Since the date Marty and Doc went to the future in the movie didn't just pass earlier this month (as a popular hoax had many believing), that gives us some time

In my unrelenting search to find a cheap hdtv, I've been looking for some bells and whistles too, most importantly internet connectivity. I want to be able to connect to my social sites, media sites, and write apps so I can connect to more sites. One thing that seems an obvious benefactor with internet connected TVs is the opportunity to turn them into communicating devices. While the surface is being scratched connecting to social sites, direct communication still has no good place in TV.

I've seen webcams in computer monitors and webcams on computer monitors, but I haven't seen that on a LED, LCD, or PLASMA HDTV so far. If you've ever used video to video chat, you know just - how - SNAZZY it can be. New "smartphones" and ultra portable web devices like netbooks and ipods may have them. Televisions offer the unique opportunity to bring live video chat to the non-tech-savvy people if they have a good enough user interface and integration. They have an opportunity to bring visual communication to the world.

In my search for a cheap HDTV, I did not expect to find an HDTV with a camera integrated into it, I did expect to find an expensive one. While searching for even an expensive webcam integrated TV, I found none. Why is this? Perhaps they're making enough money as it is, or perhaps there's no common medium through which to travel (especially one that integrates well for good ease of use/interface for non-tech-savvy users). Whatever the case, our TVs need webcams so we can have live chat, like in Back to the Future.

This is a call for video chat providers like Skype, Google and others to work with TV manufactures to readily integrate video chat. It's also a call for TV manufactures to do the same while also making their TV's more "hackable"... USB or other interfaces can be used for "addon" webcams with integrated services. Unless some device maker is really clever, there will probably be no "addon" webcam that comes even close to the ease of use of a well integrated webcam into an HDTV though.

That's my spheel for today. Don't feel bad if you were amongst the many who believed the hoax was real. I too fell victim to believe those before me had also researched the issue before re-posting it. If I hadn't just done a little Googling before writing this article a few minutes ago, this article would have had a much better effect :D This is why skeptics and conspiracy theorists are vital... They keep the powerful "wisdom of crowds" in check.

Take this idea and run with it if you've got the tools!