WSJ writes about TVs that are starting to do more of the PC functionality:
Even as traditional PC makers such as Dell Inc. and HP forge deeper into the consumer-electronics industry by offering flat-screen TVs and other gadgets, traditional gadget-makers such as Matsushita Electric Industrial and Sony Corp. are rushing to make their stereos or TVs do things that people normally needed a PC to do.
Of course, the smart gadgets are sometimes powered by old PC technology, or work together with PCs. Toshiba sells a digital-videodisc recorder that hooks up to a PC to search Internet TV-guide sites for programs to record. Microsoft is peddling a version of its Windows operating system geared to run consumer-electronics equipment.
Yet the consumer-electronics makers are also striking out on their own, developing software and semiconductors for their gadgets with little or no help from traditional PC-industry companies such as Microsoft or Intel.
Sony’s latest home-electronics device, a cross between a video-game machine and a DVD recorder called the PSX, already can pull up and play movies stored on its hard drive faster than most PCs can. The PSX runs on a chip Sony and Toshiba developed for Sony’s PlayStation 2.
