For the past year or so, we’ve seen more and more studies and surveys showing the growing popularity not just of TV on your PC, but of people thinking of their PCs (laptops, especially) as entertainment devices.

It’s a not-subtle-shift. The capital-L Laptop was for years the purview of the working Joe and Jane who did lots of spreadsheets and sent reports to Davenport back in Accounting. If you didn’t have a business use for one, you really didn’t think about having one of your own.

But laptop sales have exploded, and yes, people are starting to think of the laptop as a primary entertainment device. And by people, I mean “teen agers,” and by “teen agers” I mean specifically the teen age exchange student we hosted this past school year and all of the friends she had over the past 12 months.

Because even though we have a sweet Media Center PC hooked up to our flat screen,I don’t she and her friends ever watched a movie in the media room. Instead, they we’re up in the office, watching videos on Internet TV and listening to music on our Zune pass.

Once the Netflix feature was released, they were streaming movies and TV shows right from our Netflix account.

Teen agers. Hey. As long as they weren’t asking me to drive them to the mall, all was well. And Media Center is the one place all of their entertainment experiences were brought together.

Plenty of research backs this trend as well. An article in the Bend (Ore) Bulletin cited a recent Forrester research report:

Forrester Research released a report in January noting that while cable and satellite providers reach roughly 100 million homes in the U.S., computer-based television viewing is growing, driven largely by adults ages 18 to 34 who like to watch content when and where they choose.

“As audiences continue to migrate to a lifestyle of portability, driven by the transition to laptops and wireless networks, the cord in the living room becomes a heavier burden,” the report said.

And an April Nielsen report indicated people are watching 3 hours of online video a month, while C|net reported a 38% increase in video streaming over the past year – both of which I learned from a blog dedicated to the idea of TV on the PC.

It’s a whole new way to think about Media Center – very different from the center of a connected, whole home entertainment infrastructure. Rather, on a laptop, it’s a completely self-contained entertainment portal.

Me? I’m glad Media Center can fill both roles so well. When I want to watch a movie, I prefer the big screen and our 5.1 surround sound. But it was the 2-foot experience that kept our adopted teen so happy this year. And meeting the needs of a variety of different users is what a good platform should be able to do.

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New to Windows Media Center? Start here. or here.Or even here.

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Tags

zune pass, clubhouse, Media Center-Windows 7, windows media center, netflix, tv on the pc, media center

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