;)
In the battle for the smart home, it's all comes down to the centerpiece system in the house. Will it be the computer or the television? The home stereo or the 5.1 surround sound system on the PC? After all, a television is the ultimate media viewing device that everyone knows how to work. Meanwhile, the computer is the multi-taking workhorse. It's beauty against beast. Decisions, Decisions.
Fortunately, in this day and age, you can morph the two into one.
That's what the folks at Hy-Tek Manufacturing have done with the Tek Panel 300. On the outside, the TekPanel looks like a big honking 30 inch flat panel LCD TV (that's only five inches deep). But turn it on and it's a Windows XP personal computer powered by a Pentium 4 processor and up to 4 GB of RAM.
When you watch TV on the Tek Panel, the signal is summoned from your cable or satellite converter box and into a Radeon video card; an off the shelf TV technology package provided by ATI.
The television picture runs in a window that can be maximized so that your TV experience overlays the Windows XP Pro desktop to make the screen look like any other television. It comes with an ATI remote, too, that provides typical channel surfing functions, but can also summon a mouse cursor which can be moved around the screen using a directional thumb pad. Tek Panel also comes with a wireless mouse and keyboard, so when using it as a computer you can set the remote aside in favor of the traditional computer input devices, yet still from the comfort of a couch and coffee table.
Bear in mind, it's kind of weird to have a computer in the living room. You have to get used to the idea that anyone that walking into the room will be immediately and fully aware of what you are doing on the computer, be it word processing a Dear John letter or surfing the web for, um, "specialty" content, which take the "personal" experience out of personal computing. Public displays of computing take a little getting used to...
However, the big screen computing experience is also an exciting way to show off multimedia. The large format makes a great display for digital photos, camcorder video or even performing consultative or family web browsing research. You and the spouse and maybe the kids--or for you small business types, you and the staff--can sit down and seek information on the web in a cooperative manner. Digital window shopping is suddenly a team sport. And in the boardroom the Tek Panel is a fantastic, multipurpose presentation and brainstorming device.
However, it takes take "remote control hogging" to another level; the urge to grab the keyboard and mouse away from someone else when they are dawdling is as strong as it is when someone is flipping across television channels with the TV remote.
The other frustrating feature in this device is it’s A/V connectivity. Its connectors are all in the back and, worse, under an over-hang making it nearly impossible to access them without turning the 71 pound machine around. Scratch, scrape, grunt, growl.
That said, in the newer 37-inch Tek Panel 370--slated for launch later this year--its USB input slots have been moved to the side of the system, which makes more sense.
In the end, the Tek Panel 300 is very promising experience. However, it uses, by and large, basic off-the-shelf technology. Hy-Tek does not make all the components but instead, like any local sole-proprietor computer store, buys readily available retail components and then integrates them into one device. What's more, the ATI TV software is weak and poorly designed and occasiaonly causes simple T-watching to actually crash. Insert scream here. However, Hy-Tek says they are investigating using Windows XP Media Center Edition, which is an operating system designed with TV viewing and recording in mind. That integration into future products could be the clincher, no doubt producing rave reviews. For now, though lauded for ambitiousness, the TekPanel doesn't meet its potential.
Reviewed: Jun. 03, 2004
Type: Computer
From: Tek Panel
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