Just about everyone who lived through the dot-com fiasco should remember the hullabaloo many companies made about digital media convergence. The idea was that you’d have a central set-top box device of some sort that would enable you to watch movies on demand, listen to your music collection, view pictures of your family reunion and surf the Internet all from the comfort of your living room couch. This basic idea gave birth to a number of high profile products, many of which failed outright, many of which (WebTV) sold for millions and then faded into oblivion, and some of which morphed into something unrecognizable from their initial form. Sun’s Java originally began as language for these types of digital convergence set-top boxes. True media convergence seemed to be one of those things that are perpetually six years away, like rocket cars, sentient AI or the end of the Iraq war.

While convergence was definitely an idea ahead of its time, the level of everyday technology has managed to sneak up on us to the point where what was once a dream is now reality and increasingly being utilized by the masses. I believe that there are three major technology areas that have contributed to this; broadband Internet, cheap hard drives, and nearly ubiquitous acceptance of wi-fi have laid the groundwork for these systems to thrive.

However, it’s interesting that it took a quasi-legal community project (XBMC) to really offer a model of how all of this should function. (Before the TiVo diehards get on my case, let me say that TiVo clearly deserves a lot of credit for introducing people to the level of media control they now (or soon) will enjoy with a more general purpose set-top media solution, though the system, while fantastic for what it is, is a bit too focused to qualify as an all-around digital media convergence solution).

Xbox Media Center interface

Anyway, back to XBMC. To those unfamiliar with the system, it turns an ordinary Xbox videogame system into a device that can play DVDs, watch video files stored in dozens of different video codecs, play mp3 and other music files, view photographs, show you current weather conditions and other net/RSS related feeds and more, all on your standard television set. It supports network file shares so you can store all of this data on a file server on your home LAN and coupled with an 802.11g wireless adapter for the Xbox, you can do all of this file sharing wirelessly. The system is incredibly slick and professional in both looks and usability and supports virtually all standard PC video formats (which allows me to subject guests to all of my boring home videos) as well as DVD image files which I rip to a home file server to act as a virtual stand-in for a 50 DVD disc changer.

Unfortunately it requires one to modify their Xbox which requires a high level of technical sophistication, voids your warranty and is guaranteed to upset Microsoft. Given these limitations, it is unlikely XBMC itself will ever become mainstream, but even if it does not it will have served its purpose if it can merely show other device designers how such a system should work if they want it to be friendly to users.

XBMC’s limited but rabid fan base may have contributed to convincing other manufacturers that the time is right for convergence because there is a clear resurgence in the idea, particularly among console makers. Microsoft’s new Xbox 360 console offers something quite similar to XBMC in the form of being a Windows Media Center Extender for video and having similar MP3 and picture file sharing capabilities. Their Zune media player will further this media convergence by allowing the media to be shared onto a portable device. Sony’s Playstation 3 will offer a similar setup, also supporting portable media via their Playstation Portable system. Apple also recently jumped into the fray with their highly anticipated iTV, which will no doubt seamlessly integrate with all of those iPods out there. Nintendo’s forthcoming Wii console will also support a subset of these media sharing features with an emphasis on photo sharing, plus it will also offer a version of the Opera web browser for use on the console.

And it is somewhat surprising to me that Microsoft hasn’t gone and bundled a version of Internet Explorer for the Xbox 360, but I think they got so used to trying to convince everyone that the Xbox consoles aren’t just PCs in console form that they painted themselves into a bit of a corner, hopefully they find their way out and start offering some more general purpose Internet integration on the 360 with their Live Anywhere push, because I believe that HDTV adoption rates rising quickly enough that general purpose Internet use via these set-tops is another idea whose time is maybe, finally coming.