimate locations to view TV on demand over the web, and YouTube continues to confound by not only surviving, but thriving - despite having no truly identifiable business model. And where do we watch and listen to all this amazing digital media? On a computer screen. Maybe an ipod.
It’s bizarre really, and you've no doubt witnessed seen it. Think of how many folks you know have a wireless network, gigs of digital photos, a huge MP3 collection and an amazing HDTV/Home Theatre setup. Now think of how many of them can actually bring up pictures from their vacation easily onto that same setup? Or use that TV to find a song and play it through that great stereo system. Why is it that our digital photos and mp3s never quite make it to our new “home theaters”? (and hooking up an ipod with a headphone adapter doesn’t count.) How many people do you know have a 5 inch digital picture frame somewhere in their living room, but can’t simply view their digital picture collection or videos on their 50 inch plasma?
I’m convinced there’s still huge market opportunity here, and I don’t want to leave it to the cable company to build into their box and then charge us $9 a month for it. The lack of a device for this isn’t for lack of effort, but perhaps of vision. Over the years there have been plenty of entries into the “media hub” space. Microsoft’s media center, originally a separate version of Windows XP, adopted the “tower PC in the living room” approach and never really took off. It’s now built into Vista and Windows 7, but only records TV with the right hardware. And again, who wants a PC next to the TV? The Xbox 360 performs reasonably as a “media center extender” – but it implies a media center PC somewhere ELSE in the house, and finding items in a large music or photo collection is painfully slow. Plus the 360’s noise, lack of a Blue Ray drive, and gamebox look just don’t fit the media room.
Roku, Linksys, HP and others promised to centralize all your media access into one place, yet none truly broke out. Some interesting alternatives have grown out of the open source and XBox hacking community as options like Boxee and the XBMC (Xbox media center) – now run a fairly impressively on Windows, Linux, and Mac. But again, we’re back to the pc-in-the-living room problem. Of all, AppleTV seemed to have the most promise, and I’m actually surprised hasn’t gained more popularity. But I also suspect that its moderate acceptance, even among the Apple fanbase, is largely due to the painfully closed design of the AppleTv. Hacking AppleTV to let it play something that wasn’t purchased on iTunes has launched legions of websites, and again, Boxee is a stand-out choice here, but it still needs to be installed via an unsupported hack. And there’s no guarantee Apple won’t turn if off for spite.
So what IS the answer? Something different - forget what we already know. The interface CAN'T be a keyboard and bunch of nested folders. It's got to be simple, quick, and painfully easy to use.
Back in 2001 there was a device that, I think, got it - at least for the time: The Turtlebeach Audiotron. Designed not as a computer or hub, but as a piece of home audio equipment, this network-based music player actually LOOKED and ACTED like something that was supposed to be in the living room. The device it could play just about any format, as well as stream music from internet radio. Unlike most of its competitors (then and now) it searched the home network for music resident on any networked PC’s and aggregated them into a its own “virtual” library list, which it kept internally. This key differentiator speeds scrolling large artist lists and search immensely. The front mounted jog-shuttle wheel made music selection as quick and easy as an ipod is today (before the ipod by the way). This cached library approach and wheel interface gave it a huge performance advantage over most of the media-hubs and media-extenders I've tried, and didn't require you to move your music. The tron was an audio-only device so, like other stereo components, it displayed songs and titles on it’s lcd display, not the TV. It also contained an internal web server that allowed the device to be configured and controlled remotely from any browser – the equivalent of the “play to” function Microsoft just introduced into windows 7. Finally while not “open source”, it was at least extensible, and had a published programming interface, which let 3rd parties extend it with add-on functionality – further enhancing its value.
What made it work? It simply knew what it was.. and wasn’t. It wasn't trying to be a PC-on-a-tv. It “got” the idea that we need to start from the living room and embrace the computer, not the other way round. A quick, simple interface that was a breeze to use. While it didn’t output photos or cover art to a tv, that seemed to be a simple clear direction for it's “next generation”. It was also, critically, somewhat extensible by 3rd parties. It had that subtle level of “explorability” which made it quickly usable out of the box, but an underlying base that was more robust. Sadly the company never produced that follow-up, and the original – still working great – still sits in my stereo rack. What a shame.
So where is this mythical converged device? How hard could it be? And more importantly, why don’t people seem to naturally yearn for the ability to view their digital photos on something larger than a 4 inch screen? Where is that simple box, that fits right above the DVD player (or for that matter, built INSIDE the TV or DVD player), that connects wirelessly and uses a jog-shuttle remote to scroll through menus, artists, and pictures effortlessly, that lets me play the song lists and genres I’ve set up in any music software on any of my home’s PC’s, that lets me bring up hulu and Youtube and watch them there, that either records tv shows, or pulls them automatically on demand from the cable company? That displays my pictures and others from the web in high-resolution, quickly, cleverly, creatively, that connects with a simple hdmi connector and costs $99?
Now THAT’S worth waiting in line for. (ok, not really). But, please, somebody, just go build it.. .don’t give the cable company something else to charge us for.