Everyone from Sony to Apple to Microsoft are fighting to control the living room as it becomes the next battleground of the computer revolution, but I haven’t seen too many affordable computers I’d want to sit in my living room in my entertainment center. Sharp’s new product line, the Internet AQUOS, however, looks pretty awesome and adds the features that many have ignored in the past including a stylish wireless keyboard and mouse combo.

If the price is right, this product could very well.

(Hat Tip: Engadget)

Engadget spotted a new HD Media Streamer called EZFetch which sounds pretty cool from the specs. Available for $249 online, it supports a lot of formats and is capable of producing a 1080p output should you have 1080p content. It includes a DVI output with a HDMI adaptor included in the box. It also includes integration with Nokia NSeries phones, if that excites you in some metaphysical way.

Sounds like a cool product at a low price point; the world needs more media streamers with open standards to compete with the AppleTV.

I found this study mentioned on eHomeUpgrade very interesting. A recent study suggested the average American had an average of $1,135 of content stored on electronically, but younger adults aged 18 to 24 have $2,199 of content.

Also in the findings:

• More than half of those surveyed (56%) stated that they felt all the photos, music, movies and video games they have stored is somewhat important, valuable or priceless.
• Nearly one in five said their digital content was “priceless.”

With content ever increasing with cheaper hard drives, I think the options for backing things up is woefully inadequate. Backing things up to DVD-R, probably the cheapest consumer option, would take a long time to backup 500GB of data, and give you carpal tunnel syndrome in the process as you swap out over a hundred DVD-Rs. 500GB of data sounds like a lot, but with MP3 collections, digital photos, and digital video home movies, those hard drives fill up fast.

I’m not sure how long this deal has been going on, but Akimbo has slashed their prices to $99 for the hardware, including 3 free months of service or a reduced rate for a lifetime subscription ($169).

The key to Akimbo’s success is getting a critical mass of viewers such that they can entice more content providers from using their service, and this pricing model seams well suited to getting more users.

It’s too bad there isn’t functionality for streaming your own movie, music, or photo library to the Akimbo; that sort of functionality would enhance the offering and at the lower price for Akimbo, shift sales from other Media Servers to Akimbo. Add in support for streaming friends and family media libraries, and you’ve got a great community device where family members can watch family home movies, view photos, etc. and help increase sales.

Thursday Sony will launch their much anticipated Playstation Portable (PSP) which many have said is the next generation of portable gaming. It also includes support for MPEG4 video encoded movies, as well as audio MP3 files. From the reviews I’ve read, it’s been given high marks for gaming and been knocked for it’s support for video. From the Washington Post review:

As a portable game machine, it’s a peerless piece of work, combining sharp graphics, deep game play and easy online connectivity. As a multimedia gadget, however, it’s a dud.

The review goes on to point out the lack of support Sony gave to make video and audio easy. For instance, it doesn’t come bundled with a USB cable as well as a puny memory stick, incapable of storing video and audio files. It also lacks any PC software to make it easy to transfer video and audio to the PSP.

Sajeeth Cherian, the creative talent behind Videora, is trying to make it easier to use the PSP as a media device. His new freeware software, PSP Video 9, looks like something Sony should have bundled with the PSP. PSP Video 9 will automatically transcode a video file into the proper format for the PSP and transfer it. It also has integration with his BitTorrent software, Videora, so that you can download and transcode all automatically.

I’ve been wondering what my rationale would be to stand in line Thursday to get a PSP.

Via Build Your Own PVR.com, Plextor ConvertX is now supporting the Linux platform with an SDK.

This is a very smart move for Plextor from my point of view, and will likely be a great addition to MythTV. The Plextor guys really working overtime to make this product successful and have formed good partnerships with Divx, SageTV, and EyeTV (for the Mac). Linux just makes the product all the more ubiquitous for DVR do-it-yourselfers.

Apple introduced their new low cost $499 Macintosh server today. If you visit PVRBlog, you’ll see it’s generated some buzz for being an interesting way to build an HTPC (Home Theater PC). It’s got a 1.25Ghz (or 1.5Ghz) G4, easily powerful enough to crunch video streams, as well as a 9200 Radeon graphics card with DVI,VGA, SVideo, and Composite out. It’s only weakness is the small hard drive (80Gigs) that comes standard. The small form factor definitely gives it a little extra in the cool factor category.

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I’m still trying to catch up on the CES/Macworld news, but I can’t let the upcoming Hauppauge Portable Video Player (PVP) slip by without comment. It’s on the high-end price-wise ($699) but it comes with tons of file format support including MPEG4/Divx/Xvid, Microsoft WMV, and Apple Quicktime. It sports a 20Gig disk and whopping 7″ 16:9 screen (big for a PVP player; typical for a Portable DVD Player). It’s expected to ship Q1 of this year.

At that price, I think they might have wanted to separate themselves from the competition by adding a larger drive into the mix, but it will be interesting to see if this product will do well. Other PVPs tend to look more like MP3 players with video support, focusing on size, but the Hauppauge model seems to follow a different path.

(Hat Tip: Build Your Own PVR)

Via TVPredictions.com, Humax will introduce a television with a DVD-R and Tivo service built right into the television. The television will be a 26″ LCD flat screen and the MSRP on the unit will be $2,499.

It sounds a bit overpriced to me, and like such inventions as the spork and the combination hat and beer holder, some things are better left as components. That’s especially true if one of the components requires a monthly service fee like Tivo.

eHomeupgrade has some thoughts on this article from Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research who does a weekly column in Engadget. Jupiter Research found that 55% of people would like to watch video on a mobile player (as opposed to 79% who would like to listen to music). That’s a high number, but as Walter Mossberg, columnist for the Wall Street Journal mentioned previously, the difficulty of getting content on to a device is too high to make it ready for primetime.

It will be interesting to see what happens. When asked about these things without a price tag, it’s easy to incorrectly extrapolate whether users will pay an additional premium to have that functionality. I’d love for my MP3 player to bake chocolate chip cookies, but if it cost another $100, I’ll stick with a traditional oven.

On the other hand, buying decisions can be quite different than the way people actually use a product. Many people buy 4 wheel drive vehicles but never actually use the feature. All else being equal, people will purchase a 4 mega-pixel camera over a 3 mega-pixel if it’s the same price, regardless of whether they need the extra pixels or not. The point being that if people think they need video features on their MP3 player, it may not matter in the long run if they rarely use it.

Assuming PVPs fall into the same product category as MP3 players, the real issue could very well rest on what the cost difference is between video-capable and traditional MP3 players. At the current $100 difference at retail it’s a hard sell, but if the differential is reduced, it might very well become a checkbox item.