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Nokia and Loki Together on Linux Terminal
barrettlight50 writes "Nokia released news that they plan to distribute Linux games from Loki Software with their up and coming Media Terminal due out this fall." I'm hearing rumblings from people who have their hands on this box, but am still waiting for more meat. What remains to be seen is if Nokia will embrace the Open Source model, and let us hack the hell out of their box. Here's hopin'
That is the reason people are going to buy it. It is nice that you can also play DVDs, record video and play games that is just icing. Its a DVB tuner.
Agreed, it needs a better cpu to become a feasible game machine (the rest of the hw already makes it a hell of a TivO killer!) Why nokia decided to go for intel is a bit of a mistery, given their choice of OS. Need for production volume? Too bad.
which makes this different.
The XBox will be a high-end solution that appeals to hard-core gamers.
It is clear from the specs that Nokia is not going after that market. The development is also cheap, they are mostly reusing existing technology, much of it without any license. So they are probably going after low price.
I think they might succeed, a settop box which can also play games on the Quake II level, which are acutally pretty impressive to a non-gamer, at a price that is sufficiently low that you can buy one just to see if it is something for you, might open a large market.
If it looks good, is silent, have an easy to use shell, a TV recorder no worse than a VCR, a couple of bundled games, at a price below US$130, I just might buy one for the convenience. Even if it is slower than my ancient PC. And even though I'd probably not use the browser.
I saw the latest Motorola Timeport for sale untied in Tottenham Court Road, London, a month back - but it cost about £400 if I remember correctly.
However, in the UK I think it's illegal to lock pre-paid phones to a network, and those cost less t han £100. And post-paid phones generally only require a minimum 12-month contract, which can cost as little as £120.
Then this will be an interesting new gaming system. It would make it easier for the little guy to get in the games out there. This will be fun to watch.
You could always just point to a TiVo - it has a pleasant, friendly user interface and is of course Linux based.
The Xbox/Media Terminal comparison is deeply incorrect.
This is first and foremost a Cable/Broadband access device (look at the supplied libraries - lots of HAVI, lots of MHB stuff, but little gaming-related stuff. Look at the Nokia Pirates and Parrots game)
Yes, it will play games. So do the OpenTV and cable set-top boxes - but they aren't terribly good because that is not the prime function of the system.
It's optimised for streaming video and web access. This is a sounder straegy than the reverse (build a games box, make it a web access platform later as the deceased Dreamcast, PSX2 and Xbox teams plan(ned)). High-end consoles tend to end up in otaku household who already have those things.
This will end up in houses where people don't want a computer: it allows Nokia to own a portion of the market that isn't online. As such its an evolution upwards from set-top boxes of the past - the open sourcing of it also makes sense in this context. The closed set-top boxes are usually very good at decoding MPEG streams but useless for any rich services - open sourcing means a million developers working out neat home automation and video gadgets (and yes, games, but not of a Quake level. Stones might work).
Given a million eyeballs all business problems are trivial.
-- need more time?
There's been a lot of media hype about Linux in the news for the last several years, although very little that the average 'guy in the street' gets to hear about, or finds very relevant. :)
Now, with this on the way, we find a big brand name that many seem to identify with 'cool' (can you count the number of young teens chasing the latest images for their Nokia phones, and identifying that with the brand 'Nokia'?) that's leveraging Linux.
If it sells well, which, given Nokia's marketing engine, it should do.. Just think.
When people say "Linux, that's that hard to use unfriendly system, isn't it?", you can point to their easy to use box by the TV, and politely let them know that they're already using Linux...
Once people get the idea there's nothing to be afraid of, then a lot of the FUD from Redmond counts for naught.
It's a far cry from beating Windows on the desktop, but it's certainly stealing a march on MS in getting market penetration of product.
Bravo, Nokia. I'll be watching this with interest.
Malk
Sentences like and let us hack the hell out of their box scare the crap out of any corporate manager.
:-)
They're responsible for getting a product out the door according to their spec.s, not your's. To do that they have to retain control.
Try coming up with sentences like: We have a plan to explore the limits capabilities of your system. We would like some information, collaboration and coordination (at least a corporate contact.)
We will inform you of any security deficiencies, report on the actual capacities of the system and make general comments and contributions to expand the potential uses and markets of your system.
That is far more likely to get you on-side as an unpaid resource rather regarded like something stuck to their corporate shoe.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
hey with the upcaomeing 3.0 release of GCC this becomes important because of ABI changes
or wether it will use DRI or what video card (hope its ATI)
or what file system they use (ext2 prob but hey fsck times arnt great for the user I love XFS)
or how the IEE1394 software works wether I can record with it ?/can I roll my own ?
its all a bit iffy I would recomend GCC 3.0
regards
john jones
p.s. here is part of the GCC 3.0 news (-;
"The release will be made on or before 11:59PM GMT -8 (Pacific Daylight Time) June 15th, 2001 A.D. Because otherwise I will commit suicide at 12:00 AM on June 16th, and you will all feel very, very bad.
"
What's this DVB business? Reading the tech specs it keeps referring to the "DVB subsystem" and saying things like "Software: ...DVB System running on separate RTOS". There's also some stuff about content protection: "Secure mechanism, using triple DES". And, oh boy, "Macrovision 7 compliant"! Sounds to me like they're going to some trouble to keep the Linux hackers away from the fun parts.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Says you.
If the xbox is sufficiantly hardware-hackable, I'll be first in line to buy one. Knowing Microsoft, they will probably attempt to shutdown anyone who posts hardware hacking information regarding the machine on the web.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
well, it could be wrong, or they might be using (GASP!) a different 3d card. nVidia cards are fast, but isn't ATI radeon also supported? Those are supposed to be good cards too.
"We would rather have a small part of a large market than a large part of a small market if we had used proprietary technologies." is the quote.
I think this could be cool, but Nokia is obviously thinking that they can make money out of services to the consumer, and sales of the terminal, as they won't get royalties from each game created this way.
What is the difference between this and Indrema? Well.. contrary to what the older slashdot-story seemed to suggest, I don't think this is really an Playstation2, Nintendo and X-box-competitor. It's more like they are selling an Internet-appliance, that can also play some decent games. If it has good software, and some good functionality, it might work
.This does seem to have a stronger case in the UK.
The UK has no HDTV and wont for a long time. DVB is the Dogs bollocks and this thing seems to do Tivo's job, mp3s and umpteen other things.
Tivo is expensive for what you get. From what I understand the time shifting gear in this baby will be opensource too. Advert skipping here I come...
Those griping about the celery; Seeing as this is an open standard I can see competition ( or Nokia themselves) releasing faster, higher spec boxes.
I didn't notice any pricing info on Nokia's site - did I miss it?
:-)
Anybody know where the PVR software is coming from, and whether they're going to charge a monthly fee for the TV schedule? Of course it should be easy to hack it to get data from tvguide.com
Typically, console hardware is sold at break-even or even loss pricing. The intention is that the hardware manufacturer makes their money back by charging publishers a fee for every title sold. If Nokia intends to make their money on the hardware, network connectivity or another service, and if they intend to leave the publishers to do as they please (and if this thing has good 3D - they don't name the chipset) it could mean a ready supply of game titles, which would help push the system into market.
You mean back when personal computing was hopelessly geekish? Arcane? Fringe?
Back when programmers were wizards? Guru? Keepers of hidden knowledge?
We're not gonna get back to that paradigm. Nope, every suburban jock has an AOL account now.
Your average Joe just ain't gonna learn BASIC (or Perl, C, C++, Python, or even Visual BASIC. Let's face it, PCs have become the TV of the 21st century.
That thing is one of the worst router implementations I have seen. It is loaded with a crapload of proprietary software and is nearly impossible to mass-configure a bunch of them within the span of several eons (no config "load/store" capability across two routers; backup/restore, yes, but one router's backed-up config will break the other router when restored to it because of the proprietary crap).
Grr. No, I am not happy with Nokia at present.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
The XBOX was to have a 300MHz CPU in the early planning stage. This has changed. And the same will apply to Nokias MT. Simply because You will have to recycle those CPUs from used PCs in a year. In any case this box should be a decent digital video recorder and as it has a LAN port as well, it could be perused as a firewall&router as well. In that way it would complement my PC nicely, which then wouldbe used for gaming, buring CDs, storing of those films I'd like to keep, ...
So this box makes perfect friend with your PC and it'll be bought more like a video recorder.
chess
It seems the site for their "development network" reagrding the "Open Standards Terminal" is here. TheRegister ran a story the other day about Nokia's callout for linux developers to help code for the platform (I though it was /. worthy, but then anybody with a clue reads TheRegister already).
On the surface this would seem like just another company trying to milk the free software community of gratis code without giving anything back, but it could also be extremely important. Remember that Sony and Microsoft are both creating "media terminals" with the very clear goal of usurping the PC and becoming the main devices for accessing the Internet. And there can be no mistaking about their motivation behind this - to take charge of and close off the agents with which people access and handle networked information, so that they can regain the total control of it they need further their ultimate goals (their bottom line - at any cost to our network). Remember Sony's words: "We will block you at you PC".
I don't think it needs to be said again how profoundly dangerous this process is, and the enemy knows it.
It would be dangerous to try to paint Nokia as an angel of grace in this regard - cellphone handsets are hardly open platforms, in fact I know of few devices so infected with fuckware. But at least this move looks genuine, and while it may seem like an underdog Nokia should not be underestimated (handsets are the largest sector of consumer electronics, and Nokia the market leader by a long shot). Certainly, this looks more realistic then anything that Indrema put forward, and by not targeting games specificly it is in a better position to not have to go head to head with the big two (leaving their legions of evil to hack at each other) and target a market where Linux is more useful. I think that we could do worse for ourselves than support this effort.
It has to be possible to hack as it is using a standard CPU. My guess is they have a minimal bootstrap loader in ROM which looks for a signature on the DVD that you drop in. No signature then it just refuses to run the DVD (aside from as a simple DVD player).
It is also possible that the DVDs will be encrypted (my guess is using some standard 128 bit crypto - MS already has the code to do this in Windows with CryptoAPI). Remember MS is a software company and isn't going to use the same crappy crypto as CSS - look for something equivalent to AES or TwoFish).
All of the above could be defeated through the simple act of replacing the boot ROMs. I'd be assuming they will use standard surface mount flash ROMs, so all you need to do is unsolder a few surface mount chips, solder a few more on and you have an XBox running anything you want.
Of course, desoldering surface mount BGA chips is probably gonna be tough...
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
I never heard the XBox having a 300Mhz CPU. Initial speculation was 600MHz, which wasn't that far off. Remember also that that speculation was over 18 months before launch, not 6 months before launch (as the MT is).
Where did you see it has a LAN port? The specs sheet just says USB and IR, not LAN. You are also assuming that if it does have a LAN port you can get at the data on the HDD, which is not necessarily the case. If the machine is not running any file sharing daemons, and has no shell then you are going to have a very hard time getting your hands on anything.
I still don't see how you are going to be able to buy this as a VCR without Nokia losing money. They are going to have to require a subscription to digital TV with the machine - read their press releases:
i) It is for digital tv, internet access and games - no mention of LAN there.
ii) Games are preinstalled, no mention of user installation.
Figure it out - it's a closed box, not open or useful at all!
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Look at the specs, people. This is a machine that is comparable (only just) to the gaming PCs of about 2 years ago!! It has a Celeron 366, a TNT/Voodoo2 equivalent 3D card, a maximum resolution of PAL (720x576) standard, which most Americans can't use anyway and have to deal with NTSC (640x480) and a maximum frame rate of 30fps with some rather strict rules on color usage. There isn't even anti-aliasing to smooth out the bleeding on the TV.
Fact is you will be NOT be getting the latest games, more likely remakes of Gameboy stuff or Quake 1 re-releases and more importantly you will NOT be making a dent in XBox, Gamecube or PS2 sales.
Nokia will not be able to make any money from the direct sales of these boxes either (they would have to sell for more than the vastly superior XBox or PS/2 for this to happen), so expect to get them leased to you for about $50/month or more (along with a digital TV connection). Nokia is simply USING the open source community as a group of people who can provide gimmicks to sell their digital TV boxes.
So, don't expect to EVER see these on shelves but expect some cable guy to drop one on your desk and the games will be much the same distraction you get on the current Nokia phones - a gimmick and a long way from the real purpose of the box in the first place, which is to pipe an encrypted stream of media to your TV, decoded by a proprietary smart-card all for the monthly hit to the cheque book.
To sum up, this box WILL end up costing a substantial subscription fee, probably will never belong to you and the instant you stop paying they will come and take your slow TV-game box away. It isn't a games machine, it will never be a games machine and is going to do nothing to MS/AOL/Sony/Nintendo's bottom line.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
Nokia have stated that they'd rather have a small
slice of a large market than all of a small market. This implies that the media terminal will
have to comply to "open standards" and also be
clonable.
This box could be our only hope against the
lock-in hell of Microsoft or Sony/AOL.
I hope Nokia "gets it".
"You can catch flies till the cows come home, but wasps are a totally different kettle of fish."
The specifications imply that the only thing needed to do this would be the software. It has support for myriad broadband connections and an RJ11 telephone jack. You can also bet that they will be hooking their smart phones up to this puppy.
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
"My works are like water. The works of the great masters is like wine, but everybody drinks water."
--Mark Twain
Given that Indrema open sourced their stuff, can Nokia use that in their product?
and now another one - time to have a word with the bank manager ....
spiny
Fry: heh, Yakov Smirnoff said it
Leela: No he didn't.
From the Nokia site:
/. keep you eyes and ears open!
The Nokia Media Terminal will be priced competitively. The first Nokia Media Terminals will be available in Sweden in the middle part of 2001 and later on in the year in Europe and North America.
All Swedes visiting
Religion is the opium of the people. Evolution is the opium of scientists.
Thus, while most Linux users might not be so interested about buying a separate game console, this is great news for all Linux gamers who want more games.
Some have argued that game consoles are usually sold with loss, and real profit comes from games. You should remember that this is a digital TV box, and Internet terminal, so it has much more value in itself than any pure game console. Also, many Linux users who would not be so interested about a game console, might be interested about the digital TV receiver, digital recorder, DVD player.
While the announcement answers my questions about Loki, it still doesn't tell which current Linux games will be available. I'm also little worried about the openness of the system for installing new software that has not been packaged by Nokia, as Nokia probably doesn't want to be responsible for customers messing up the system software.
that many companies are embracing the penguin not because they have any feeling towards open source whatsoever; but because they can get the framework code for their product for free. They only tap an extra customer base if they do not fret over [notice I didn't say encourage] hacking of this product; as more and more people will be encouraged to customize or even develop products for the platform.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.
Actually, NOKIA did already embrace the opensource model (as mentioned in some comments before) with their NOKOS license.
The new open source development license with examples on how to code on their media-terminal is located at: http://www.ostdev.net.
The site is still under development (some faq answers aren't filled out yet etc.), but all in all gives a good introduction to programming for their new box.
It's amazing to see this many stupid americans in one thread writing stupid things about a great product and not getting it. It's a digital set-top box. It's a digital TV-recorder (tivo, etc). It's a internet@home TV-box. It can also play games that are a few hundred times more advanced that the usual digital set-top/cable boxes.
Oh, yes, it's going to be sold world-wide it seems.
(Yes, since I'm writing anti-american stuff in here I'm going to get modded down - you know, it doesn't matter what you post as long as you write "America rules!", but write the truth and you'll get modded down in an instant .. *sheesh*)
it's in my head
The story says the games will be built in when the system ships. I'm sure there will be ways to add more though, and idiots manage to do that with cell phones, so it shouldn't be too tough.\ =\=\=\=\
=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=\=
Does anyone know how the OS is stored in the XBox? Can we replace it with Linux?
I maintain that:
Chaos is the future and beyond it is freedom
In the spoon, there is no Soviet Russia!
The even have their own OSI approved license. NOKOS, the Nokia Open Source License.
There's no place I can be, since I found Serenity.
Good luck finding those celeron 366. Will it have a sid chip too?
You can always alias a single ethernet port and then plug your broadband modem into a switch with everything else. It's not quite as secure (or efficient) as using two ethernet ports in your gateway but it works just fine.
"Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!"
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I seriously doubt any cable phone company would like to endorse this at the moment, since I seem to recall they make most of their money on long-distance call rates.
404 Not Found: No such file or resource as '.sig'
Considering its rather low performance the box will have to come out at a lower price than the PS2 or the yet to be released xbox. I think the big problem with this box are that its benifits are not that great compared to a celery based computer of the same speed and they are entering an arena where you have to sell your hardware for no profit in order to get anyone to buy it.
One key to marketing this would be to stress the "everything included out of the box" aspect and also to sell the reliability. Convince everyone that because all the machines are built to the same specifications that the drivers and OS are much more stable on that machine than a general OS on a general machine because they were able to debug against thier hardware longer.
Honestly though I have to give this box a thumbs down. Old computers in new boxes don't sell without a great gimmick and I don't see the great gimmick in this.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Therefore it is important that Nokia produce something decent in its initial release. Not only will this drum up enough sales to assure the life of the product but it will motivate people hack around with it.
This is the main problem with expecting open source developers to develop code without owning the hardware.
If Nokia wants to pique the interest of the open source crowd it has to release a kickass product (hardware & software) first and open up the source at that point. It's no good dumping some buggy code on ostdev.org and expecting people to do much with it.
I'd like to know that to...
And Macrovision?
Bjarne
In days of old, hardware makers sold thier hardware at a profit, and pretty much left the software developers to do thier own thing.
Games were written by people in thier own homes. No need for big software houses.
Technology has improved, but the games have not. The innovative people can't afford thier own copy of the SDK.
The sooner the world gets away from the con of software sales subsidising loss-making hardware, the better.
Bill, jet set.
Okay this is slightly off-topic, but whatever happened to the ZapStation?
... I gotta wonder: just what are these "media terminal" people actually thinking?
... what? ... like this Nokia thing is gonna actually see the light of day?
Last I'd heard, they were taking pre-orders and then -- suddenly -- nearly doubled their pre-order price -- from something like 499 (599?) to around 799 or 899.
Moving more on-topic
None of them -- with the sole exceptions of TIVO and Replay -- have made it to market. Zapstation, Indrema, and
You gotta hand it to TIVO and Replay -- they're coming up on 2 years old, no? I don't own a Replay, but I have a couple TIVOs. Despite the fact that the hardware is aging somewhat -- it's an amazingly forward-looking product.
The fact that it came out nearly 2 years ago (more?) just boggles my mind. I suppose the market conditions, as they say, were a little more favorable for "visionaries" two years ago (although one could debate whether or not the visionaries were actually "visionary") I'm amazed that something like TIVO -- which still really hasn't caught the fire of the mainstream, although the word itself has most definitely entered the cultural vocabulary -- made it off the drawing board and found itself in actual living rooms.
I don't begrudge failures like Indrema and (perhaps) the ZapStation, but I do get a little miffed when I read their product literature, actually want to buy the product, and then find out that not only is the product not out yet, it probably never will be and (in the case of Indrema, at least) has already gone belly-up.
I really hope the Nokia product makes it out of the gates. But with a Celeron 366 and a 20 gig hard drive -- you gotta wonder: why?
The XBOX is definitely the power house. Say what you will about Microsoft -- evil empire, deceptive business practices, short sighted managers giving stupid speeches about open source -- they're committed to it, got the developers to commit, and will deliver the goods.
And you bet, I'll be first in line for the XBOX -- assuming that they can overcome the PS2 problems with supply the first few days of release.
But Nokia? Dudes, just give me a price, a firm date, and I'll be there, too. But I have my doubts.
DVB is already up and running - one example is the UK's ONdigital service, so it would appear that I will be able to junk my current set-top decoder and replace it with a Linux-based one from Nokia at some point. Of course, if its doing the MPEG2 decoding in software its a blimming good job they plan to use a seperate RTOS for that part. I have enough problems playing DVDs with stuttering from background processes time-slicing, so I wouldn't want to hit that on my set-top.
"I Know You Are But What Am I?"
I've seen some of loki's games run, and running on a Celeron 366 with 32MB of RAM is not optimal. It sounds like a great idea in theory, but when you're getting 5 frames per second, you'll take the game over to your PC and play it. Either that or you'll put a game in your PS2/Nintendo-whatever and get a game with a good frame-rate. These all-in-one boxes never work, and in this case I think it's got even more drawbacks than usual. :)
All that aside, it's cooler than not having loki games for it
I was on a seminar in Helsinki earlier this year where a guy from Nokia did a presentation about this device...
one important thing I remember is that he said all the software on it is opensource, except some of the very specific video software ("nobody but us has use of it anyway") and I think Nokia's screen interface is propietary (sp?)...
In fact he said that even if they'd keep the whole box closed source he knew people were going to hack on it anyway so why make it difficult?
He was also showing off some kinda open developers portal they fully supported, which was linked to the development of the device...
Have you seen any software yet? I looked at the site and they have no SDK yet, so I don't know about quality.
From the article... "Nokia is demonstrating the Media Terminal and will show the ostdev.net open source network at the E3 exhibition in Los Angeles 16-19 May."
DVB is a digital broadcasting standard using MPEG2 that is used in Europe. Most, if not all free-to-air stations here in Germany are broadcasting it over sattelite (stationary 60cm dish is enough) and cable. You get DVD quality resolution and sharpness.
;-), but thats changing fast).
linuxtv.org is developing / has developed a driver for a certain group of cards that allmost all available models are based on. A tivo like VDR application has been written. There even is a legal way to watch PayTV channels via a standard smart card interface.
It works great.
Nokia is cooperating with them in developing an open API. (As I understand it the linuxtv people had a working system and Nokia approached them, to work with them on that project. So it's not a case of a company allowing others to participate, but a big company joinign in. I think that is a good sign.)
So I have build my own Tivo (not available here yet) like device really easily thanks to the great work of those people.
With LCD and remote it is a real appliance, usable without any great knowlege about computers. (Just the beta status of the software
With the onboard MPEG2 decoder chip, it puts not a great load on the CPU and DVD playing is also possibele without a glich.
Yeah! I'm very happy.
Marcus
...into porting/creating apps for this device? I mean, the issue of piracy is a huge deal to companies, and with an OS-based OS (ugh) like Linux, controlling the media is going to be a definite challenge.
I'm VERY exited over this machine though. Nokia certainly has the money to design, build and distribute something like this, and considering their success with the IP-xxx firewalls, they have more than zero experience dealing with electronic appliances. "It just might work!"
But again - are they just 'testing the waters' to see developer/community interest, or is there really a machine/dev-kit (which is a whole other issue) and a business plan? Is Nokia really committed to delivering a new console/appliance?
sedawkgrep
Is that a salami in my pants or am I just happy to be me?
Uh... MS is pretty obsessive about that digital-signing thing. I suspect they'd probably do everything they possibly can to lock out the unauthorized.
/Brian
Just what We Need!
How am I supposed to play all these games and make time to fight the Evil Empire of Redmond as well?
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Go to the page referenced, there are 2 PDFs, one on the unit, the other on developing games on the unit. Looks cool, if it really does do everything (PVR, Loki, Linux, MP3s) I may have to get one.
"Sometimes a woman is a kind of religion, she can save your soul & set you free from all your sins" - Bad Examples
While it would be great fun to play xbill or Quake on my cell phone... is it really that feasable?
JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP JUMP IRRIGATE
I must admit to feeling quite optimistic about this whole thing, from reading the details on the Nokia site. They say they are planning to open the hardware specs, and I can't really see how they could be planning to prevent hacking if this is what they end up doing.
I posted a message here is response to the announcement of the Indrema console all those months ago, expressing my doubts about the future of the machine, but at they same time saying that if it did fail, I would make damn sure it was not because I did not support it. I tried to support it, but it failed anyway. I feel so much more optimistic about the Media Terminal. They have something that actaully looks like a working prototype, rather than just a mockup. They have actuall hardware specs which fit with the photographs of the back of the prototype. They have documentation for their IO API, and a developers site with real information on it. Most importantly of all perhaps they are a decent sized company with the technical and financial clout to build a machine that works.
I just can't wait to get my hands on one. Looking forward to having a WorldForge demo running on the beast before the end of the year.
I'm hoping those are for games, and not for a subscription based service like DirecTV. And why didn't they slap in a DVD/CD/MP3 player? How is anyone supposed to put new games on this thing? Download them?
The whole community just seems to be getting better and stronger everyday.
Linux has really made a giant leap in the last year, it really blows my mind. Linux has been put on a watch, game console, Google has 8000 Linux servers, corporations seem to be embracing it, more users are hearing more about Linux everyday it feels like it won't be long before it's a household name and almost everyone has a partition of Linux on the computer.
Only if the 13373575 of the group could grow up....
I am currently not obliged to divulge that information as it might compromise the agents in the field
I don't like the sound of the wonderfully
secure (triple-DES) content protection.
Will we be able to do simple MP3 jobs, even,
never mind other media???
------------------
Ok, so looking at the specs, its not the fastest kid on the block (366mhz celeron or better, unspecified 3D card, etc.) but it will function like a tivo AND I can play soldier of fortune on it? Where do I pre-order?
Uninnovate - Only the finest in engineering.
Agreed. Here's hopin' we get back to that paradigm.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You should really make a CVS checkout from ostdev. Software is installable via the Mozilla browser, installing a game is just as easy as clicking a link. The installation scripts are of course XML-based. Nokia of all companies is the one that know how to make easy user interfaces for (generally) stupid users. Just a thougt; has anyone any knowledge if Nokia is going to link their box with Club Nokia? The 3330 GSM phone is able to download new levels for the built in games from Club Nokia. Each download costs some Club Nokia "credits" one can buy online. It would really be a logical step to integrate some Club Nokia stuff to the box as the profit for the boxes may be poor but the real revenue stream in the future may be the branded content. Just see what the others (Microsoft and Sony) are doing...
Three things jumped out at me reading the spec sheet:
1 - DVB System running on separate RTOS
DVB, ATVEF and MHP Compliant
2 - Macrovision 7 compliant
3 - Intel Celeron ® 366 Mhz CPU or faster
(listed separately) Full MPEG2/DVB compatible engine
This seems boils down to an entirely separate sub-system that handles _all_ broadcast type digital video. The overall DVB spec has two specs inside of it that deal with content encryption/protection. No telling from the site just _how_ compliant their DVB imlpementation is, but with Macrovision also listed, it seems safe to assume they are leaning towards the look-but-dont-copy side of things. This thing may be able to be hacked up to run some games, but looks like you can forget doing much digital video hacking with it.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Hi, I would love to see another media terminal with _two_ ethernet plugins. So I can use it as a gateway for my homenetwork. Hope I can plugin a wireless network card as well :-)
... Just a side note (as always), but if M$ loose $125 dollars per xbox sold, wouldn't we all do the world a favour if we bought $400B / $125 = (err probably a lot) of xboxs. Ok, it'd look good for MS marketing department (we sold 10 squillion xboxs), but it could just break the company......
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
Jolly good show Dr. Holmes! ; -)
This would be a great way to get the cable companies to recommend this box, because it could theoretically replace a lot of normal telephone usage and give the cable companies the edge in providing services to home users. Not to mention the conveniece of paying less than 10 cents a minute to Europe or Asia...
Nokia doesn't provide vapor, but when this thing gets out.... I can see the image of a little kid that asked, his parents to gimme a PS2 for christmas, and when he opens, his new NOKIA media terminal, he finds that IT SUCKS. It has inferior, processing power, to run newest games well. But looks good in eyes of the parents... Until they see the face of their little kid, crying out loud, GOD why have you forsaken me.
The reason I think this is not vapor, that Nokia has put some reputation, behind this. They will bring it to market, even if they would LOOSE money, after change in conditions, and not do well in the market, since their reputations is more worthy than 1G$. Well after they find out it doesn't do well, they would slowly reduce the availability. Compared to other things that failed, they have money, so they wouldn't drop out of project if it failed, not this late. Perhaps redefine, and upgrade specs a bit, and come 2 months later. But not give up. Too much in stake when they have putten that website there...
Emacs is good operating system, but it has one flaw: Its text editor could be better.
That's a very big 'if'. I reckon the chances of the XBox being hardware hackable are so remote that it won't even be worth the effort. And if you could you'll be fuelling the evil empire with cash which which to fight distributers of such documents in the courts by buying it. Much like what has happened with DeCSS. Don't you think ?
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
Look at the politics involved:
I'm sure there's more but I can't think right now. In a way - and I don't mean to troll or invite flames here - I think that it's still a hype thing. I didn't find out until recently that TiVo runs Linux. It's not something it wears on its sleeve. The OS is invisible.
Mmm
Claric
--
There's no problem that cannot be solved with a suitable amount of high explosives
Could this be the new Indrema?
I wonder how they will deal with the "newbie user installation"? Are they going to make it RPM/Deb based? What about dependencies? I can only wonder what happens when there is a Xwindows problem.....
===> An eye for an eye makes everyone blind - MG
Why are they using a Celeron 366? Yes, I'm aware of the "or better" clause, but still, why are they using 2.5 year old technology? If they want to make it cheap, what's wrong with a low-end Duron?
.mp3s(.oggs), surf the web, do some word processing and office apps, chat, play DVDs, etc for ~$300, it might make Nokia some money. Even still, MT is promising "simplicity", and when you start adding all those things, the overall picture becomes more complicated. Most open source projects are a work in progress. Are they just gonna draw the line somewhere? Are they going to be running a "Nokia Update" program? What happens when Joe Sixpack mistakenly overwrites a critical system file? When people buy a console, that want it to "just work right" all the time and not deal with crashes, updates, bug reports, etc.
While I don't doubt Nokia's intentions for using Linux (low development cost, etc.), I can't help but be concerned by the fact that there has not been a single widely-succesful Linux-based product to date. With all the half-baked, consoles/devices/software products brandishing "Linux!" as a way of gaining attention, I'm afraid the reputation of our beloved OS will suffer in the eyes of the general public. Obviously, the Eazel announcement isn't helping things either. People may begin to associate Linux with "failure" or "low quality". I don't think anyone wants that.
Realisticly, games should just be an afterthought for the MediaTerminal, and perhaps that's the reason for the Celeron 366. Anyone who thinks this thing has a chance of drawing people away from the XBox should really set their crack pipe aside for a minute or two. C'mon, remember Indreama? The game support for Linux, let alone a just-announced console is not sufficient to build a profitable product around. If, however, MT could play
Perhaps the people at Nokia are envisioning something different that what I can forsee, but it seems to me that it's gonna be tough sell for the average user.
--Greg