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Where are the "Internet" Appliances with Ethernet Cards?
"I read a press release about the new IPaq information appliance. I think: well, I may get one of these for my kitchen. It'd be neat to have a good-looking appliance sitting somewhere on the counter so I could check e-mail, check CNN.com, have my daily moreover.com newsfeed, etc. But again: no ethernet -- just a crappy 56K modem. (And a $599 price tag! WTF is up with that? But again, I digress...)
Then, I start to think about the I-Opener. A modem. No ethernet.
So I start to wonder: why aren't there cheap internet appliances that simply have an ethernet card? Let me worry about the connection -- you sell me the hardware. The sort of appliance I might put in mykitchen for e-mail and casual surfing. I mean, I've got the home network up and running, got the firewall all configured, so everything is all set.
What's up with all these appliances and their built-in modems? I suspect it's because they're selling the service -- i.e. the 9.95 a month TIVO subscription or the 19.95 MSN service -- and so have no desire to support someone who already has the service.
So I gotta wonder: is the "true" internet appliance is still a long ways off? That what all these so-called 'internet appliances' -- TIVO included -- are simply companies risking losses on hardware in order to sell monthly services? Are there business models in place for internet appliance that *don't* rely on a modem and the monthly service? (I mean, I don't even mind the monthly service! I'd still pay 9.95 a month for TiVO -- but just ditch the modem and let me use my DSL!!)"
You gotta understand that most people don't have DSL. Dialup is still standard fare, even in the States.
Also, there are so many configurations for network setups that it may not always be possible to support all of them. It would be a technical support nightmare if they had to support DHCP routers, static IPs, PPPoE and so many other different kinds of logins that a network card could use.
With dialup its easy - 1 standard, 1 method for connecting - no ambiguity.
Maybe companies are being hesitant because they need an Appliance Over TCP/IP standard.
Somebody needs to show a secure way for a machine to be connected in an non-point-to-point environment. The TiVo is point to point, over the DSL, it would not be. Maybe some sort of VPN is needed to emulate a p2p or something secure like a ssh connection.
I know I don't want my tivo or my toaster to be "haxored"by the script kiddies.
I thought that Jini from Sun was supposed to solve some of this. Where is Jini at?
-I just work here... how am I supposed to know?
If there is ever an Lan connection on a Tvio it'd take probably less than a week for some smart arsed hack, to reverse engeneer access to those files and a means to play back and store on a PC. TViO proably doesnt want to deal with the legal implications of this, as they hinted before in there comments on the Hardware hack, they dont mind as long as no one starts poking at the propietry video file format they have.
Oblisk
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Is that they have to pitch these things where they can be used by the most people. I suspect the number of people who have a home network is relativly small. The number of people with a telephone line is significantly greater (although as it happens I have no land-line, just a mobile and ethernet :)).
:() but presumably it just dials the TiVO ISP and gets the details. Even if it gets it from centralised servers, from the way TiVO have acted so far I wouldn't be surprised if they were prepared to set up an Internet site for those with hacked ethernet TiVOs, as long as you're prepared to still pay the $9.95/month of course :)
Fortunately TiVO have already said that they have no objections to people hacking these things, and given that they run on Linux how hard can it be to put in a network card? I'm not familiar with the ins-and-outs of the TiVO (i'm in the UK and they're not out here yet
IMO we won't see devices like this with ethernet capabilities until ethernet is far more ubiquitous.
Here in the UK those that want to use the Sky Digital Television service must agree to permanently connect the box to a telephone line, so it can upload data such as which pay-for films you've been watching. At present I would expect this trend to continue..
Blaming GW Bush for the Iraq war is like blaming Ronald McDonald for the poor quality of food.
The demo I saw at Mobicom 2000 was pretty convincing and they had a sleeve for compact-flash and one for PC-cards. All that's needed is drivers for the ethernet and wireless lan cards.
For that matter, why just Ethernet support, I want wireless ethernet support, I hate wires! Simon
I have ethernet at home, wires trailing all over the upstairs of the house. I only connect to the internet with a 56k modem (in the English countryside there's nothing else avaliable for a reasonable price), but that's shared over the 3 computers using a wonderful linux distro-on-a-floppy called freesco (www.freesco.org) and an old 486 with a broken HDD. If I bought a new device like a TiVo (they come out here in the "Fall" apparently - I think that means Autumn) then I wouldn't want to go to the hassle of installing phone sockets in the living room (it's an old house, there are very few phone sockets) if I had the option of installing an ethernet socket - ethernet is far more versatile, and more suited to what I'd want to do.
The majority of homes don't have networks and/or high bandwidth connections yet (especially in the UK & Europe). So the market is not big enough for ethernet appliances, compared to the modem only versions, "Only a normal phoneline required for use". And why put in both and increase your costs?
Secondly they don't trust users with the data ! It becomes so much easier to break open your packet sniffer and start reverse engineering whatever protocol they are using, or redirect the communication or whatever the user feels like doing when its on a network. A phone line is so much more controlled.
Give it a while for home networks to become more popular (and standardise) and ethernet connectors may start to appear.
I know it's not a full-featured appliance, but the Kerbango internet radio offers Ethernet connections as well as landline. I think the reasoning behind that is because most of the people who would even know what to do with an internet radio are geeks with a high likelihood of owning a home network.
I agree with many posters regarding the profit motive. Although I have an ethernet home network, only 2 of my coworkers do as well. Most of my coworkers use dialup, but the cable-modem faction is definitely on the rise!
Would the current solution for we cutting-edge people to attempt to add ethernet to an existing appliance, or is it better to just buy a cheap PC, install a minimal Linux distro and leave it running?
Illegitimi non carborundum
Just my $0.02
The bastard
"Oh, I got me a helmet - I got a beauty!"
"Oh, I got me a helmet - I got a beauty!"
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so it wouldn't be cost effective to include an ethernet card if hardly no one used it.
O.K, but why not do what Printer manufactuers do, and build the connection in as a swap-out card. You can then easily have two options on the same hardware, a 56k Modem "Standard" option, and a Ethernet option for those who need it.
Using cards also means that the "Standard" option can be upgraded, or allow connections to new type s of technology (Firewire, USB etc.).
Syllable : It's an Operating System
You'd want some kinda of inter-house broadcast protocol..
: WHO-HAS PERSON-NEAR && CAN-ALERT?
: SEND-ALERT "Toast's up!"
Those who create these devices (contrary to popular opinion) are not complete morons.
:)
In the case of the I-Opener if they gave you an ethernet socket then you would be able to connect it to the net down your cable line (and not thru their expensive service). Plus anyone knows that when it comes to making nice thin linux clients it's far more important to have an ethernet adaptor than even a hard disk.
No ethernet adaptor lessens the incentive to hack it
However my cable tv box has a serial port, ps/2 port, ethernet port, and one or two other proprietry ones that all have no documented use. Not to mention having a second smart card slot which is meant to be for Mondex electronic transactions. Although i see no reason to want to connect my cabletv box to my cable modem since i guess the tv box has a modem inside it anyway.
Do you think we could petition Microchip to make a microcontroller with built in 10mbit ethernet and tcp/ip. That way it could be made fairly trivial to built ethernet into the home appliances we already own.
Supply and demand. Catch-22. There is a huge potential market where phone lines exist. By comparison, the number of cable modem or DSL customers is but a tiny fraction of that, now.
So, from a business perspective, where do you put your money when designing and manufacturing a product? Where the biggest market exists. Sure, they COULD add the hardware for an ethernet connection, but that costs money, and the expense would have to be paid by the consumer. A modem-only device would be less expensive to manufacture than a dual-mode model. (An ethernet-only model would have too small a market, now, to even consider.)
Herein lies an opportunity. From the start, I'll grant you that the customer would lose out on the high-speed of a cable modem/DSL connection, but it would at least free up their phone line. (As these devices become increasingly popular, I could readily imagine a dozen or so devices each trying to grab a phone-line connection.)
How about a box that interfaces with the analog modem signal on the internet appliance side (e.g. RJ11), and interfaces with the ethernet LAN (RJ-45) on the other side?
What would YOU be willing to pay for such a device?
Caveat: It might require some salesmanship to persuade the appliance vendors that there are cost-effective alternatives to purchasing and maintaining racks of modems for their clients to dial into; that these could be bypassed with a high-speed link to the ethernet direct to their routers.
Also, it is a market that would eventually disappear as high-speed access becomes pervasive and the vendors create products with the ethernet port built-in, but in the interim, I suspect a small fortune could be made.
Hmmm, anyone got $100 million to invest? (Paraphrasing an old saw: Question: How do you make a small fortune on the internet? Answer: Start with a large fortune? <grin>)
I think it would definately be powerful and useful if it were possible to connect all of these various devices together and allow them to communicate with each other. Not necessarily via TCP/IP and Ethernet, though that would certainly have advantages for connecting to computers and LANs. It could instead be some sort of new standard that would be easier for the average user to use, seeing as most people probably don't have their home wired for Ethernet already. Something that worked over existing wiring in the home, such as the phone lines, might be ideal in terms of ease of use if it were possible.
:)
If these devices could be interconnected easily, there would be lots of interesting possibilities for home automation and the like. Already one can use systems like X-10 to control devices, but this could be taken to the next level. For example, it would be useful to have a stereo that could pull MP3s from a centralized server, took audio and video from various sources (including, perhaps, a TiVo-like device, or streaming video from the internet) and distributed them to various locations around the house, and had an easy interface for controlling these features. These sort of things are indeed possible now, but they require complex enough setup and wiring that these are out of reach of the average consumer.
I'm envisioning a unified interface for connecting these various devices. It'd need both a physical means of communication - Ethernet is a possibility, and the bandwidth available with the faster variants is appealing; perhaps a wireless system would be more effective for the majority of people who don't have their homes wired for Ethernet. There would also be a need for a standardized, extensible, secure set of protocols for these devices to interact. This is a lot to hope for; perhaps I'm dreaming a bit too unrealistically - it's getting later and I'm running out of caffeine.
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
> Ethernet on all devices would be cool, indeed,
> but who the heck has ethernet at home?
Actually I cannot think of any of my friends that doesn't have it. Even my *father* has installed ethernet at his home. And he is NOT a computer geek.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
That's why every Apple Macintosh has standard 10/100 ethernet....
Ethernet is more and more becoming THE standard.
And modems (especially analog) are on the way out.
Most people are switching to ISDN, ADSL or cable.
Most ISDN-routers also have an ethernetconnector.
According to the FAQ on the unofficial TiVo Hackers Site, adding an ethernet card to replace the modem is something they are working on or at least thinking about. Of course, you'll void your warranty . . .
That'd be me, and pretty much all of my computer geek friends. Even some of my non-geek friends have a home network for multi-player gaming under Win32.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
http://www.avsforum.com/ubbtivo/Forum6/HTML/000398 .html
If you do not have the serial port tied up with a satellite box, you can run ppp from the serial port to a server and set the default route. See the above link for instructions.
OTOH, it is only a short phone call every 25 hours.
"Is it really that hard to do?"
This is the perennial question from business and engineering newbies. Difficulty has nothing to do with it. Net payoff is the only factor.
Modems are:
-cheaper
-simpler
-more standard
Furthermore, even if Ethernet were tied on all the above it would still not have the wide adoption rate required to make a profit.
But if you are determined to not tie up a phone line you might have an option (depending on the device). Connect the device to your home server via a phone line. Just let it dial into your server and get to the Internet that way. (Clearly this doesn't work with devices that have proprietary protocols--which is another reason in favor of modems).
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What i would imagine the major reason they are fitted with Modems are for the security reasons behind them.
You will probably be dialing in to a closed network not openly connected to the rest of the net therefor DSL would be an option anyways. This would reduce the possibilities of it being hacked, and if the number was hard coded into the TiVO software or something then it would make it much harder to dial in to this netowkr using a standard modem/pc.
I refuse to believe that it is as simple as connect to their server. etc.
Companies such as these rely on the service to make them money, if it ws being hacked or exploited every few months or whatever then this is major cause for concern and all of the services users.
Hope this will spread a bit of light!
Why don't they just have a pcmcia card or pc card, sorry forgot what they are called, but those are the things used in notebook computers, you know those credit card sized [insert generic device] cards?
That way, when you order, you can choice to get a modem for an additional $25 bucks, an ethernet card for an additiional $25 bucks or without anything. This way in [insert remainig life span of ethernet] years when ethernet is dead, you can take your favorite off the shelf pc networking card (wireless ethernet
Still an ethernet would be better by default then a 56K modem, or better yet add ethernet and stick a serial port on the back so you can terminal you way in or use it on an analog device to dialog out or even a direct connection to the host computer via serial null modem type of thing.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
Pick up a flat panel LCD at an online auction and you'll get more than an appliance, you'll get half a PC!
I'm envisioning a unified interface for connecting these various devices...There would also be a need for a standardized, extensible, secure set of protocols for these devices to interact.
Oh, you mean Sun Microsystem's Jini(tm), or how about Microsoft's Universal Plug and Play (tm)?
As for using something other than ethernet for connectivity for consumer electronics, isn't that what Firewire / IEEE1394 was supposed to deliver on? Or, if you're talking about using the existing phone wiring in the home, how about something like this thingee from D-Link?
Now... There are a few examples of tech we have right now , basically. So why aren't we using them more? Various reasons I don't feel like going into, but basically they're being slow to adopt.
Meanwhile, more and more homes are being outfitted with Cable Modem and DSL broadband equipment, which for the most part means ethernet. Which is making it a growing defacto standard for home networking. Many of the things that the hardcore geeks are tinkering with now (home hubs and routers) will be common commodity in a few short years.
So, while there might be something more appropriate for the home than ethernet... I'd rather see internet appliances now with an ethernet module, and maybe the option for a pluggable NewHomeAutomationBusFastNetThing in the future. As for TCP/IP, again there might be something better, but that's what's showing up as the transport of choice in broadband homes across the world.
So again, great blue sky vision. But we have cable modems, DSL, ethernet, and TCP/IP in the home now. Give us more appliances ready for this growing market. (I mean, I don't have to shut off the fridge when I want to use the microwave, why should I have to shut off the IPad when I want to use my Dreamcast online?!)
The New Internet Computer seems to have what you're looking for.
Look at the Mobicom 2000 website to see what kind of subjects were presented and discussed there....
A lot of these research projects are funded by the millitary, because ad-hoc networks are an obvious solution for situations where you don't have or cannot trust the infrastructured networks (be they wireless or wired).
Both wireless LAN and Bluetooth are capable of ad-hoc networks, but higher layers (the IP layer) must have some form of configuration to talk to each other. This is being developed in the IETF in the MANET and ZeroConf working groups.
Speed of these networks will improve over time, the other developments are at least as important and they will take some more years to mature I believe, so when it all comes together, heaven is upon us ;-)
Another interesting subject is ubiquitos or pervasive Internet. Meaning the accessibility of Internet in all (reasonably capable) devices and in all physical locations.
One complication is that Internet should not just be accessible to the rich, but also the poor and the people in the developing countries (this is important for a lot of reasons, but I digress...)
About a year ago I started badgering our electricians at work, who do all our data wiring, if they had any partial CAT5 spools they wanted to sell. I had just moved into a new house and wanted to be able to pull 3 x CAT5 runs per room and having to rewind wire from a 1000' pull-box onto spools was a pain in the ass, hence the desire to buy the 1000' as 3 x 350' boxes.
Anyway, one of the electricians stopped me in the hall and said "you were ahead of your time. They just made CAT5 wiring code-required for all new construction, both voice and data." So Ethernet may not be everywhere, but the demand is great enough that the electrical code now mandates CAT5 wiring. I even saw Joanne Liebler pulling CAT5 during a Hometime episode.
The question I have, has anybody committed to fiber? When I say committed, I mean pulled into walls and part of the infrastructure, not just using 1M drops between FO tranceivers. How many pairs did you pull per room? Does it just serve as a replacement for 100M copper ethernet or are you running gigabit/ATM over it?
Your WAN router could dial out via good old analog, the connection is completely immaterial. It would be fairly trivial for the vendors to provide for two scenarios:
1. Internal modem with vendor's dial-up server
OR
2. Internal Ethernet card, with options for:
a. DHCP/BOOTP OR static IP
b. default gateway
c. optional proxy server
d. optional POP3 server
e. any other device-specific features
Setting up for these two scenarios could be easily accomplished with a simple wizard that makes it idiot-proof. The initial choice between vendor's ISP and Ethernet could be labeled in colorful ways such as EASY SETUP and ADVANCED.
Eventually vendors WILL have to take this approach, as appliances get more and more popular. Once you have a few appliances, say one in the kitchen, one in the living room (maybe set-top box), one in the bedroom/can/den/torture chamber, vendors will have to provide for the possibility of all/some of these devices being used simultaneously. With a single phone line that just ain't possible, guv.
Besides, as appliances become more popular, smaller and smaller vendors will start offering them, and many of them simply won't have the capital to set up their own ISPs. Including just Ethernet is an easy way for them to cheapen out, and still address a large audience. Home LANs are becoming a lot more popular than large companies are willing to concede (there are stats on that, I couldn't be bothered to look them up now), and sooner or later they'll wake up and smell the coffee and realize the money they could save.
Overall, though, I think the main reason there will be a move away from modems is the multiple appliance simultaneous access problem.
Uwe Wolfgang Radu
For now, most of the homes that buy "internet appliances" only have one, or maybe two, the market is just starting, and it's slow. To have to buy an "internet appliance multiplexor" that can share your phone line with many home internet appliances would be an excessive burden, if all you have is an iVCR. However, the manufacturers are going to have to get their heads together and come up with a standard for home internet connectivity, and then you'll have a $50 box that plugs into the phone line, and all your household devices (including your Windows PC, then 1-6 months later your Linux PC) will connect to it via ethernet, USB, power lines, radio, or whatever, and it'll dial up the internet on demand. https should cover the manufacturers' security concerns. I'm looking forward to it.
Eh, somehow I don't think this would work.
First of all, you can only get 33600bps when going from user to user (all analog); one end needs to be digital in order to get 56K speeds.
Second, how will the TiVO know it's going to be able to connect even though it got no dialtone?
The closest you might be able to get would be to set up an internal phone network and hook it up to that. And have the number it dials go to your system's modem. Of course, you'd still be limited to 33.6kbps...
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This is the same argument that my wife uses. She's an aerobics instructor. She'll often argue with me that 'everyone' works out everyday.
I'll respond to you the way I respond to her. The people you know are an extremely small subset of the worlds population.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
In the US, we have 900 numbers -- anywhere from 50 cents up to $10 per minute. However, many homes (especially homes with curious young children) put blocks on 900-number calls, and fraud is so widespread that phone companies will usually remove a 900-number charge without too much of a fight. If TiVo called such a number, there would be an immense public outcry, and maybe even a class-action lawsuit.
Most large ISP's go through services like SprintNet to get local access numbers to most of the country. As a result, most customers won't pay more than 10 cents for the call, regardless of how long it lasts.
For more information, click here.
Then, I start to think about the I-Opener. A modem. No ethernet.
I-Opener has one USB port (contrary to a false rumour, you can add another if you like surface mount soldering). The USB can be adapted to ethernet if you like. The caviat here is that Netpliance does not support any of the above, even thought the hardware does (kinda).
You can check the latest progress on I-Opener hacking here, including the processor upgrades up to K6-III 333 AFK (it is an OEM chip, Fry's has tham all).
The point is well taken that it does not seem like the manufacturers want to enable this capability, even if it is sitting there waiting to be activated. Kinda disappointing.
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I agree with the article 100%. It's sad (and expensive!) to keep making these nifty little gadgets with redundant dialup hardware.
I propose that a manufacturer produce a little PPPD-and-modem in a box, with 1-4 ethernet jacks, and a minimal configuration system. Then, even the most un-savvy user can have their own home network, while the rest of us aren't made to buy multiple losey modems.
Buy an iPaq? Buy a dialer box! Want another for the bathroom? You've already got connectivity, so the next one is cheaper!
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Though I'm still worried that technical details might keep it from being widely accepted.
Jini can run on top of Bluetooth. TCP/IP is optional for Bluetooth. Theoretical bandwidth of 720kbps. Range of 30 feet, so would need repeaters throughout the house.
I think we're right to ask why we can't get simple x-terminals (or equivelents) to buy. But I'm going to stop thinking from my angle and start thinking from the angle of the service providers.
Ultimately, what they're selling is a content delivery service. They give you the "node" at the end of the line and they hope to sell you stuff to go on it. This holds true for all Internet appliances with the "sell the blades" model, whether it's a simple surfing device or a TiVO. They want to sell you content, and in order to reach a wider audience they give you the node to sweeten the deal.
This raises a fundamental question. Will we have to pay to get content delivered to every last device in our home?
I think we all know the answer: none of us would. By definition, then, we don't have to - I don't think any consumers would do that.
So here's how the internet appliance companies are going to adapt their content delivery service once A) broadband becomes more common and B) they get their software and hardware established:
The appliance companies are going to give away servers. After a time, when Joe-consumer begins to want more than two or three ways to access the internet, he'll begin to balk at paying for all this. And the appliance companies will build server appliances: instead of delivering content to the individual devices that we use, they'll deliver it to servers owned by consumers (and given away/sold very cheaply by the service providers). Once the content is on the server (thinking especially music and video here) then we can plug in as many devices as we own via ethernet.
-Merlyn42
The audience doesn't care if it's hard.
Actually I did have Ethernet at home. http://www.waldenweb.com
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
Look, many users couldn't tell the difference between a phone line and an ethernet jack if both had neon signs.
I've helped new students get their spiffy new machines setup in the dorms at my university, and, belive me, people plugged phone cables into their modem and then wanted to know why the ethernet connection wasn't working.
Imagine your typical AOLer. Yeah. They know the difference.
But there are issues. In some cases, we are bundling services with the system -- these are not yet something you would likely buy for home use if you already had a PC. In some installations, you're getting our box via another service provider, such as a cable TV company, and may very well be able to share the connection with a PC.
TiVo and more specific purpose units are, and sure, there's no really reason no to allow alternate hookups even there, except perhaps the support issue. They want to sell an appliance -- every unit is basically the same unit, and not offering an Ethernet hookup may save on the support side without really hurting their acceptance among advanced users. After all, I bought my TiVo anyway; I would have preferred an ethernet hookup.
Of course, TiVo may also be taking a shortcut and not running over a full TCP/IP link, which is another issue.
In time, this will change. The phone thing works for the first appliance, gets annoying for the second (I also have a satellite box in the same room), unmanageable much beyond that. As connected appliances grow, they will at first support and later demand some kind of home network. Hopefully, that'll be IP6 based with some choice in options, though there's certainly a chance the consumer electronics giants will embrace one thing (maybe bluetooth, maybe not) so completely that computer users and smaller manufacturers like me will have not choice but to follow suit.
We're entering the transition phase now -- give it a few years.
-Dave Haynie
Those lovely people over at the Dallas Semiconductor toyshop make a gadget that's just the job for this, the TINI board.
Size of a DIMM module, built-in 10baseT, a Dallas one-wire interface, runs Java and costs $50. What more could you want ?
..the hardware may be cheaper. But that's not the only cost. With a networking device you also have to have a networking subsystem. With a modem you just write to a serial port. Then there's configuration (modem=phone#; network=IP, mask, gateway, dns, etc), support (modem=normal phone problems; network=normal network problems which are more numerous and less easy for Joe Blow).
Well, that's totally unreadable. Oh well.
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Oh, you beat me. I've only had it for 7 years, the last 3 of which has been at 100 mbps.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The file format is MPEG, but the MPEG files are stored on a hard disk partition which uses a proprietary filesystem. You can pop the HD out of a TiVo today and (noting that it is of a different endian order than i86) put that HD in a PC, but you can't mount the partitions containing the MPEG... today.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
The first Network computers were produced by Acorn and were equiped with either a modem or a network card.
They were booting amazingly quickly, provided perfect television display (with the nicest anti-aliasing ever) and were damn quick at displaying HTML (NCFresco).
If you can still buy a cheap one on the Net, there are other alternatives still being produced and featuring lots of goodies like a RiscStation or some Oregan product.
The latter supports lots of features includinf Java, but no CSS, though.
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Trolling using another account since 2005.
is exactly the reason. Remember, the i-Opener fiasco? The reason those things are so cheap, is the hardware is sold at a loss, and they make it up on the service. Same with TiVo. The TiVo company actually pays Sony, Panasonic, et al, to sell their hardware at a loss, so TiVo can make it back in subscription fees (and kickback some of it to the hardware companies.) The reason most don't have Ethernet is because they can control the service better if you dial directly in to them, instead of going through such an odd medium as the internet.
I recently ran into that dilemma. I signed up for a wireless internet access (long-range derivative of 802.11b) and cancelled my home phone service, leaving only my cell phone as my telephone. Now, on a sunny day (solar panels on my house,) I am drawing absolutely nothing from the local grid. No power, no water (well,) no phone (cell,) no TV (old-fasioned antenna,) and no internet... But, I decided that while I may get a great reception of the broadcast networks, I wanted some better TV (I miss the Discovery Channel.) So, I went off to my local A/V store, and looked around.
We've got DirecTV, Dish, Primestar, and a few others. They all sounded good (Dish has my local channels, DirecTV gets them at the end of this month, so my search focused on those two,) except that they require a POTS line to dial in to their server. Not only once on initial configuration, but also if I ever want to watch pay-per-view. Darn.
Then, there's TiVo. GREAT idea. I went out to pick up the Sony model as soon as it came out. But... That darned modem again. I could still use the hardware as an overpriced VCR, but I'd lose all scheduling capabilities, plus the (in my opinion) best feature, taste matching. Come on, how hard would it have been to ALSO include a $10 NIC chip on there, add on a $0.25 RJ-45 port, and let those of us with broadband connections use them!
But, that brings us back to control... Do you know that TiVo collects the info on every show you watch? I'm sure you've thought about it, but read your contract. It says that they have the right to use any information they collect for aggregate statistical analysis, and targeted promotions. This means that sooner or later, you'll start getting ads that are being sent not by the network, or the cable provider, but by TiVo. TiVo will have such good tracking of your taste (after all, you've been telling them exactly what you do and don't like...) that every ad will be tailor-made for you. So, of course they want to keep control of the transfer medium. They don't want that pesky internet getting in the way of their data mining...
Or, I could be wrong, and they're just too cheap to put $15 of extra hardware on there....
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
All Axis equipment has RS232, Parallel port, SCSI, EIDE, Ethernet and Token Ring support. The only difference is what is plugged in... About the only thing that's missing from their own ETRAX processor is a MMU, but you can live without that. It's a lovely processor for building anything net-aware.
It simply makes no economic sense, at this time, to offer ethernet on TiVo. When DSL has a larger market penetration, this will change.
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It's a
-- Danny Vermin
Cost is a big factor. Broadband isn't even available in most households. Thus, putting in ethernet where it would benefit relatively few people would make it cost more for everyone else. In a price-sensitive market, this would be a Bad Thing.
Even if a person does have broadband, not everyone is set up to have either multiple IPs or a router and private IPs to internal networks or any of the other geek things we all have at home. Right?
Tell me you want to explain to your grandma how she has to set up DHCP on this shiny new router connected to a lame-ass PPPoE consumer-grade DSL line so that she can get her TiVo working.
Tell me that the average consumer knows the difference between a Cat-5 connector and a phone jack.
Security is also a factor. If the box was on the net 24/7, someone could conceivably hack info about your viewing habits. For example.
_Deirdre (engineer at TiVo, but speaking for herself)
(yeah, much frustration and blood was spent routing the wires, drilling holes in floor joists, etc., but it was definately worth it in the end. Also, my dad added a computer in his office a few weeks ago, and stringing another piece of cat5 was no problem at all.)
-legolas
i've looked at love from both sides now. from win and lose, and still somehow...
Karma gets frozen when you have more then 50, you moron
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
DHCP is really an easy enough protocol for most any device. There are already quite a few "Broadband switches" that act as a DHCP client and server as well as a firewall. (As a bad firewall)
With the advent of ethernet available appliances we will most likely see the next version of ethernet/internet access support much of this in the providers interface. (Not the monkey boy cable modems of today, but the internet pipe to your futurehome.) The technologies are still in their infancies. Over the next 20 years we will see the PC as we know it become obsolete in favor of appliances. As this trend begins the market leaders will be those that bring this to someone other than the geeks and the freaks.
All you need is 172.16 class addresses beyond the firewall anyway. DHCP will do a fine job of this. The last thing we need is a new protocol to muck things up. (Although for the rest of the world a new protocol will need to come and soon...)
The only reason to go with another protocol would be that it would work better on a chip level, hence would integrate better in smaller appliances. The one that shall rule them all is the one that is the easiest to use and the most difficult to hack. *SIGH*
~Hammy
"I did not have sex with that woman..." B.C.