Other Smart Stuff: TV and Beyond

by Jim Mikles
Summer/Fall 1999

There's a movement afoot to bring PC power gaming to the living room. Here's what you need to know to make it happen. When you have PC power on your television, the old set-top console game pales in comparison to what's available from a stocked 3D computer running a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive. Sure the 3D is nice on the newer Sonys and Nintendos, but it takes forever for the games to load and there are only so many titles available. There will always be a market for them, of course, but we're looking for something more.

Only thing is, the Nintendo 64s and Sony PlayStations of the world were specifically designed for two or more players in the living room on a TV with a joystick. Most PC games are made for a single player with a keyboard and mouse from a desk two feet away. How to merge the two?

There's a whole crop of new titles and equipment that make it easier to run a PC game on the TV. A good scan converter is the first thing to look for. ATI has nice gaming products with its All-in-Wonder, All-in-Wonder Pro and All-in-Wonder 128 video cards (www.atitech.com). A couple of good external scan converters include the TView Gold by Focus Enhancements (www.focusinfo.com) and the Grand UltraView Pro by Dobbs Stanford (www.dobbsstanford.com).

What about game controllers? Wireless keyboards by Sejin (www.sejin.com) always get great reviews, along with U.S. Electronics (www.uselec.com) and Key Tronic (www.keytronic.com) products. Focus Enhancements has a product called the GameShark that includes a MicroXGA scan converter and a joystick with a 10-foot extension cord.

Once you have big-screen PC gaming in the living room, make sure to check out the line of multi-player titles from Hasbro Interactive (www.hasbro-interactive.com), including Star Wars 3D Monopoly, Boggle, Scrabble and Frogger. Speaking of 1980s video game revivals, programs called "emulators" are available online that can port all your favorite classics like Centipede, Asteroids and Tempest to the PC platform. For a good list of the software check out members.aol.com/chrissalo/emu1.htm.

Online gaming is quite popular as well, and more fun (and comfortable) from your couch. There are hundreds of online games, so between discs, emulators and online game communities, you can pretty much name your pleasure: action, strategy, roll-playing, shoot-'em'ups or whatever.

.MP3 Delivers Smart Audio
.MP3 is taking the online world by storm. A very high-quality Internet music format, .MP3, which stands for Motion Picture Entertainment Group, Layer 3 (related to the well-known MPEG-2 video format), can deliver CD-quality sound to the hard drive of your PC/TV. Portable .MP3 players are all the gadget rage these days (see our review of the Diamond Rio, page 25), but there are other ways to enjoy .MP3s. Connect your PC sound card to your stereo system (which you should do with a PC/TV anyway), and you can play the .MP3 in your living room. Connect a cassette deck to the sound system, and record the .MP3 to analog tape for convenient listening . It's no longer a digital recording, but by the time your analog tape wears out, you'll be ready to record some new and different tunes anyway. Once only the domain of the Internet underground, .MP3 is making it mainstream with greater security measures that are making recording labels more willing to release their material in the format. Search for .MP3s and you'll find hundred of different sites. Almost everything you find easily is legal, and some of it's pretty decent. Start with MP3.COM to get on the path to quality .MP3s.