Convergence of computing and entertainment has been talked about for years, and there is very little debate that it is now finally occurring. A report from In-Stat says that the market for PC-TV's is ready to explode. While I think the concept of entertainment PCs is a good one, a project I worked on this year showed me that consumers might feel differently.
In a product design and development class I worked with a team of students and Intel to design an "entertainment pc". We found that while consumers love the idea of easily managing and consuming their digital content, they hated the idea of a "PC" in their entertainment center. When consumers think of consumer electronic devices they believe that any device they buy should be able to work for 5 - 7 years. When we talked about an "entertainment PC" one of the biggest concerns consumers had was that the device would be obsolete in 3 - 4 years.
The key take away we had was that any "entertainment PC" shouldn't be marketed at a "PC", since a computer carries with it an impression of difficult to use, Windows crashing, and expensive. They should be marketed as CE devices that just happens to have a hard drive and a processor.
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