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TiVo and Rendezvous
An anonymous reader writes "Just found this press release on the Apple web site. Time to upgrade the TiVo?" Looks way excellent. Right now I have an old iBook sitting on top of the TV, and it streams MP3s via AirPort from the server. But it would be so much better to just listen to the MP3s through the TiVo instead ... and have access to my iPhoto albums too? Sweet. But I would still want it to be wireless: Josuah writes "Alex King has set up his TiVo 2 to download its meta information over his 802.11b network, instead of the landline. He's got step-by-step instructions up." I'd probably want to use 802.11g though ... lots of data, this is.
Two questions:
1 - Where do you live that 11Mb/s is the bottleneck between your Tivo and the backbone? I count myself lucky to have 640k down/128 up DSL.
2 - Just how much meta information do you need to download to this thing that you need 22Mb/s? Or do you really need to refresh all program info for all 400 DBS channels every second?
You definitely can - and it's brilliant that you (and many others) have both the ability to do this.
:)
:D
What the rendezvous setup does is let you not have to worry about your own abilities, a tech's abilities, support, or hunting down the hardware/software to do it and setting that up. And that's marketing
It's a little like adding a room onto your house. It;s dead easy - just a few simple steps, some thought and the work put in place, and it's done. Most people would be just as happy to pay a builder to do it. Works well either way
Heh. I like it. "That thing that Rendezvous will let you do with zero configuration? Oh, you can do the very same thing today with this list of obscure tools and a couple of weekends of hacking work."
;-)
That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Rendezvous is a good thing.
I write in my journal
This is for showing pictures and mp3s off your network, and if you think about the bandwidth of those things, 802.11b should be just fine. Program data doesn't usually exceed 5 MB (remember, TiVo was designed to do that over poor modem connections), and since it grabs 10 days ahead of Today and processes at 50 mhz (on series 1), an 802.11g connection isn't going to help.
The other big feature that nobody's talking much about is one I have been using for awhile now. Remote scheduling. I have full remote management via the TivoWeb project (tivo.lightn.org), and love it. When I had a job, it was nice to be able to schedule something a coworker might mention, or something I had forgotten to schedule but was going to miss, without having to be at home to do it.
I think this kind of interconnectivity can lead the way to seamless integration of set top boxes so that every TV in a home has one.
No offense, but I think you're full of shit. An iPod holds 20 GB today, and presumably 40 GB real soon now. DVD's put about two hours into about 7 GB, at about 8 Mb/s. So you could store five DVD's without additional compression on a 40 GB iPod, and stream them over plain old AirPort, and still have room left over for some MP3's.
So everything you describe could be done right now, with last year's technology. If Apple were planning to do it, they would have been doing it already.
I'm not 100% sure, but I think you're full of shit.
I write in my journal
Google around a bit and you can get it up and running with dumps of video to your Mac -- MPEG/MP3 video files that can be converted to VCD/SVCD/DVD. It's sweet!
The thing that ReplayTV needs to get that is NOT available but is touted by the TiVo Rendezvous solution is the ability to get to your MUSIC library (read: iTunes). This would be a great step for the ReplayTV to take as well and I have been trying to find a way to contact them to make the suggestion.
Having your PVR also act as a music jukebox for your main entertainment room would be excellent.
I love the irony of two slashdot articles in a row, where one talks about Apple's Rendezvous, and the next talks about Microsoft's new 'Spot' wristwatch thingy. Apple's product is useful, open-sourced, and can provide benefits beyond Mac owners, since devices can communicate without a Mac or any Apple products at all. Contrast this with the Microsoft announcement: a clunky, expensive watch that will cost at least $100 year in service fees.
Apple Press Release
Microsoft Watch Article
But there is something more going on here. Apple is returning to its roots, and to computing's roots, by giving away software in order to sell hardware. Microsoft sees the "free software" writing on the wall, and is desperately trying to sell hardware and services. Who's going to win?
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
More work? There's basically no work involved. If you can extract a zip file, you can install ReplayPC with a GUI.. it took me all of 10-15 seconds (literally) to "setup".
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
Oh hell, fuck tivo I want a free/open linux pvr with xml show listings available on the net.
Yeah, okay, whatever. Let us know when you get that working, okay? Meanwhile, the rest of us are going to stick with something that actually works, and that does not require an absurd amount of work to set up and maintain.
I write in my journal
to making it's digital hub strategy come true, and yet I don't understand why they don't just do it.
All they have to do is allow the Mac to connect to the TV and let iMovie record stuff off the TV. Once they integrate iCal with iMovie, they've made the Mac the ultimate Personal Video Recorder.
How many people own digital video cameras? And of those, how many actually have the patience to make a movie out of their footage? But everyone has a TV and everyone wants to record their favorite shows and movies and edit out the commercials and archive it to DVD. This is the killer app Apple has been looking for since the Laser Printer.
Not only will it convince the average joe to buy a computer with a powerful processor and a large hard drive and a SuperDrive, it'll convince appliance manufacturer to adobt Rendezvous technology. It may also help Apple sell Airport base stations.
iLife won't mean squat if Apple lets Microsoft integrate the computer with the TV first. Until the people see that they can increase the value of their TV by buying a Mac, the hub for digital lifestyle is just a pipe dream.
Rendezvous currently only broadcasts availibility of services within a single subnet. This will change in the future though, then there would be the possibility of you broadcasting the availibility of services to the entire world. Of course, this happens already with such things as NetBIOS, and is a problem - mainly for users who don't understand networking concepts. But, this isn't a new situation, people do need to be better informed regarding security, but this is a seperate issue which needs addressing.
Rendezvous (and more specifically the zeroconf working group) is not there to increase security, it's to make networking and service discovery easier for people. That isn't to say that security isn't important and that it isn't something which the working group take seriously. But Rendezvous really doesn't harm security, certainly no more than a variety of other standards such as NetBIOS and UPnP.
If an individual or company is worried about security, then they should have a policy regarding this and methods to implement it, regardless of what OS, protocols, etc they are using.
I've taken my (Korean) satellite TV feed, sent it to my G4, and piped it right back out...onto the internet, using QuickTime Streaming Server and Broadcaster (both free from Apple).
:)
Only I'm using Firewire and a Sony DV cam to get it into the Mac. What would a TiVO get me, I wonder...maybe better control over the source?
Now to figure out a way to change TV stations remote, via a web browser, and I'm set