BengaBenga said:
Good read but I don't agree:
As far as I know almost everyone has a PC and yet CD-players, DVD-players, consoles etc. are being sold. PC's will never fully take over consumer electronics functions because
1. some people want quality (like a good CD/Amplifier/Vinylplayer combination), PC's don't provide this by nature, since everything is digital and most consumer electronic functions are not not a core function of a PC without extra expences. (Good souncards are expensive for example and still don't match real amplifiers/speaker combination). Everything that can be done in hardware can be done in software. It is only a matter of time really. I seriously doubt that a PC can play Vinyl ever. Plus it's not that a lot of thing can't be done by PC's, it's that not many will tweak their PC's to match the quality they can have with single components like amplifiers, even if they will become available and competitive in prive for PC's. Please show me the PC hardware that simulates a good amplifier, is affordable and looks nice in your home.
2. Most people see their PC as a WORK station, used for documents/internet, people don't want to use there computer for everything.
That would be why sales of top-end gaming video cards have never been higher, Windows Home Server for multimedia sharing has been released and media extenders have never beenn more popular. Just because your PC is boring doesn't mean other people's must be. My PC is absolutely boring, like the majority of people who just buy a PC and don't do anything other than computer stuff with it. I know on a forum like this the number of people that have extra-ordinary PC's is higher than average, but your average consumer barely knows how to use iTunes and that's it.
3. Putting a DVD in your DVD player is way more convenient than using Windows/software stuff for everything. People want convenient equipment, not a mouse/keyboard combination to do everything.
That's you can put DVDs in my computer and use a media remote to control it. Optical media will die in favour of downloaded content - there will be TVs that link to your PC as a dumb display device channeling remote input to the PC and streaming downloaded movies from the PC. You'd still have to have your PC on and have no-one else using it. Remember that media devices are designed to be used in family circumstances and that most families have 1 or 2 PC's of which the probably won't use any to be used as a DVD player. Of course TV's will be linked to the internet in some sort of way, but this will probably more in a way we see with current pay-TV decoders.
Gameconsoles definitely will become more and more functional with the internet and have more discspace and function, but just like today the market for different home consoles will exist because people love to play games on their TV instead of on a PC where they have to install files and be attached to a keyboard/mouse. No. The PC will have like a Linux package manager (one-click invisible download and install) and then stream the game to your TV if you want per point 3. OK, but that doesn't mean people will not buy seperate devices for seperate things. I really think people will continue to buy consoles, amps, DVD-CD players and so on because the average consumer won't, for a long time, wants to invest in a computer that handles everything until "server-like" home networks are common, that have everything on one server that is accesible without a "windows-like environment" from different screens so that once you turn on the TV it won't show the whole environment, but just the film/TV section for example. Also the quality of computer hardware has to be | 
