George Carlin once said that if you put together two items that have never been put together before, someone will buy them from you. Or at least he said something to that effect, and that’s definitely the case with a lot of consumer electronics these days.

Fortunately, however, the research and development departments of most electronics manufacturers are not so haphazard. Most of the time, devices that are combined in this way are well thought out, practical and definitely functional. An example of this type of device is a new type of television made by Hitachi that has a built-in digital video recorder. This is a great idea, the only problem is that it had not been thought of before. Basically, these devices that use plasma screens or LCD screens come in built-in units along with 250-gigabyte hard drives that can store dozens of hours of video recorded directly from the TV signal. It is also possible to add removable hard drives with capacities of eighty or one hundred and sixty gigabytes.

An interesting thing to note is the fact that the hard drives, both internal and external, are proprietary hardware manufactured by Hitachi and as such come with pre-loaded anti-piracy software to prevent illegal copies of recorded programs from being made. While this is a noble thing for Hitachi to include, we can imagine it will only be a matter of time before some people create a hack to get around anti-piracy software and go ahead and make illegal video copies anyway.

One thing about these new Hitachi TVs/DVRs that consumers will like is that it cheapens digital video recording capacity. After all, while these devices are likely to be more expensive than an HDTV or digital video recorder, they will certainly be cheaper than buying the two devices separately at the same time.

Similarly, consumers will also appreciate the fact that buying a digital video recorder built into their HDTV will reduce the amount of clutter in their home entertainment centers into one device. After all, the number of set-top boxes people have in their home entertainment centers is becoming a serious nuisance to them, as well as a serious source of “spaghetti” when it comes to all the cables needed for all those Of course, the idea of ​​combining HDTVs with digital video recorders is just one of many combinations of home entertainment center components you can get to minimize clutter. For example, many TV service providers offer receivers with built-in DVRs. It’s also possible to get TVs with built-in DVD players or VCRs. There is also a combination of DVD and VCR players.

If you really want to consolidate your home entertainment center devices, you should consider a media center computer. These devices combine your home computer system with a DVR, a DVD player (and often the ability to record recorded video to DVD), your receiver, and many systems will also serve as video game platforms.

Gadgets are much more useful when combined to create new devices.