“The end is nigh.” The entrenched order is on the brink of losing its grip on television. We are looking at a new technological paradigm in the dissemination of content. While change can be frightening, this is an awesome advancement for the consumer.

The media center PC concept allows you to integrate computer technology with the capabilities of your typical living room entertainment center. This enables you to watch television episodes on your computer. The versatility of available content online makes for an immensely superior experience to the typical home theater arrangement.

A tuner card can be used to feed traditional television signals into your computer environment. It will allow you to record TV episodes and burn them to DVD. Many modern video cards will let you export content from your PC to your TV. You can also integrate your audio files and photos into your home entertainment system. The options are limitless.

Some have theorized that online content will soon kill broadcast cable television. Why pay for cable television service when you can just as easily watch the same shows on your computer whenever you want? A computer can be easily connected to your television without significant technical expertise. This seems to render the normal cable box obsolete. Why should you have to watch your favorite shows on the network’s schedule? Most television programs will soon offer the same content online, indeed, some of it is already available. This means that there is an overlap between television and internet service. If you connect a computer to your TV, you can see much of the same content whenever you want. As bandwidth speeds go up, the picture quality will improve too. This will only make it easier to watch high quality internet content on your TV.

Since the majority of internet content is supported by advertisements, it makes a profit in the same general way as cable television. In the future, all content providers will be able to turn a profit offering their shows on-demand. This is a huge improvement over how we were required to get our television in the past.

This also opens up more opportunities for the independent content provider. You no longer have to invest the capital in a expensive television station and pricey equipment in order to create and broadcast content. The internet creates a medium in which the independent arts can flourish, and this new technology can bring their finished products to the home entertainment system. Competition in content makes for better overall quality.

In the end the consumer really benefits from this boom in new technology. The price of a media center PC will continue to drop as newer devices are made. The bandwidth capacity of our internet service providers will grow over time as well. Wireless high-speed internet access will soon be made available to rural customers.

Fear not this atmosphere of technological change. The computer holds the key to the future of television. We will soon be able to watch any program we want at any time. Wireless technology will improve the communication between all of our household electronic devices. We are at the forefront of a major paradigm shift in the way we consume entertainment.

Gregg Housh works at Geek Choice, a nationwide Computer Repair company. At Geek Choice we solve computer problems such as: Slow computer, Virus Removal, and much more.