I was last night at HP's SmartHome in Cupertino where the PC division was hosting a pre-CES NDA briefing reception. Of course, I can't say anything about the new devices I've seen there but what I can say is that 2008 will be the year of connected TVs for HP. Either connected to the home network or directly to the Internet. Also, seeing this house in the middle of HP's deserted parking lot had a bizarre feeling of "deja-vu": HP brought this home after CES 2005 from the Las Vegas convention centre parking lot.
During the evening I had a chance to chat with Carlos Montalvo (pictured), the marketing vice-president of HP's Managed Home business, and a former Apple Quicktime exec. Which made the conversation suddendly all the more interesting when I compared HP's connected home with the Apple TV.

"Apple TV is bad TV. It's a closed system and there is little content for it. Besides, it's a push system: you have to download the content and then push it to the Apple TV. With our Connected TVs, you pull the content from wherever it is, your PC, your network storage or the Internet. You have the choice", said Carlos Montalvo.

The video of Montalvo's opening comments after the jump.