Well after years of talk about convergent technology, it’s finally happening. Yep, the PC is poised to become a part – if not the centre - of the “digital home”. Well, at least the home multi-media entertainment system.

Of course many of us have been using the PC as a source of music and movies for some time, but with the coming of age of Wireless LAN technology, cheap high capacity hard drives, good quality digital still and video cameras and more powerful computers running better software - 2004 looks to be the year where we will really start to see the PC used as an audio visual hub.

At its most basic we will see the PC used as an AV jukebox - storing all the households’ music, digital photo’s and increasingly video content as well. This content can then be distributed all over the house – offering household members instant access to any song or photo or video, anywhere there is a computer - or a device like the <a href= ?q=node/view/91>Linksys WMA-11B</a> ‘wireless media adaptor’, or the soon to be released <a target="_blank" href=http://www.linksys.com/press/press.asp?prid=142>version</a> with an inbuilt DVD player. But if things go the way they are planned the PC will do much more than just store your movies.

Enter the Multimedia PC.

Storing your media on the PC is one thing, but how about using it as your source?  Improved user interfaces like Windows XP Media Centre Edition are making it easier then ever before to use your PC to replace your CD, DVD, TV tuner and PVR (personal video recorder). Nice on screen graphics with simplified menus and remote control look set to liberate the PC from the study and bedroom and give it centre place in your home entertainment system.

And the results can be excellent. With a fast machine and high end graphics and sound cards (especially using DVI or HDMI and digital audio out) a properly configured machine can serve as reasonably high end media source. I wouldn’t throw out my dedicated CD player (and definitely not my turntable) from my dedicated stereo system, but my DVD player is looking a bit nervous – especially as my PC can play the new High Definition DVD’s that are starting come out, and my DVD player can’t.

But there are negatives. PCs tend to be noisy, they consume a lot of power, they take a relatively long time to turn on and off, they can be unstable, and I have yet to worry about my DVD player getting a virus..

Of course these issues are being worked on, but until there fully sorted, the move of the PC into the living room will be mostly amongst the more technology savvy households. So for now the DVD player is safe. But maybe not for long.