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Bokks Linux Based AV Component
Here is an article about a new linux based AV stereo componenent. This one is from
Bokks and it has a lot going for it: Plays your MP3s, MPEGs, VOBs, and soon Divx. Has standard audio and video ports, a sleek form factor, and what looks to be a sexxy interface. Its ethernet interface can take input from NFS or Samba, or the net. The only downside I see is that it has no DVD drive for built in ripping, and it has only a 20G drive. But at $400, this is pushing the line of reasonable for this type of device.
Should be available in Feb.
Will they be putting out a bigger, optional hard drive? 20 gigs isn't too much when yuo consider the average file size of mp3s and mpegs.
I'm a repairman in an imperfect world.
Hopefully in the future stereos will move away from plain uncompressed stuff and towards things like MP3s. It will be nice to be able to fit a huge bunch of music on a single CD, called "Peter's Favorite Music" in my case, that you can play on good audio hardware, not just old Sound Blaster speakers.
Will a 266 Mhz x86 processor be able to play DivX smoothly? I ask because my 333 Mhz laptop has trouble keeping audio sync...
No Ogg Vorbis support though. .ogg's have better compression than mp3's and is OSS. If they get it to work on there, it'd make it even more attractive...
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Random, useless fact: I type in startx entirely with my left hand.
I'm certain someone will have posted a similar comment by the time I hit submit but...
BEGIN WHINE:
Can you replace the drive with because...
Multiple choice:
a)My mp3 collection is HUGE, I mean it's SO much bigger than yours you should be turning green with envy.
b)You can only fit hours of on this drive according to my calculations which I will now list in order to invite ridicule on my crap math skills.
c)the clever sales person told me you have to have at least 80GB of memory these days and he wouldn't lie to me he was really clevar.
END WHINE.
That should save everyone else lots of typing.
If they added a VideoLan Client, it would be practically perfect. VLC by itself probably doesn't support the hardware MPEG decoder, and the CPU isn't fast enough to do DVD decoding in software.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
there's a handy little mobo/case called the SV24, made by shuttle. it has:
RCA/S-video out
normal audio out
ethernet
4 usb ports
2 firewire
etc... (standard mobo parts, ps2 ports etc etc)
put together a nice multimedia system for only $490 some, plus it's actually useable as a computer!
i mean, that's a nifty box and all, but you can build a better one for not that much more. it does everything that the unit above does, and much more besides.
This would be perfect without the hard drive. If the box has network access, why do you need it? It's just an extra component that could fail.
There is also less need to keep all your 1.5-3 hour movies in one device that can play them all without switching media as there is for your 2-15 minute songs; I see DIVX more as the result of the fact that most computers don't have DVD burners.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
A: They thought it would be a nice middle ground between nothing and more.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
So that's about 288 USD parts, if we accept your quoted prices as being market. But you're ignoring ethernet and probably a few other things (e.g., wireless remote). Plus labor to assemble it and install software. Plus support. Plus software development for their UI. Plus profit (god forbid anyone take a little risk and expect that). Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
A scratch does not damage the information on a piece of optical media, only the clear plastic that is protcting the information; that is why the plastic is there, you can get a scratch kit to fix it. If you need to record something for extremely long term archival, you can get silver, gold, or platinum CDs. Most commercial DVDs are burned on silver or gold, so unlike your VHSs, they should be usable many generations from now.
When he says hard drives are not a permanent medium he is referring more to the fact that they have moving parts and are prone to data corruption than their archival value. Overall, I think we should be glad we are moving from extremely short lived products, i.e. magnetic tape, and short lived products, i.e. film, to store our multimedia art on.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
It is unreasonable if you're willing to spend the time to put something like this together--but that's how it goes for pretty much everything these days. If you do it yourself, then you're going to save cash.
The point is that not everybody has the tools (remember, Joe Average is the target audience and he's not going to know how to assemble said box or even come close to getting all the required software running--even with Ye Olde Simple MS Product) nor the time (Joe Average again--even if he had the tools to get this job done, I'd sure he'd rather spend it at his kids' T-ball game) to assemble this thing.
True--it doesn't make sense for your the "technical elite," but that's not who it's marketed to. This is a product just like a Dell computer or an internet appliance--it's got some cool technology bits but it's sold as a package so that Mr. and Mrs. Average don't have to get their hands dirty with the details. I'm sure there are a fair number of geeks that will be interested in this product based solely on its technical merits, but the intended audience is not someone who could do this on their own--that person has already done it, and for half the price.
But the marketing/advertising they are receiving, at least from that review, aims directly towards illegal uses. Take the following examples:
This implies you will TRADE the movies, not just watch them for your own personal fair use. Here it suggests hooking up external equipment to your companies LAN and use their bandwidth for your own (likely) illegal use. Not good either.If this product hopes to succeed, it must be presented in fair use. The Rio almost got nailed by the RIAA, but the Rio presented itself as legal fair use, and set a good precedent. This could set a NEGATIVE precedent if done incorrectly. They need to improve their image quick.
Linux: Because a PC is a terrible thing to waste.
James Brents
ATI AIW TV edition, 100$
... priceless. There are things money can't buy, for everything else there's an innovative hacker.
motherboard, 100$
lots of ram, 50$
40gig harddrive, 150$
duron 850 processor, 80$
Not paying heating bills because your collection of computers keep your home toasty warm
My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I likes it!
What software and codecs are being used for playback? Are they something that's already public domain or are they being developed specifically for this box? Much media playback software for Linux currently is "OKay", but with frequent crashes, poor features, and artifacts, it's got a long way to go. If this is going to be a consumer product, I imagine the software will be a little more polished, or at the very least, provide decent functionality in the form of front-ends that users of other platforms have expected. Is this software to be available to us or will it have to be hacked mercilessly out of the box and liberated from a restrictive license?
Why bother.
I see that many people here are complaining about the capabilities and price of the box. For me it is just the kind of STB I was looking for.
:-)
Sure, you can build a PC with MPEG2 playback, networking etc. cheaper or for about the same price. But thats not what this device tries to replace, at least I would not buy it for doing this. When I saw the older TV Bokks (you can see it on their web page) I thought this would be great as an STB to stream files and live DVB streams from a server in the basement to other TVs here at home. But, although we have one of those at work to play with, I never saw it being offered for sale anywhere.
The old Bokks has a Geode chip as processor/graphics chip/etc. and a Sigma Designs EM8400 for decoding. I guess the new Bokks is based on the same design. They only added some hardware (like the hard drive) and changed the shape to a brick. The EM8400 is a nice decoder chip. We developed our own driver which is API compatible to our DVB drivers. So, I would not mind playing with one of those Bokkses. Also, if you consider the price of an EM8400 card (e.g. the Netstream 2000), the Bokks does not seem that expensive anymore.
Sure, I would also not mind if the Bokks were a little cheaper. With VAT (AFAIK 25% in Sweden which I guess I will have to pay when ordering from Germany) its over 1100 German Marks + shipping. Maybe they decide to also sell the old version for a lower price. I at least would be interested in it. On the other hand, the disk and nice brick shape makes the new system really portable. And I think the specs mention only 10W power usage. No noise, little heat, sounds good.
Now please everybody buy it so that the price goes down and I can get one
Imagine this.....
1) 1.2 Ghz athlon with 512 megs of memory
2) ATI all in wonder radeon that provides not only a TV tuner but svideo/composite A/V inputs and outputs and the ability to do audio/video capture at 720x384 at 30 fps on any of the inputs
3) Sound blaster Live platinum 5.1 for surround sound playback of DVD's etc.
4) four 100 gig hard drives on an IDE raid controller. Total capacity of 400 gigs
5) DVD-R burner, preferably SCSI
6) CD burner, preferably SCSI
7) It will be connected to the internet via a switched 100base-T network connected to a NAT gateway that is itself connected through DSL.
This is the system I'm building right now. Its purpose is much the same as the Bokks device. With it I will be able to play DVD's, vobs, mp3, avi's, mpegs, vcd, divx, etc all on my TV thanks to the all in wonder. Additionally I'll be able to do tivo style recording thanks to that all in wonder. I can rip all my DVD's, encode them to divx, and store them on the raid array or burn them to CD. Or I can just rip them and burn them back to DVD in regionless format with no macrovision. I've got friends overseas that might appreciate that.
By the time this Bokks device becomes available I'll have this system up and running. I haven't decided whether to use Linux or Windows2000 yet. Which one I use will greatly depend upon device support for the all in wonder and SB Live. We've got an HK A/V reciever with dolby surround sound support. If the SB Live drivers for linux support all the features, and the support for the All in wonder is there, then I'd rather use Linux. But if this is not the case I'll use windows instead.
Unfortunately this system is going to cost me a fair bit more than $400. I've already got the MB, CPU, and memory. All I'll need is a good case/PS, the hard drives, the video card, the sound card, and of course the SCSI adapter and burners. Total cost will be upwards of $2000 dollars US.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Well I am not a nerd, nor do I reguard it as something to be proud of. That said, whether it has built in LAN or not is practically irrelevant. If you're an employed nerd, you might realize that your time is actually worth something. If I have to spend a couple hours putting this thing together to match its quality, then I've lost a significant amount of money.
Your time clearly is worth nothing. Troll for the Troll.
[Xbox and PS2] will make for a good convergence device, once it gets hacked and opend up.
Hacked? Yeah right. Xbox is locked up tight; apparently, all binaries must bear Microsoft's digital signature. Watch for Microsoft to use its vast re$ources to sue any modchip makers into oblivion.
for some reason divx movies look identical to the DVD on the monitor but not so identical to the DVD when played on TV out compared to DVD played on DVD player.
This may be a gamma issue. Try tweaking your TV-out device's settings.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Lots of people just say build a PC, but what software on the PC lets you run the thing with a remote control and has a built-in set of menus for timer-recording and other features without fscking around with a keyboard (even a wireless one is too much if *manditory*).
PCs seem to be able to all the multimedia stuff independantly but they lack a common, simple IR-compatible way of tying it all together.
If you can make all the bits work together, that's got be worth something.
The only downside I see is that it has no DVD drive for built in ripping
:P
:)
It's not to surprising, considering that they wanted to sell the device, rather then just getting lawyered the fuck out of
Once they're successful they might be able to do things like throw in a DVD burner a-la recent Macs, but don't except a home DeCSS machine on store shelves anytime soon
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
Those images were not taken on film! Please read the site. Film begins getting discolored after a decade or so and must be stored in a room with excellent climate control to prevent degradation; Universal stores all it's negatives in a stone vault carved into Mount Weather, and they still need massive restoration when brought out.
The others who replied already dealt with your other points.
"Reality is just a convenient measure of complexity" -Alvy Ray Smith
Those who are electrical engineers correct me if I'm wrong, but this device appears to be centric to Europe in its video output. Its listed as having SCART, S-Video, and Composite (PAL) output. From what I know, the Composite signal isn't the only thing that is PAL/NTSC specific - S-Video is as well! If that is in fact the case, I don't believe any North American television will be of much use with this device. Too bad, in my opinion.
Without composite audio out, I guarantee you that the noise level of the outputs makes them totally worthless for even the less picky audio enthusiasts like myself. If I pause the machine and get a buzz through my otherwise totally clean Sherwood and MC500 pair, then the box isn't worth a ten dollar gift certificate.
Come on, for the love of christ somebody had to have a decent stereo on the team that developed this! Nobody in their right mind uses analog anymore for anything other than vinyl or magnetic tape, it is impossible to clean the signal even over the three feet between components. And when your signal is already digital (as it is before the cheap DAC on the sound card gets ahold of it and messes it up), why the hell not supply it as digital, so that $300 DAC in the sherwood isn't just twiddling it's thumbs. Coaxial outputs are basically free, and even optical out is hardly prohibitive anymore.
Keep it digital, folks, analog is the useless buzzing child of the past.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
They probably got a quantity deal on a bunch of old PII laptop chips from the same place they picked up those closeout 20 G drives.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.