It started with 3D-TVs. A few years ago, 3D-TVs was "the big thing" at Consumer Electronic Show, the largest technology show in the world. 3D TVs was going to revolutionize how we watched TVs by letting us sit with 3D-glasses. A few years later, barely anyone has a 3D TV nor uses it of those who own a 3D-TV. Today, the TV manufactures has gone away from the 3D-gimmick to "smart TVs". This allows the user to use apps such as Netflix and Hulu on their TV. As many people are still waiting for Apple to come up with their iTV, there are many bottlenecks to be solved with the Smart-TVs as they are today.

Lack of good user-interfaces
What perhaps is the greatest minus with the smart-tvs is the lack of a good user-interface. 20 years ago, the controller for the TV had a power-button, numbers(0-9), and buttons for adjusting the channel and volume (+/-). One should have thought this would be enough, but when the TVs became more advanced, arrows and other menu-buttons were added to the controller. Later on, pause, play, back and forward was added as well in order to integrate with other DVD or VCR devices. It doesn't end there, there was added color-coded buttons for color-coded buttons on the user-interface, EPG, text-TV, back, forward, exit, and the list goes on. A rule in HCI states as following: "The user should not be presented to more than 7 +/- 2 options as the short term memory consists of 7+/-2 short term memory units." In some cases, there are over 30 individual buttons where every single one of them has their own purpose. Sure, my keyboard has many buttons. But the keyboard is something I type on and is a very generalized tool. I do not have one button assigned to open Skype, one to open Word and another one to open Visual Studio. Having to look for the button on my keyboard for Visual Studio would take time, and imagine how many keyboard there would be if there was one specialized for every computer program. It would just not work. It is interesting to see there has been no improvement but the contrary on the development in terms of remote controllers. Where are the designers? Or is it the lack of technology that holds us back? Why is there no remote controller with a touch pad (As on the Playstation 4) so the user can use gestures and use a mouse pointer-like user-interface? Perhaps they tried it out, and found out that the user preferred the traditional controller with hundreds of controllers? I have yet to find an answer to this question. 

Application life-cycles
When you buy a TV, you would expect it to last at least five years. You don't buy a new TV every 2nd year like you would do with a smart phone. When I see a smart-tv, I get the impression that the life-cycle of the applications is lasted only a few years. Sure, the OS may be Android-based, but what happens when we get dozens of different smart-tv platforms and all of these wants Netflix, Skype, Facebook, Twitter, and who is going to fix something in a 3 year-old smart-tv application which has only a dew thousand users? I believe as of this, other "boxes" which would have similar functionality to a home-theater PC would do just as good and perhaps even better. Even gaming consoles such as the recently released PS4 or Xbox One may even provide better quality-applications compared with the smart-tvs as those platforms are targeted to last in the long term. 

The HTPC
But where did the home-theater PC (HTPC) go? Why does nobody have a HTPC in their living-room? It turns out that HTPCs is something only "specially interested" got as they require more technical competence, and it is usually something you can't just "plug and play". On the other hand, the technology moves forward. New products like the Roku proves much of the functionality available in a HTPC and in the smart-tv, there are even small "Android HDMI-sticks" you can plug into your TV which would give you all the smart-tv functionality which you would be missing. Then why buy a new TV over 1000$ when you can buy a Roku or an Android device you hook up with your TV for less than a hundred bucks? 

It still remains to see whether smart-TVs would be such a great success as HD-TV and fit into the smart-device category(Smartphones, tablets, smartwatches?). So far, it looks pretty cool to browse the web from the living-room, being able to watch Netflix without any console or PC plugged in. But I wouldn't say it works very well - yet.

As a Norwegian, there was no big surprise that the Xbox One were to be delayed by months. After all, we normally get new tech a few months later than every other country in the world. However, this racism is something I didn't really accept so I ordered one from Amazon instead. The console arrived the day before Christmas Eve, and the xmas feeling finally stroke me when I started unboxing the console. 

First-impressions

The console sure is "one huge box" compared with the previous generation. Although this is not exactly a minus for my usage as I am going to keep the console on the same spot every day, it could be a bit more of a hassle when carrying it with to a friend. Large gaming computers are on the other hand a different story.
Since I come from Norway, manuals are something which is never read and over-looked in the box. I noticed this when my console refused to boot up when I had not yet connected my Kinect camera. After connecting it and rebooting the console, it started downloading a massive 500MB update, which surprisingly maxed out at my internet speed (25Mbit/s aka 3.12MB/s). 

Confusing user-interface?

Many reviews has concluded that the Xbox One has a confusing user-interface. To me, it was quite confusing in the beginning. But once I understood how the tiles worked, the UI is pretty amazing. On the main dashboard page, the largest tile is the last app/game/whatever you used. If I am for example playing Forza and I press the Xbox button on my controller, the Forza game is minimized to that window. I can then open for example "my apps and games" to check how much is left on another game I am downloading. Now here comes the cool part: If I have entered a non-game app, I can instantly go back to the main dashboard game and continue on my game just where I left it. Finally, the guys at Microsoft has realized that a console (just like a computer) can have several programs open simultaneously and re-starting the game just because I opened some silly app is unnecessary as it is still fresh in memory. The user-interface on the Xbox One has many similarities with the Windows 8 user-interface which is both loved and hated. My conclusion on the UI is that it was a bit confusing in the beginning once I realized how Microsoft had thought the UI should work. It was simply something new I had to get used to (Like the modern UI) which worked far better once I understood it and got used to it.

Kinect

When I had my console booted up the next day after I got it, it said "log in". Confusingly, I once thought that there was some auto-login setting that I had missed. To my big surprise, my console automatically recognized me and a notification "Welcome, martinmine" appeared on my monitor. The coolest part of Kinect was that I could just tell my xbox to record that, and the last 30 seconds got saved to the Gaming DVR. It was also pretty cool when my console started to wait for a command when I had a Skype conversation in Norwegian and I mentioned the word "Xbox". Some reviews has mentioned issues with voice recognition issues, but I have still not had any issues with this. 

The next generation

This is the next generation console, and many believe this is the last console Microsoft will ever release. I believe that might be the case. But I would like to put a question mark at some key-points. Why do I need this ancient thing called discs? Why couldn't Microsoft adapt the same model as Steam has? (Thanks to /r/gaming and other kids on the internet, nope.) Why can't I replace my HDD in my console with an SSD drive? Why do I need to wait almost a minute for my console to boot up when its 100% shut-down? (My laptop boots in 8 seconds) However, I believe many of these issues will be addressed in the future as the hardware is not an obstacle any longer. There are on the other hand these "wow-moments" which weights up with most of the points and what makes me realize this is the next generation. When I manage to get out from a car crash in NFS and the other car crashes, I can just tell my xbox to record that, then upload it to the net to show a friend. There are some interesting features coming up later this year such as direct upload to Youtube from the Uploader app (Why wasn't this here in the first place?) and streaming through Twitch. Waiting half an hour for my clip to be uploaded to Skydrive at 0.8Mbit/s when my connection is capable of uploading 25Mbit/s, I get some beta-feeling that this is work-in-progress (And who the heck wants to share videos through Skydrive anyways?). As this is new technology, I don't expect it to work 100% smoothly, but at least everything has worked smoothly so far. But having Skype available on the Xbox One was a huge step forward.

What is the best console?

"Hurr durr Xbox One is better than PS4" and vice versa are often arguments I read often on the internet. The fun fact is that the kids who argue doesn't even understand half of the technical specifications for the two consoles and they have not even tried any of the consoles. PS4 and Xbox One both applies to different groups of people. Just like cars. I have yet to test out the PS4, but there is an important point which none of these kids realize. There is no "best console". Both of the consoles are almost equal hardware-vise. Sure, the PS4 has a bit faster graphics memory, but this has mostly an impact on load times in-game. You can argue that some games looks better on the Xbox One than the PS4, but guess what: There are games which looks better on the PS4 than Xbox One as well. This is because developers has not had the time to optimize and fine-tune their graphics engines for each console, then you end up with maybe a bit better graphics on one system than the other. We have to wait years until we can compare how good games look like on each system, and the result will be (as of the almost-equal hw specs): they will look pretty much the same.
When you are going to chose which system to buy (PS4 or Xbox One), think of these following points: What systems are my friends on? Which platform-exclusives do I want? Do I wanna use my console to stream videos from my PC and use my console a lot with different medias? (Why on earth doesn't PS4 support UPnP?) These are the questions you have to ask yourself when deciding. There is no console-winner, there is only a right console for you.

Let's all stop the racism in the technology world

There is an on-going racism on the internet when it comes to content. Why can't everyone in Norway have access to the same content someone in the US has? I find it kind of unnecessary to purchase a VPN in order to have access to the content 'muricans has as it is far better than the content which is available to Norwegians. We are in 2013, but it really should not matter where you come from when you watch something on Netflix, you should have access to the exactly same content like someone from China.