*Going the way of the drive-in theater and the public telephone booth.
(...)
"It was not long ago that an essential component for selling a house was a "TV room," a place that could accommodate some couches and a few comfy chairs angled for multiple-person viewing. Now, between the explosion of available channels, the burgeoning number of devices for multimedia viewing, and the shrinking size of homes, the TV room is going the way of the land line. In some cases, solo viewing is the only chance for "me time."
"If I advertised a TV room in a house today, people would be asking me, 'What is that?' " said Deborah Grassi, a longtime agent for Coldwell Banker James C. Otten Real Estate in Stone Harbor. And for her summer Shore rentals, forget it. "You have to have a TV in every room. You never know who wants to be where.
"I think it is just a myth that people want to watch together. In my house, it is an opportunity to do our own things - alone."
"In fact, TV itself is moving away from the central TV. Hulu and YouTube have made the computer and handhelds into primary entertainment viewing devices, while cable and other TV connection services are just trying to stay afloat. Verizon, for instance, in November rolled out Flex View, which currently has 2,000 on-demand titles that can be downloaded or rented for mobile devices. Even the idea of needing a room, let alone labeling one as the place to watch TV, is fast becoming obsolete.
"The modernist architects would say that a house always responds to the technology that is introduced," said James Moustafellos, associate director for the Center for Design + Innovation at Temple University's Fox School of Business. "When TV was introduced, people disguised it as a piece of furniture. Socially, people didn't know how to integrate it."
"Then came the TV room, with its updating over the years. But now technology has superseded it.
"Now TV is a fluid thing..."
