In order for the media to converge, two main things need to occur.  First, computers and televisions must be able to be content interchangeable.  That is, computers must be able to view and use television content, and televisions must be able to view and receieve Internet content.  Second, people must be sufficiently interested in being able to view the same content on both device to make implementation of this interoperability commercially viable.  The two are clearly interrelated, since the amount of interest in interoperability people have determines how much they are willing to pay for that functionality.

Before determining whether it is possible to make television and computers interoperable, we need a list of what sorts of content both can, or will be able to receive.  To start, here is a list of some of the content we might see on both the web and digital television in the future:

• Television Content:
  • Television shows
  • Movies
  • Commercials
• World Wide Web Content:
  • Media presentations (scripted presentations of various media objects including text, 3-D graphics, audio and video)
  • Games (non-scripted temporal presenation of various media objects with which the user/viewer can interact)
  • Information blocks (collections of media objects through which the user/viewer can browse)

The Computer

It is easiest to first answer the question of whether a computer will be able to receive television content.  The types of content that are broadcast over television currently, and will continue to be broadcast if the two media do not converge, are audio/video streams.  Since the computer media already includes audio and video streams, it should be able to decode the streams with no extra equipment.  The possible exception to this is the addition of a tuner card to decode the analog signal into the digital stream, but this should be of marginal additional cost considering the cost of purchasing a computer.
So, a computer will be able to receive television content for little extra cost.  Since the cost difference between a machine with this capability and a machine without this capability will be low, even if there is little consumer interest in this, machines will still come with this capability.

The Television

The more difficult question is whether a television will be able to display world wide web content.  It is pretty clear that you can put enough hardware into a television to make it able to display the media that a computer can display.  Essentially you would need to add a reasonable sized hard disk, some memory, and a fairly fast general purpose processor.  How much would this add to the cost of the television?  I will guess at the prices of items six years from now if they are shipping in large quanties.