Consoles: Not Just for Gaming Anymore!
Need to surf the Net? No computer? No problem. Fire up your PlayStation2, Xbox or GameCube and you're ready to ride the Infobahn. Though designed for the youthful twitchy-finger set, they have serious formidable computer power under the hood. Web access is one of the modern gaming machines' abilities, but that's just the beginning. New game consoles play DVDs, connect hard drives through FireWire and USB ports, and a whole lot more. In fact, game consoles can act as full-fledged home media gateways. Interested? We thought so.
In its simplest form, a home media gateway provides a connection between broadband Internet access, like cable or DSL, and an inside-the-home network that connects all the digital devices, computer peripherals, game consoles, DVRs and more. Home media gateways designed for easy setup and maintenance, include setting up additional items to the network as they become available at a later time. After all, we are talking about basing all of this on a game console. It has to be easy.
A new generation of gaming devices including Sony's PlayStation2, Xbox from Microsoft and Nintendo's GameCube have extended the potential of what a gaming console can be. And from new potentials, new uses emerge. Sometimes, new features materialize that even surprise the designers.
Smart Game Machine Features
For starters, playing DVD video is one of the PlayStation2's built-in capabilities. On a game box? Believe it. The Xbox offers DVD capability on an expansion kit. (The GameCube, at present, doesn't include this feature.) This is a good feature for several reasons. For starters, in the wired household of today, one DVD player may not be enough. Maybe dad wants to view Saving Private Ryan, while little sister wants to watch The Little Mermaid, again, and junior wants to check out the latest Jackie Chan movie. For this family, one DVD player wouldn't do. A game console DVD player solves a lot of bickering, and cheaply, too.
All of these game consoles offer Internet access, crucial to their role as home media gateways. Nintendo's GameCube either a 56K modem or a broadband adapter as add-ons. The Xbox comes with built-in 100Mbps Ethernet networking for cable, DSL or satellite broadband connections. The PlayStation2 provides broadband access through an HDD expansion unit. Two of these game boxes pack a 100Mbps Ethernet interface, allowing clean and fast data to stream in from the Net. It can even be wireless. From Wi-Fi giant Linksys comes the Wireless-B Game Adapter. With an MSRP of $79, it's designed for the GameCube, the PS2, as well as the Xbox. The WGA11B is a 802.11b wireless network link pumping out transfer rates up to 11Mbps. Gamers can either work in pairs for a two-system LAN game or network in via a wireless router for online gaming or Web surfing. Plug it into the console and you're Net surfing.
Both Sony and Microsoft have included a hard drive in their offerings. The Nintendo GameCube offers no hard drive at this time. The PlayStation2 unit, an add-on from SCEI (Sony Computer Entertainment Inc.), is an HDD unit containing a 40GB hard drive. The Xbox offers an 8GB hard disk. While it is a relatively small drive by today's standards, it is built-in, while the PlayStation2 offering is an add-on requiring additional expense.
Read the technical specifications of game consoles and you will realize that lurking under the covers, these are very powerful computers. As proof, take a look at the Under the Hood sidebar on specifications.
Connecting the Gateway
If it has a digital heartbeat, connect it. Home media gateways support dynamic Internet Protocol addressing, so that Net-enabled devices can all share the same gateway to the Web. Any device that uploads or downloads media of any sort, whether it's games, streaming video, MP3 files, digital photos, e-books, video on demand or data of any sort, benefits from a home media gateway connection.
The modem, broadband or not, gets connected to the gaming console on one end. That's the connection to the outside. Then, the home network is attached through the Ethernet connections or the USB ports. That's the connection to the inside. The network connects everything to everything.
The home media gateway represents an excellent place to store audio and video content for the entire home. Music, TV and movies are converted to digital forms. As they do so, they become available for sale and delivery on the Internet. Downloading music and videos to a centralized, networked media-storage system allows access by today's PCs and DVRs and by all the digital devices of tomorrow from anywhere in the home. The home media gateway saves time, effort and duplication. In many ways, the home media server becomes the jukebox for the home.
As an example, BroadQ offers QCast, a $50 program that lets you use your PlayStation 2 to view and play media files stored on your PC over your home network. The software supports a wide array of media, including MPEG-1, -2 and -4 video, DivX video, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis music files, and JPEG and PNG images. According to BroadQ, QCast is optimized for wireless networks as well.
Games and Gateways - Looking Ahead
This only scratches the surface of what a home media gateway can do for your home. As more and more devices become networked, expect more interesting and unexpected uses to emerge. Imagine telecommuting from a game console.
Using the game console as a gateway for interactive communication enables home technologies and services to interact with each other and the outside world.
Every advance in chip and network technologies makes computers, game consoles and digital devices smarter and more capable. The idea of linking them all together to access information and services from a single device, whether it's in the living room or in the basement, makes more and more sense. Since they're all digital bits anyway, its time to connect them all in a home media gateway running on a game console. Now where did I put that game controller?
[Sidebar: Game Boxes -- Under the Hood]
The strongest contenders in the home gateway category are Sony's PlayStation2, Microsoft's Xbox and Nintendo's Game Cube. All have powerful features and both offer additional add-ons to become a complete home media gateway. Let's take a look.
Sony PlayStation2
CPU: 128-Bit Emotion Engine 300MHz
Memory: 32MB RAM, plus 4MB on the graphics chip
Connectivity: FireWire, USB and 10/100 Ethernet expansion kit
Hard drive: Expansion HDD unit with 40GB
Multimedia: CD and DVD-Video playback, Dolby Digital sound
MSRP: $179
Microsoft Xbox
CPU: Intel 733MHz processor
Memory: 64MB RAM
Connectivity: 4 USB ports, 10/100 Ethernet
Hard drive: built-in 8GB
Multimedia: TV, home-theater hookups, DVD expansion kit
MSRP: $180
Nintendo Game CubeCPU: IBM PowerPC Gecko, 485 MHz
Memory: 40 MB RAM
Connectivity: Expansion port for modem or broadband adapter
Hard drive: None Available
Multimedia: Composite video, S-video outputs. Component video cable available.
MSRP: $100
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