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HP's Digital-Audio Entertainment Box
ARP writes: "Hewlett Packard has introduced the de100c Digital Entertainment Center, a one of a kind stand-alone product that combines Internet features and digital multimedia capabilities. The unit connects to the television and stereo, from where it allows for organizing and storing MP3 and CD music that can be stored on its 40GB hard drive. It also comes with a CD writer for burning CDs on the fly, and USB connections for transferring files from and to portable devices such as PDAs. Coolest of all is the ability to connect through the Internet (broadband and dial-up both supported) to download music. The de100c is expected to hit the stores around the holidays. More info and shot at RatedPC." If this had the video capabilities like TiVo, it might be a much easier sell, but still looks like a useful component.
It looks like a great addition, but how much is it gonna cost me??
I saw it at Linuxworld in San Francisco. It apperently runs linux on 'encrypted' hardware. The guy demo-ing it pretty much challenged anyone to crack it.
You can only play media files with DMR controls on this box, it won't play MP3's...
Chris.
-- I don't have a cool sig.
Is it a device to give the RIAA execs nightmares or wet dreams? We all know that the MPAA and RIAA would both like to uninvent the computer, and this sort of specialized digital entertainment box may be just the thing they need, a special-purpose device that they have near absolute control over.
We all know that digital rights management is impossible to enforce on a general-purpose computer. But on a special-purpose entertainment console like this one, it will be trivial to do so except against the most determined cracker, if it has been designed properly.
Maybe the CD writer it's got is one of those that only writes those junk CD's that you can't play on a computer...
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
The general idea of a pc-based entertainment center is, actually, a great idea.
A PC gains more and more entertainment capabilities. You can use a PC for game playing, listening to MP3, watching DVDs, as a smart TV (a-la TiVo), and the list goes on.
There is one problem with a TV, though: it is not designed to sit in your living-room.
So, an entertainment center designed to sit at your living room and function as a combained DVD/CD/MP3 player, TiVo, internet set-top box and play-station is a great idea.
The problem with HP's offering is that it focuses only on the music-related features, and hence it is may end up as a pretty expensive toy that have a relatively small set of features.
Out of the list of suggested features, I may be willing to give-up on the game-playing features (it would be difficult to have a rich game library unless the product is based on an existing gaming platform, or is windows-based PC under the hood). I would like to see a combined DVD/CD/MP3/TiVo with internet conectivity, though.
Here's what I want from Apple, a la iPod, in a stereo component (iDeck, I kinda like that for a name...)
Removable 60 GB firewire harddrive. Sync with my mac (or move your mp3's manually from peecee). Connect to my stereo. Play mp3's through my stereo, easily.
PVR functionality. Record television shows, Tivo, etc. Play DVD's, CD's, mp3 CD-R's, etc.
Snync recorded video to my mac (or drag and drop from the mounted firewire drive to my peecee...) Have a plugin for iMovie that allows me to record my television programs to DVD, via the SuperDrive. This would be very cool, and Apple could actually do it.
Make it expandable. Include an empty bay so that I can add another 100GB firewire drive if I want. Include networking, but not to transfer massive video files over a network (why? when you have firewire...). Allow mp3 streaming to PC clients on the network.
Release a mini-iDeck that will connect to the main Deck via airport and have music streamed to any room in range. Build on cheap G3 hardware, embedded Darwin, scaled down Aqua gui for tv out (antialiased text on a television...)
I'm also waiting for Sony to release something like this, perhaps with linux inside (they seem to be gearing up for war with Microsoft...)
My other computer is your Windows box
The HP drives are just rebadged Philips internals, the early ones sucked, I had a HP 6020 2x CDR in 1997, it died within months, they replaced it with another, it died.
In fact the products sucked that much that a bunch of US consumers initated a class action suit against HP and Philips and won. I believe you're entitled to $150 or a new drive if you were unfortunate enough to have purchased this drive.
I had a nice little chat to HP UK about the above class action and they offered to send me a new SCSI CDRW drive, it was to shut me up, I guess they didn't want risk the same action happening in the UK, especially now precedent had been set.
We're not talking about $90 CDRW's you see today, I paid £350 (~$500) for the 6020 SCSI in 1997, so you can see why people felt a little cheated when it died after 4 months.
Now, I'm not usually one for supporting the heranging of companies with frivolous claims (e.g. hot coffee burnt me, doh) but there were some serious technical deficiencies with this drive which shouldn't have gone to production in its current state, in effect many people became beta testers at a very expensive price, so they did have good grounds.
The problem I have with most digital music vault devices is the user interface. My ideal user interface is voice input, of course ("Computer, play something upbeat" or "Computer, play some U2", etc.). Of course, even this needs a supplement, since I need a fast way to see what I have available. My current system is to look at my rack of CDs and scan the titles from the cases, then pick the ones I want. I need a UI that gives me something as easy as that. I can't stand it if I have to constantly press a scroll button and wait for every title to go by. It would be better if I had a scroll wheel, and the listing of titles would move as fast as I turned the wheel (while remaining completely readable at all times). I could spin the wheel, scan the titles, stop it at the ones I wanted, the hit "select" for those. The important thing is that it be fast (and responsive), since I may have lots of titles (of course, there should be lots of selection modes, not necessarily just for titles). Anybody seen any good UI ideas in a good music product lately?