The way we consume media has changed significantly over the last 10 years. Many people now have 40-inch or larger HD displays in their living rooms and bedrooms, and stream everything from TV shows to movies on their PCs. So it's only natural that PCs and media from those PCs find their way into people's bedrooms and living room spaces.
The concept of the living room PC has been around for a while. Both Macheads and Windows geeks have trailblazing claims in their past. Back in 1996, Gateway 2000 produced the Gateway Destination, a $4,000 PC with a TV Tuner and 36-inch CRT monitor. Apple also had the Macintosh TV in 1994, which was a $2,100 all-in-one CRT-based Macintosh computer with a TV tuner and switchable display: you could compute or watch TV, though not both at the same time. Today's PCs are a little more sophisticated. They can display video from built in tuners or a set-top box like a satellite service DVR. Plus you can always use a PC to view online videos and downloads. The old concept of waiting for a program to watch it live is becoming an outdated concept. The current crop of HDTV-friendly living room friendly PCs include Linux systems, Macs, and Windows PCs.
The reason why PCs (and Macs) are slowly but surely entering the living room are the features: Ports like HDMI let you hook the PC directly up to your 60-inch HDTV in the living room as if it were another set-top box like a DVR. Wi-Fi and wireless keyboards assure users that there won't be unsightly wires snaking all over the living room. Wi-Fi is also the key to getting Netflix and other streaming video on your HDTV. Blu-ray never became the movie powerhouse it was made out to be in the early 2000s, but Blu-ray devotees can easily use a PC to display the latest blockbuster on their 3D HDTV, and then subsequently look up obscure facts about the production on imdb.com on their PC's Web browser.
While much has been said in the past year about the cloud and online storage, the fact of the matter is that cloud services are still clunky and slow for people with tens or hundreds of Terabytes of photos, music, and videos on the various hard drives on their PCs. The small capacity SSDs on the latest tablets, ultrabooks, and laptops like the MacBook Air don't have enough storage to hold an entire family's digital life. PCs and local network-attached storage are the still the way to go for large personal libraries.
Even if you don't have a living room PC, you can still use the power and storage on your PC in your living room. Devices like the Apple TV or Netgear Push2TV can stream movies, photos, and music from a PC, Mac, or iOS device like an iPhone 4S. Or if you'd like, Apple makes an iOS-to-HDMI adapter to hook your iPad or iPhone up to the HDTV directly. D-Link's Boxee Box and Western Digital's WDTV are other media streamers that can play the media stored on PCs or shared hard drives. You don't even need a separate set-top box on some cable systems: Verizon's FIOS cable boxes can stream video and photos from your home PC; all you have to do is install a utility on the PC.
You can see that PCs and devices in the living room aren't merely limited to the laptop or tablet you've carried into the room so you can look up facts while channel surfing. PCs can be the central device in the living room, connected to your HDTV or over your local wireless network.