Computer Content On TV? Vice Versa? Just You Watch.

TiVo will bring Net videos to your TV set. (Tivo Via Bloomberg News)

Ever since their invention, the television set and the home computer have remained separate devices, often in separate rooms. But next year could be the year they come together -- or at least become less distinguishable.

New gizmos are coming (and many are already here) that enable you to send content from your PC to your TV, and vice versa. Just as important, these devices enable you to send content from any PC (work, home, laptop, etc.) to any TV set or video playback device you want, anywhere. And vice versa.

Confused? If not yet, you probably will be. The consumer electronics industry is great at inventing stuff but not so great at explaining what all the stuff can do. Bewilderment is a given.

Suffice to say, there's big excitement about devices that switch video from one box to another, and do so wirelessly.

Say there's a neat video on YouTube that you want to watch on your living-room TV set. Done. Say your living-room TiVo captured a show that you want to watch later on the TiVo-less TV set in the basement. Done, too. Or say -- sneaky fella -- you want to watch the big game on your computer while you're at the office. Can do, too.

Some of this capability is already around, thanks to companies such as SlingMedia and Microsoft. SlingMedia, for example, makes the $180 SlingBox Tuner, which looks like an oversize bar of chocolate and which can "sling" cable TV programming from a TV set to a PC or mobile device.

But demand for all these products could take off with the entry early next year of TiVo and, especially, Apple Computer into the anytime, anywhere market.

TiVo said in November that it will broaden its recording service so users of its set-top boxes can download videos from the Internet and watch them from their TV sets.

Apple, meanwhile, announced in September that it will market a compact set-top box, called iTV, that will allow consumers to send digital content, such as movies purchased online, to a TV set. The device will reportedly cost less than $250.

It's unclear whether Apple has built a better mousetrap, but that might be less important than the fact that Apple has built it in the first place. With Apple's brand-name cred and decades of marketing genius, the iTV might become the iPod of video-slinging boxes. Which is to say, ubiquitous.

Internet? TV? It might be hard to tell the difference much longer.