Compaq Computer Corp has been touring the US with the first of its home entertainment PC Theater products, the results of its collaboration with Thomson Consumer Electronics SA. The system comes with a 36 inch monitor, wireless keyboard, CD-ROM and floppy drives that will enable users to simultaneously run computer programs, or the Internet and television or video braodcasts. A protocol of the product was unveiled at Compaq’s Innovate Forum event in Houston at the beginning of the month (CI No 3,138), and will be shown in six selected cities next month, before a launch in the fall. The PC Theater, which is said to be easy to set up and use, bears a distinct resemblance to a standard television set, and incorporates electronic program guides, universal remote control and surround sound. It can be connected to most digital satellite systems, video recorders, digital video disk players, laser disk players, home stereo systems, cable television systems and video cameras. The multimedia computer that that forms the computing part of the product is powered by an Intel Corp 200MHz Pentium processor with MMX technology. It will be priced at around $5,000. Compaq and Intel Corp, along with Thomson, Hitachi Ltd, Mitsubishi Electric Corp, NEC Technologies Inc, Philips Electronics NV and Toshiba Corp, announced at the beginning of April that they were working to create a new PC Theater category of products for the home, and are working with the Video Electronics Standards Association on plug-and play standards (CI No 3,130).
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