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Real Convergence

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Intel's announcement of its Canmore chip at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas seems to me to augur real convergence in digital media.  According to the report in The Seattle Times, "[the Canmore chip packs high-end audiovisual processors, a 3-D graphics card and TV tuner capabilities alongside a PC processor core.  It's designed for TVs, set-top boxes, stereos and other consumer-electronics gear that will be able to access the Internet without the help of PC." 

That's what one wants, I think.  Convergence in this space will not be accomplished by having all kinds of media come to you via your PC, but rather by having all kinds of media come to you via your TV.  Your TV already brings you television broadcasts, on-demand content, DVD movies, console games, and photos retrieved from some location on your home network.  The only thing missing here is a decent Internet experience. 

Canmore is one of the two pieces that is required.  The other piece is a piece of software that makes broadcast content retrieved via a TV cable or satellite dish, and Internet pages readily browsable and usable as if they were all the same thing.  Picture various cables going into the back of any convergence device, and a souped-up browser on the TV that makes content from all of those sources readily browsable and usable.

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