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Linux TV
Stealth Dave writes "ZDNet has an article about a new television from Sylvania which is basically a Linux box with a 27" monitor and TV tuner (800x600 resolution, even)! It runs a Geode single-chip solution and is broadband capable. Lots of cool features, and is designed to support a hard drive as well. The ZDNet article has a surprising amount of details without being too technical to lose their broader audience." This "news story" reads a lot more like an advertisement, but take it for what it's worth.
TV screens usually have longer persistence phosphors, brighter, non-interlaced, slower refresh, and lower resolution. Computers screens have shorter persistence, dimmer, interlaced, faster refresh, and higher resolution.
That's because a computer user typically sits two feet away from the screen and a tv watcher sits twelve feet away. Computer users need to read very small text, tv watchers don't read lots of info off the screen. Using the wrong kind of screen for the job would be annoying for any one of the reasons listed above. Try to compromise at a point in between, and you end up with an image that's too dim or bright, too flickery or with trails behind moving objects, or too blurry.
The requirements for the two types of screens are very different, and each has specially designed displays. It's certainly true that it's not economical to make a CRT screen that does both of these jobs well. Are there flat LCD (or other technology) screens that do both well? Maybe some day, but not yet in the mass market price range.
Companies should analyze whether putting Linux in their products will actually be useful after the excitement is over. I think there are too many paper pushers out there that read an article on Linux and wet themselves, convinced that putting it in everything will be a great idea.
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Oh bother.
A television with a network connection. I can see it now.
Kiddie 1: "D00d! 1 r00t3d tH1s pH@t t3l3v1s10n!!"
Kiddie 2: "L33t! J00 0wnZ!"
I better go firm up my firewall...
--jwriney
Recording involves a *lot* more then plugging in a HD; it means hardware built to suport this this (a fast processor / hw assist video system / sound generations / etc.) If it was trivial every linux box out there would be happly DVCRing away.
Since possible DVCR not in the announcement then I don't expect it in this model.
Indeed I wouldn't be suprised if the IDE port is simply a leftover from whatever design they licensed. Perhaps they have an internal goal of a DVCR in v.2 or something but dollars to donuts it won't be possible in what they've got listed now.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
The answer to the "why Linux?" questions typical of mainstream media was telling and amounted to "Because it was there, and we didn't have to license it!" Once the reporters begin to understand what the GPL REALLY means, the lid will be off and we will all be mainstream.
REPORTER: Why Linux?
SAVVY ENTREPRENEUR: Because we already owned it and held the license for it. So do you. So does everybody. We DID contribute to the Linux International organization, but we didn't have to. We already owned the software and system. So do you.
REPORTER: Huh???!!!
SE: (continuing) Yeah. The GPL meant that we could build on work already done by others, take that work for free, extend it and give the stuff we paid people to do back to the community/source. For free. We the spent our investors' money in making the idea consumer-friendly and affordable. Because we didn't HAVE to take on or license a partner or partners' technology, we have a better chance of survival. Our business model works BECAUSE OF THE GPL. We can be assured that, from the standpoint of the operating system and hardware drivers, at least, we don't have exposure to intellectual-property or copyright issues...There may be patent issues on the terms of the interface, or the functions of the system, but we wrote that into the business plan and are funded to either license or defend against Gemstar. We were prepared for that when we made the decision to enter the space.
REPORTER: But...but...but...you didin't pay for the software......!!!!!!!! That's STEEEEEALING!!!! (begins to swoon)
SE: No, it's not. You can't steal something you already own. More importantly, we paid people to extend the work others did and then gave that work back to the community to be further extended by those same people...That gave us another tremendous advantage. Because we set the project up on a publicly accessible project hosting platform, we can look at those people continuing to volunteer to improve the project and extend it's functionality and get to know them and perhaps hire the best of them based on work they have already done and that has proved a valuable extension and great fit for our business. It makes the problem of finding the personnel resources necessary to grow our business faster than the competition that much easier; thereby further ensuring the success of our business. We concentrate on the consumer. We made a TV behave and receive data like a computer...It's still a TV...simple to operate. Inexpensive. That's our business: to extend the TV as an appliance and add some computer functionality to it. Because we own the base platform the technology is built on, we're free to extend it or allow the community to do so while we continue to make it cheaper and easier to use. Understand?
REPORTER: BUT YOU DIDN'T PAY FOR THE SOFTWARE!!! YOU DON'T HAVE A PLATFORM PARTNER!!! HOW WILL YOU SUCCEED? WHO WILL PAY FOR YOUR SUPPERBOWL ADS?
SE: Ummmm...I think maybe you better read the first paragraph of the GPL. I think that concludes the interview. Thanks.
Questions from the audience:
1. How long befor Gemstar goes after these guys?
2. What's the next great embedded Linux platform/idea?
3. How long befor CE REALLY is dead?
4. Does J2ME have a chance without Sun GPL'ing the whole J2 package?
Remember guys, this is Amerika. Just because you have the most votes, doesn't mean you get to win.--Fox Mulder
The monitor sounds a lot like the Arcadia Series Presentation Displays from Princeton Graphics. I purchased one of these 27 inch monitors a few years ago. It is essentially a 14 inch monitor turned into a giant 27 inch display. It's maximum res is 800x600, but the video bandwidth is 30 to 38 MHz, which allows only 60 Hz refresh at 800x600. The flicker wasn't so bad for games, but the monitor was basically unusable for any "normal" desktop applications. For a while I had a PC hooked up to it, but a 27 inch monitor at low res in the living room (sitting several feet away) isn't nearly as entertaining for games as a 21 inch hi-res monitor at the computer desk, where I sit about 18 inches away from the screen. I do like the princeton monitor for watching videos, as it has a line doubler that's always on. My ears are quite sensitive to the 15 kHz sound that's associated with all normal TVs. My girlfriend sometimes watches TV, like that survivor show, and it's nice to be able to walk around the house without the high-pitch pressure of 15 kHz on my eardrums. Not getting hearaches anymore was well worth the rather expensive price tag. It does make for an excellent picture watching video. The novelty of a such a large screen for a PC display wore off very quickly, even for games.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I would reccommend capturing at 640x480 or 320x240 if you are going to playback on a TV, you'll save a lot of space/cpu without losing anything. Use xawtv for tuning your card, v4lctl or plain xawtv. Then you do something like this:
$ mp1e -G 640x480 -b 4.0 > some_file.mpeg
Experiment with the bitrate and picture size for best results. I haven't tried playing back these captured streams on the DXR3 but I'm sure it's possible. Something to try over the weekend
Good luck...
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
As for Ch.1, yeah, no guarantees it'll stay around.
which isn't a guarantee, but I can't imagine including hard drive support without plans for using it for recording.Regarding Tivo functionality,
Also, my personal experience is that standard 27" TV's aren't generally capable of displaying 800*600 resolution without looking like fuzzy ass, and I wasn't aware of a WebTV that supported Ethernet (I didn't say it doesn't exist, just that I wasn't aware of it).
Dietcrack.com -- Death to All Baldwins!
I submitted this weeks ago... but the gods at Slashdot didn't think it was newsworthy enough... NadaPC is offering the same device with a different subscription model. Check it out here.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
In fact, there's a simple, obvious market. TV with pause. Forget the "record a specific show" feature, which nobody uses on VCRs anyway. Just concentrate on offering pause/fast forward/rewind for whatever you're watching. This requires a modest hard drive, and a trivial user interface. And you can sell it to Joe Sixpack.
I wish the article mentioned how open or closed this is going to be. Will we be able to tweak linux and run programs other than the ones preinstalled? If so, I imagine many of us could use one if the price is right. If not, it doesn't really matter as someone will hack it within a month or so. So I guess either way, it'll be somewhat open. I just hope they let people do with it what they want (and not be like the makers of cueCat)
Hardware:
Software:
The TV..erh..Linux box automatically boots up in KDM so logging in is as simply as switching to the "X Win" channel and typing your user/login
Latest addition to the software list is MP3sb which catalogs all your MP3's and has provides you with multiple views of your colection. Konqueror displaying the PHP3 client. Anyway, lots of fun hacking this stuff...
-adnans
"In short: just say NO TO DRUGS, and maybe you won't end up like the Hurd people." --Linus Torvalds
I used to detect commercials by detecting the fade to black editing when the station switched from the program to the commercials. There's a quick fade to black on the picture signal.
I had an old Zentith television that had a capacitor go bad and did the same thing. It was the only thing that ever broke on a television that I really appreciated. To bad it didn't blank the sound --the most annoying part of commercials.
Indeed!
sulli
RTFJ.
This isn't meant as flamebait, but I'm honestly interested in WHY anybody would want this? Buy this, and you get a smallish, clunky TV, and a tiny, underpowered, immobile computer. Why would I want to use this, when I can watch my 36" TV with a satellite from my couch, with my P800 laptop computer on my lap with a DSL connection? What benefits does this provide outside that most geeks don't already have?
All your TV are belong to Linus!
e.
www.randomdrivel.com -- All that is NOT fit to link to
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I thought the big issue with DVCR was the filesystem (ie. the part that Tivo said they didn't want people to try to reverse engineer).
I agree though, that thats probably not the hard drives idea. I think they might be planning to use it to cache the program guide, so they only need to send updates, and would allow you to scan as far ahead as they have data. Although a DVCR does seem like something they are probably pursuing.
This space for rent. All reasonable inquiries will be entertained at proprietors discretion.
It's only because you aren't part of the tight-knit little clique of the first quarter of a million to get accounts here.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Zenith. The penguin goes in before the name goes on.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
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since the TV is billed as a "high resolution HDTV-ready monitor with a built-in conventional TV tuner," i'm sure we'll hear about some sort of HDTV copy prevention built into it. seems like an interesting little ploy, to me - i don't care if the internet appliance *is* linux, i'm not going anywhere near HDTV until i know it has no inherent/embedded copy prevention.
- On the one hand, Linux is still a buzzword and there are people who'll buy a linux device just for the sake of it or hoping to play with its innards.
- On the other hand, tv/net appliances are not a market linux geeks are likely to consume in.
It's nice to see embedded linux getting some work, but does this have any effects broader than mere novelty value (as far as we're concerned)?Who do you think is making this stuff, the Keebler elves?
;)
In all seriousness, I wouldn't worry about it.
"A box like that could be a great little inexpensive MP3 server or something."
hmm, i'm not sure why, but this sounds a little familiar to me... let's hope that the marketing is a little better this time around.
--saint----
More Technical Specs can be found here.
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Why did they choose Linux? Had they chosen FreeBSD or something they could save face and not have to tell anyone how they did it. With the GPL, any hard work or software magic they do has to be open source too
But they don't WANT to close it up. They're licensing the hardware to other manufacturers, so there's nothing to be gained (and a lot to be lost - like willingness of other manufacturers to buy) by closing the software.
Also: They apparently want to sell to early-adopters, who have been asking for Linux.
If nothing else, I bet the customers don't want their TV crashing constantly, script-kiddies changing their channels or turning it on at 3 AM, the boss finding out what porn they're watching, and the movie companies showing up to bust them for viewing homemade copies of rented movies.
If your TV's on the net with closed-source appware how do you know it's not open to all of the above?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The good thing about this is that most video cards adjust automatically for ntsc and pal format. This way you won't have to buy a pal compliant TV if you leave the states. At least if they did it right.
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
ObSlashdotStupidity: Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of... oh, never mind. :-)
Actually, I can.
I imagine it doing a wall-of-monitors bigscreen, in software, in real-time.
B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Actually (proprietary) interactive television has been the "Next Big Thing!"(tm) almost as long as the videophone.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Even better would be an API, so that I could make applets for them and load them into flash. I could imagine trading these online.
First killer app: commercial skipper. Record a show beforehand, or start watching it late and it automatically trims commercials from the show. People might be surprised how short their favorite shows really are.
Of course advertisers would become more wary, and we may need to patch our video-spam killers now and then...
Truely we live in a bold new age of incredible technology...
Vidi, Vici, Veni
I'd like to see what sort of price for similar features but on a 60" model.
BTW... ain't Linux just *cuuuuuuuuuuute* all dolled up like that? :-)
--
$ chown -R us:us yourbase
Seems like this would be a great tool for people whose vision is impaired. Let's face it, 800x600 on a 27-inch monitor provides large fonts, and enough space to be useful.
One downside, though. There would not be much space left over if you had one of these on your desk. I mean, really, wouldn't you just HAVE to hook it up to a PSX2, too? ;)
The revolution is here at last! Full-screen streaming video content, available for free over the airwaves? Truly, this was Linux's calling.
The good news is it's computers people are going to be able to use. The bad news is when are software engineers going to be relagated to the Maytag repair man?
The concept is very cool. Execution looks fine, too, to me.
But hey now, I'm going to spend $8.95 per month for what exactly? Do I really need to access the TV station's web site in PIP while I watch the program? I do not.
This is the way of things, and I guess I understand. If you got the bare-bones Ch.1 service at $8.95 per month, you'd have to use the TV for more than 8 years to have the service cost overtake the hardware cost. Lucky if the hardware lasts that long (let alone Ch.1).
Still, given that they're using a free operating system I can obtain elsewhere, and a Web connection I can maintain (and must pay for) elsewhere, I'm not that excited to have an online TV guide for nine bucks a month. At least with OnStar in the car, I'm getting service I can't duplicate on my own.
Of course, I may not be the target audience. I don't own a television. I watch movies on the monitor that came with my first IBM PC: An Amdek with RCA in (only)...
So why not just buy any other 27" TV with line-doubling and plug in a cheapie home PC? It'll do more and be easier to upgrade in the future. I dunno 'bout you but I expect my TV sets to last at least 10 years, anyone here expect Ch.1 Inc. to last that long or to coninue supporting this product?
Indeed it apparently can't even do Digital-VCR functions. Give me TiVo + router + firewall + webcaching + light fileserving + telephone + HDTV (& not via some damn 3rd-party add-on but integrated & used throughout) + in-house streaming and I'll buy. Otherwise it's just another TV with yet-another fancy channel guide & some pre-set "portal" crap.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.