AS THE TODDLER sleeps in the middle of the sitting room floor, I remember the electronics we had as a kid. Two pieces of tech saw me through high school graduation: a record player and a black and white television. Things have changed since the 20th century and we need more stuff for the youngster because there's a much more exciting range of media to enjoy. We need a bigger pipe, a smarter video player, a clever DVD burner, and more storage space. The panda bear at left insists.
Fat Broadband Pipe. We need to get faster broadband service. The best we have coming over our wires is seven megabits per second. That speed should return to our home by early February. If we had a 50Mbps cable service, we could download a typical film in less than 10 minutes.
Smart Video Player. Once I have a film downloaded, I can push it across a home network or plug in a USB drive and let it play. Western Digital's HD Media Player connects to an HDMI input and plays full HD.
HD Burner. We have DVD and CD burners in the house. The €149 LG GGW-H20L burns high-definition Blu-ray discs in 20 minutes.
Storage Space. Now is the time to buy external hard drives. Network-attached storage (NAS) drives can be connected directly to a router, so films can play directly through a video player without a computer in between. The €160 Freecom Network Drive Pro will download to its 1TB drive on its own.
Matthew Bingham -- "Technology Makes It Easy" in The Sunday Times, 25 January 2009.
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Bonus Link: Photo from my sitting room.
