Seattle Times Brier Dudley Column: AppleTV Complicates Digitizing

Mar. 26--The TV gadget Apple introduced last week will help a lot of people connect their computers and televisions.

AppleTV will also force companies from Microsoft on down to make their living-room technology more elegant and easier to set up. But Apple's making life more complicated for those trying to figure out the best way to digify the home.

It was hard enough choosing among all the media-streaming, Internet-connecting TV gizmos promising to revolutionize our entertainment experience. Then along comes Steve Jobs with a potential category killer.

The digital-TV era is just beginning, and the entertainment center's already having more turnover than a U.S. Attorney's Office.

For perspective, I met last week with Michael Hurlston, vice president of Broadcom's home- and wireless-networking business unit.

The Irvine, Calif., company makes the tiny Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radios used in more and more devices. Its radios are inside AppleTV, enabling it to wirelessly pull music and video from a computer.

Broadcom's modules are also used in Dell laptops and Nintendo's Wii console and controllers.

Hurlston thinks the wireless, networked-entertainment phenomenon has just begun. Devices such as AppleTV are interim steps until wireless technologies appear in things like cable- and satellite-TV companies' set-top boxes.

Set-top boxes will have Wi-Fi starting in 2008, Hurlston said, using the same technology as Apple to stream content around the home.

Will Apple try an end-run around cable TV by offering video subscriptions, as well as downloads on iTunes?

Meanwhile, Microsoft's goosing the Xbox to maintain its lead in the streaming, set-top box race. The Xbox has long been able to play content stored on a PC, but it needs an adapter to do so wirelessly.

Hurlston said the Xbox 360 will get Wi-Fi, but he didn't say when. I wonder if it's in the next week or two, when Microsoft's likely to announce a new model with a bigger hard drive and HDMI connectors.

It's getting complicated. But consumer-electronics companies are trying to make it easier by developing TVs that connect directly to the Internet, in some cases without even using a computer.

New Sony TVs coming this summer will have a module that connects to the Internet through a broadband Ethernet connection.

Pioneer is already selling plasma TVs with Ethernet jacks, so you can watch content stored on a PC.

Of course, you can connect a Windows Media Center PC or a TiVo to a TV if you want to use those machines to download, store and play movies, music and TV shows.

If you wait a little longer, all those capabilities and wireless will probably be built right into the TV.

LG is already selling a line of flat-panels with built-in, 160 gigabyte digital video recorders.

TVs probably will get Wi-Fi next, based on the same 802.11n wireless standard Apple's using. "Wireless N" can carry streams of high-definition video, but it took until last month for the tech industry to get close to agreeing on the specifications.

Hurlston said it may take another year to finalize, but 95 percent of the issues were settled last month, giving manufacturers enough certainty to proceed with N products.

Maybe it's time to take a break from shopping, while the market sorts itself out. In the meantime, I think I'll try reading a book.

Brier Dudley's column appears Mondays. Reach him at 206-515-5687 or bdudley@seattletimes.com.

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