HP Unveils Its Digital Media Receiver

strictnein writes "Looks like HP is getting into the media box market. Today they introduced their new HP Digital Media Receiver 5000 series. Some of the key specs are: Wireless networking support (on the ew5000 model), S-Video and composite video output, and MP3 and WMA support. The OS support is limited to Windows ME or XP. This is an interesting addition to their Windows Media Center based 863N, 873N, and 883N desktop models."

Comments

Wireless Networking

[56]

The wireless networking on this has interesting potential.

Who cares? Why is this on slash dot

[Anonymous Coward]

Heck unless it has 802.11g/a its not even state of the art. It wont work as a media center with smart screens. THis is just another box.

Wow

[Anonymous Coward]

A mention of an MS OS and no childish, snide remark thrown in at the end. CowboyNeal, you da man.

The All-Important Business Question

[Amsterdam Vallon]

... Is there a market for this kind of thing?

I'm a hardcore geek and have expert certification on everything from Windows 2000 to A+ certs to Novell Network certs to CISCO certs to _____ . You name it, I've done it.

But I personally could probably just barely piece one of these "home media units" together. Furthermore, I wouldn't even know what to use it for.

Some of us, like myself, still buy CDs from BMG and Columbia House. Yes, you read that correctly -- some of us still buy CDs.

So, we have more need for 6 disc changes than we do for 10 GB discs of hard drives on which to store mostly-illegally-obtained mp3s.

Sorry to rant, but:

1) HP clearly is out of their league and doesn't know their market,
and,
2) No one aside from the most hardcore Slashdotter would even know what to do with one of these

Re:The All-Important Business Question

[Jordy]

I'll tell you the market. The market is people who want to eliminate needless hardware and centralize the interface for various components in a multi-room (or single) environment.

If you can stick a high enough end digital output device on a PC (because no one trusts DAC's in an electromagnetically noisy PC) and make it realiable enough to store my DVD collection, my CD collection and integrate into my TV to give me PVR-like functionality while at the same time delivering content that is on-par with my originals (ie., no MP3, but AAC is ok), then I'd be the happiest person in the world.

The problem a lot of people have is multi-room installations aren't particularly transparent. I want to be upstairs watching TV in my bedroom and pull up a TV program I recorded yesterday using the interface in my living room. Only, I don't want to know where it is stored. Hell, I don't care. The same goes for my DVD collection, my CD collection, my, uh, "picture" collection.

Then there is all the other functionality I would like. Pulling down movies from the Internet (legally available of course), audio books and what not. Hooking into my security system to record what is on my security camera and letting me access it. Controlling lights, drapes, etc. to save electricity.

The thing is, you can do a lot of this stuff right now. It just is all done by these little independent pieces of hardware that don't talk to eachother nicely and are rather expensive independently.

Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Re:The All-Important Business Question

[SuperDuG]

I'm a hardcore geek and have expert certification on everything from Windows 2000 to A+ certs to Novell Network certs to CISCO certs to _____ . You name it, I've done it.

Obviously with that standard A+ and level one CNE along with MCSE ... you sir are a computer genuis.

But I personally could probably just barely piece one of these "home media units" together. Furthermore, I wouldn't even know what to use it for.

Right, see this is a set-top box that happens to have a computer inside of it that runs and OS that most all of us are used to. That doesn't mean I want a computer sitting on top of my TV that has been rigged to use my TV-Out on the old video card. This is meant to be like a TiVO (read: Also a computer) where you don't ever have to do anything except use the remote to make it work, but it can interact with your home computer without wires (read: magic).

Some of us, like myself, still buy CDs from BMG and Columbia House. Yes, you read that correctly -- some of us still buy CDs.

Obviously here on slashdot all we do is STEAL them from the poor artists, hence why we hate the RIAA they just want to stop us all from breaking the law.

So, we have more need for 6 disc changes than we do for 10 GB discs of hard drives on which to store mostly-illegally-obtained mp3s.

Perhaps they didn't cover this in your "A+" training, but it is possible to take a CD that you own and rip it into an mp3/ogg/whatever and listen to it. But catch this, you need some type of media to store it on, usually a ... catch this ... a harddrive. 6 Audio CD's will easily fit on an CD with the songs compressed as MP3's making that 6 disc changer, non-essential, amazing isn't it?

Catch this, you can even rip a CD ... while you listen to it, making it non-essential to rip the CD at a later time, you can even setup a cd/mp3 software "program" to do this ... automatically (read: requires magic).

Sorry to rant, but:

Ahh, if you apologize first that makes it impossible for jerks like me to pick apart your stupid posts ...

1) HP clearly is out of their league and doesn't know their market, and,

Whoa did I see a degree in economics somewhere in that mess of worthless credentials at the top of this post?? Nope, obviously you don't have any clue what the intended market is for this product as it hasn't even been sold yet and you've declared it "out of their league". When obviously there is so many greater rivals out there doing the same thing, wait a minute, no their aren't.

2) No one aside from the most hardcore Slashdotter would even know what to do with one of these

Well I'm guessing they'd probably be used for ... viewing media ... hence the clever name of Digital Media Receiver.

Ya know, I remember when the TiVO came out and everyone said the EXACT same thing. That microsoft would come out with a better product to pound TiVO into the ground and that no one excecpt the uber geek would ever want to have one. Yet low-and-behold, even my grandma has a TiVO now because she doesn't like how hard it is to program her VCR. HP isn't stupid, they make computers really easy to use and asthetically appealing to the eye, look at Mac's popularity.

I think you need to realize that you aren't as smart as HP, seeing as they're a huge company and you're a moron with a win2000 cert ... hehehehe ... you want some advice, don't ever advertise you have an MCSE on slashdot. That's like saying you love to watch linux suck.

Re:The All-Important Business Question

[g4dget]

I'm a hardcore geek and have expert certification on everything from Windows 2000 to A+ certs to Novell Network certs to CISCO certs to _____ . You name it, I've done it. But I personally could probably just barely piece one of these "home media units" together. Furthermore, I wouldn't even know what to use it for.

I don't have any of those certifications (thank God!), but I have had no trouble pulling together a "home media unit" from scratch.

A standard Linux install pretty much has all you need, and you have lots of choices for how to set it up--all of them pretty simple. You can set up the box as a streaming media server, or you can make it part of your own in-home P2P network, or you can handle all the music through web interfaces. You can push audio to a Linux box or have it pull it from other systems with standard commands.

Another very simple approach is to get a Macintosh--iTunes pretty much does everything you need for that out of the box.

So, we have more need for 6 disc changes than we do for 10 GB discs of hard drives on which to store mostly-illegally-obtained mp3s.

I own all the CDs for the MP3s that I have. Why store them on-line? Because a computer is much, much more convenient than two 300 CD jukeboxes or, worse, lots of jewel cases and strange looking pieces of furniture.

No one aside from the most hardcore Slashdotter would even know what to do with one of these

My parents seem to have no trouble understanding the convenience of just selecting a CD from an on-screen list, as opposed to dealing with hundreds of jewel boxes.

Of course, little of this applies to this HP device, which does sound much more complex, less functional, and proprietary than just getting a Mini-ITX system.

what about playing video?

[SobiOne]

I wouldn't even think about purchasing one of these unless it did the following:

1. Play my videos (.mpg, .avi, etc...)
2. Displayed winamp plugins on the TV while playing music files.

sounds like junk

[Stanley Feinbaum]

No OGG support

No divx support

The only thing it was going for it is it runs windowsXP

Build it yourself.

[PyroX_Pro]

For $300 I can build one myself, stuff it into an old vcr box, and play anything I want on it, including but not limited to:

1) Music ( All formats )
2) Video ( All formats, inc. dvd )
3) PVR
4) MAME, SNES, NES, ect ect ect
5) Digi Cam Pict Viewer Gallery Thingy
6) Internet


Of course, I would run a cable to mine, the budget is not there to go out and buy wireless just for this. ( Plus the speed of the connection is a factor )

You can do this too, just go out to ebay or pricewatch and do some research with google.


Just me 2 cents worth.

Re:We have to ask... (apple?)

[Pathwalker]

Personally, I would be happy with just support from Apple for the Vorbis audio codec in a Quicktime wrapper.

It would be difficult for me to find a way to care less than I do about the OGG wrapper format, but Vorbis seems to actually be a rather good audio codec. In OGG, it is decent, but in QuickTime, it could be outstanding!

As one example, the ability for a Vorbis stream to be stripped to a lower bitrate on the fly seems to be a perfect match with the QuickTIme Packetizer API to create a Packetizer/Reassembler combo which can compensate for lost packets by replacing them with packets at a lower bit rate, keeping the total stream bandwidth below the specified limit!

Plus, you wouldn't have to decode all of the headers in the stream (to read the granule positions, to determine at what time each frame starts) before being able to seek around in it, as in Quicktime the Sample Table Atom holds everything you need in one place.

Where's SP/DIF ?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you saw the DIY Ethernet Audio Receiver project, where's the SP/DIF output on this HP receiver ?

It's nice to have SP/DIF out, as having to use the built-in DAC's is typically a compromise when you have a 6000$ digital pre-amp/processor which handles jitter correction and upsampling.

Using both techniques, MP3 can certainly sound superior to the typical output of a soundblaster card following the AC97 spec, which resamples 44.1 to 48 Khz in a bad manner.

MP3 can really sound high-end using the winamp3 resampler plugin and a good digital pre-amp.