Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
As TVs and Blu-ray players increasingly feature internet connections, content partnerships, and now even open operating systems, they're turning up the pressure on of standalone devices such as Apple TV and the Roku player. Indeed, Steve Jobs has said the demanding existence between the rock of the connected television and the hard place of the closed cable system is what's relegated Apple TV to "hobby" status.
In the Windows world, several companies in the netbook space such as Asus, Acer and Lenovo have popped Atom processors into s
