If the “smart TV” craze hasn’t made it to your home entertainment yet, making one on your own is getting easier every year. All you need is a spare HDMI slot and the Intel Compute Stick.
Available with a range of processors, the technology to make your TV into a computer fits in the palm of your hands. Put simply, the compute stick is a full PC crammed into an enlarged USB drive. It plugs into the HDMI socket on the back of a TV for display and delivers full PC functionality. Being the beginning of second generation compute sticks, it offers increased performance and two USB ports to allow for mouse, keyboard, or external storage use.
Of the features Intel chose to make most visible, the ease of use is possibly one of the most impressive. Popping a product out of the box to plug into your TV seems like almost too little effort to transform your home entertainment center into a full responsive computer. Additionally, the application for this outside of the home is magnificent. As we progress further into the technological age, more are advocating how being connected to the world through the web is a utility, such as phone service and electricity. Others go so far as to name it as a fundamental right alongside food and water. While this device does not connect to satellite signals like a phone would, such a portable machine with only a television as its requirement could have positive effects in education, medicine, and communication in regions where not everyone owns a smartphone for similar access.
