Inbox:I am surely heading for divorce as, these days, what little television viewing I do with my wife tends to be accompanied by a laptop computer. TV shows seem to move so slowly that I am often downloading the entire plot at Wikipedia before the hero has even made his first move. Call it attention laptop disorder, writes Mike Butcher.
But perhaps a better solution would be to have a TV that had PC-like functions. Indeed, this is the sort of combined device that would go down well in teenagers' bedrooms, where space is at a premium, and the cost of buying a television, DVD and a PC can be prohibitive.
Such combined PC/ TV devices started to appear in the late 1990s from makers such as Dell, but failed to take off because they were so expensive.
Microsoft has also teamed up with TV manufacturers to shoehorn Windows Vista into TV LCD and plasma screens, but these too are pretty pricey. A new firm hopes to flip the notion of a PC/TV on its head with a device that is much closer to a PVR - portable video recorder - first and a PC second.
Babel TV (www.Babel.tv) is the brainchild of internet pioneer Peter Dawe. The multifaceted set-top-box (pictured, with stand) enables you to tune into and record digital television broadcasts, stream video clips or programming from the web and even make VoIP calls.
It will handle photos or sync with many MP3 players. And because the box uses an extremely simple version of the Linux operating system, it runs quickly, is designed not to crash and is remotely managed by Babel TV's technical team.
The device is a sort of computer Swiss army knife.
Once plugged into broadband and a digital TV aerial, it will behave like a PVR, but also has a web browser, plays YouTube videos, does e-mail and even simple "Office" applications such as word processing and spread sheets.
To back up your files, you save them to the capacious 16GB hard drive to store them remotely - a function that can be done automatically by Babel TV for a small subscription fee.
One gigabyte of secure online storage costs €1.50 a month - enough space for about 250 music tracks or 2,000 photos. Extra secure online storage is an additional €1.50 a month a gigabyte.
In addition, Babel TV is a very "green" machine, as power consumption is 15 watts, compared with 150w for a typical computer or 60w for a typical PVR.
The PVR functionality is pretty good, enabling series link recording and the ability to record one channel while watching another. Initially it's designed for the UK's Freeview TV system but should be able to work here.
Costing £295 or €410, it's the kind of thing I might well buy my mother-in-law (if she didn't already have a PC) since it already has simple PC features, without any of the hideous crashing or software reinstalling that usually involves a visit from her son-in-law.
Unfortunately, since it is going up against television set-top boxes in the €150 range, Babel TV is going to have to get the price down by selling lots of units.
It has failed to secure a high-street retailer deal as yet, but it's an idea that deserves a chance. At least for the sanity of my wife and her mother, if not for me.
