Colin Stewart, tech columnist for the hometown paper of the OC, is a smart guy (He must be; he agrees with me.) He makes a lot of sense in a recent column in which he says that a lot of the “gee-whiz” predictions of high-tech writers just won’t happen. His thoughts on our favorite topic: PC-TV convergence or the battle for the living room, as he calls it:

“Electronics in the living room will remain an uncoordinated mess. At present, with few exceptions, the family TV doesn’t connect to a computer or a stereo or the Internet. The DVR won’t talk to your computer’s hard drive.

“The living room is a battlefield for tech companies, said Dwight Decker, the chairman of Conexant Systems in Newport Beach, Calif. “It’s a real food fight.”

“Tech companies have little incentive to solve that problem because they see the living room as turf to conquer. If they can make money on their own gadgets, why coordinate with others?

“It’s a horrible mess,” said Henry Samueli, founder and chief technical officer at Broadcom in Irvine, Calif. “Nothing has been done to solve it in a clean way.” As a result, using current technology to create a networked digital living room is beyond most people’s abilities.”

Bigger unsolved problems, said Samueli, are agreeing on payments for copyrighted videos and crafting software that allows easy control for enormously complex devices.

“Unless you’re a junior engineer, it’s very difficult to implement,” said Steven Joe, president and chief executive of D-Link in Fountain Valley, Calif.”

What are Stewart’s suggestions?

1) Don’t run out and buy the disappointing Microsoft Media Center, which was supposed to become the hub of a digital living room back in 2002 and then again in subsequent revisions. (Agree – See our recent comment on this.)

2) Don’t count too much on Apple, either, because it never learned how to play well with others. It entered the turf war with the Apple TV networking device, a gadget you’ll love if your idea of fine entertainment is watching iTunes videos on a big screen instead of on your iPod. (Disagree – AppleTV will open up more and more; and its elegance and simplicity is the standard others will follow. I am comfortable predicting that early adopters will be rewarded sooner rather than later.