By Richard M. Sherwin…

For twenty years I have been watching computer companies try to make strides into the mainstream consumer electronics industry. Microsoft spent hundreds of millions of their gazillion dollars to launch Windows Media Center standalone products. They actually had to buy back 1000s of units from CE stores sales were so poor. HP, with some Panasonic help, offered up a terrific PC built inside a TV that, while well regarded, couldn’t be given away. The word convergence, used by the Consumer Electronics Association and every suit trying to make his/her product seem useful, is so overused now it should be taken out of the lexicon of technology words. In my experience, convergence means this part of our product may never get out of the labs or may never sell a single unit.

I have heard CE executives from Sony, Panasonic, Toshiba and the original RCA company, literally promise retailers that they wouldn’t partner with Microsoft or even Apple because of computer companies unreliable reputation.

“We spend too much time making our products with nearly 100% reliability,” to take a chance adding some operating system that might say “alt. control delete” before you change channels,” said a CEO of one of the largest TV makers.

And troubled brands like Philips, Zenith, Hitachi also eschewed Microsoft and other computer companies even though they became desperate to add some kind of feature or functionality to save them from going out of business.

“We have little or no returns and literally very few calls to our technical support line over the last 25 years, said a president of a highly regarded audio manufacturer.” “We would just be inviting trouble to let a computer company enter our domain.” The audio executive added.

But in the last 24 months, this on-again off- again marriage of reliable CE products to not so reliable computer company products, has become a success. In fact, the tech children borne of this marriage are reliable even though it took 20 years for this to occur.

I just installed Roku, possibly the best example of the merging of TV and Internet technologies. Roku is a little unobtrusive set top box that allows you to instantly stream Internet content to your TV.

Whether connected to a router/modem through a Ethernet cable or through home WiFi, you can watch movies and TV shows from Netflix, Hulu Plus or Amazon VOD, listen to music on Pandora, and catch the latest ballgame or switch channels to some of the most unique content available anywhere.

Another of the so-called sons and daughters of the TV-PC Roku was created and is run by Anthony Wood, arguably the creator of the first PVR (Replay TV) and a veteran of both the CE and PC industries. And, while Replay lost out to a better financed, better run TiVo, Wood’s ideas for using TV in a different and better way never died.

I had Roku working perfectly in about five minutes. It connects to web via Ethernet or WiFi and has a very easy onscreen keyboard to enter passwords and screen names. When you find an app you want to use, there is a one-time “device code” that you need to go to a traditional PC to enter, but after that all of the extra channels are downloadable in seconds. It offered me nearly 100 different channels of and its Netflix App was better than the streaming service uses on most TVs or Blue Ray players.

Roku’s other Apps turned my TV into an AM-FM Internet radio in seconds with itsTune-IN Radio Channel. Its sports channels NHL and MLB, while requiring a monthly fee, still offer terrific programming not available on traditional TVs. Roku’s version of Hulu Plus will probably alter the way you use TV over the Internet or the way you subscribe to your cable company. If Hulu signs up more stations, it will feature more traditional TV offerings than most cable stations with a much smaller pay for play scheme than the average $55 you spend now. And Roku’s funky channels (too many too mention) offer everything from really rare old TV episodes from Moonlight TV channel to customized foreign language channels that are very costly if you use cable TV to get them.

Now some of my colleagues at Digital Family Advisor only want their TV to offer TV…no web content…no email…no searching. But they also complain there’s nothing on TV for their expensive cable dollars. I think Roku takes TV where it should be…… offering a lot of interesting and useful Television for very little money.

The end result of my Roku experience was that, unlike many of the promised convergence products, it really offered of value and ease of use for the price and showed that a PC type manufacturer can build and sell a CE product that’s worthwhile.

Bytes and pieces:

By the way, our other convergence winners of the year are Play Station 3’s free upgrade which now offers VuDu, Netflix and Hulu Plus… Orb, a low priced adapter that offers some added TV programming and audio content and the ever present TiVo, which finally added some more apps to it already easy to use “extra features”. I also want to give kudus to some other hybrids of the PC and CE industry: Skype, Magic Jack, Logitech Squeezebox and Logitech Security and the other convergence companies I’ll be seeing in Vegas soon at CES. My wish list for 2011 includes a drastic drop in prices of 3D TV and increased programming when I can afford a new 3D TV preferable from Panasonic or Visio. A Wuala online storage system that’s a bit faster and or a 100% never gonna die backup drive from Apricorn, Seagate or Maxtor…A audio component system from Denon, or Harmon or anyone that includes a tiny subwoofer instead of one that takes over the living room…a more reliable HDMI connector or a Cable box or FIOS system that actually takes advantage of HDMI instead of crashing when you have too many devices using HDMI. A smaller DXG camcorder or a Flip with a better zoom…how about a truly easy to use multimedia software from Nero or Adobe that I have to relearn every time I use it or show it to a friend. And maybe a better set of fingers for myself so I don’t screw up all the touch screen products coming out in 2011.