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Japanese Makers To Forge An Internet TV Standard
An anonymous reader writes "Five Japanese TV manufacturers will form a working group to hammer out technical specifications by October for
digital TVs with Internet access. They will develop a consumer electronics version of Linux to provide functions and performance required for digital products. The resulting source code will be made available through the General Public License procedure."
The resulting source code will be made available through the General Public License procedure
What procedure is that? The one where someone swipes some GPL code, tries to pass it off as proprietary, and has to be badgered and humiliated until they release the source or pull the product?
So, they're going to forge this standard? Isn't there some kind of law against that? ;-)
Finally, you'd have an OS/interface that would be the same for most TV's worldwide, and wouldn't need loads of effort and reprogramming to localize for different markets. And that's not mentioning the possiblity of a widely available set-top that could conceivably run a very decent browser (mozilla/phoenix). Maybe it's not what we geeky Americans drool over, but the business/marketing sense in it is obvious.
True science means that when you re-evaluate the evidence, you re-evaluate your faith.
Would this be like HTML forged standards?
Or more like Dell's forged printer cartridge chip standard?
Enquiring minds want to know!
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
In France, we have a important internet provider (free.fr) which released in December a settop-box running Linux providing 2mbs internet access , digital TV and 2 phone lines for 30/mo.
pictures and technicals details (in french) on http://free.box.free.fr/ (it's an unofficial site)
This is a pretty cool idea, especially if it means I can set up real time television streaming a la shoutcast. We've got a ways to go on bandwidth is most places to make this ubiquitous, though. It'd suck if it just turned into an alternate closed delivery scheme for digital cable.
$ cat Farscape_4x22.mpg | vidcast -v -dtv dig_tv &
Woo.
This could never have happened in Capitalist America (troll, yeah, I know), where companies are too retarded to realize that you need to cooperate with others if you want to make *standards*.
Next step is to gather a bunch of corporations to form new standards for TV shows, in order to improve the shows too.
8mbps ADSL connections over in Japan are extremely common with 12mbps starting to be introduced.
Hell, you can get free 64K ISDN through one of the many ISDN ISPs over there.
They have the infrastructure to support it. If you were using multicast or something like that, Internet TV could be very usable even at high bitrates.
Remembers Bill gates "Vision" of a pc in every home running his software.. Visions of Windows enabled electronics Spread through the huse as well.. It sure seems that MS is not working the way he invisioned the future.. Linux is breaking more ground and seems to be the "OS" that will be powering all the electronics in the home.
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
afaik, Standard digital cable is a mpeg stream anyway. It'd be real nice if TV's and cable boxes all have some sort of standard, and this may open up the way for decent streaming TV or VoD streams.
Right now, companies like AT&T are using the same cable to bring you CableTV, Broadband internet access, and Phone service (trying to break back into the local telco market). It's the same copper infrastructure, but the technology for all of these services on both sides on the wire are all different.
If a standard like this really catches on, and VOIP takes hold, we may see providers like AT&T doing it all over IP, which could really help everyone out, as well as push broadband speeds up a notch.
The United States government has announced in a press conference that this action is considered a terrorist act toward Microsoft. "Our allies would use Microsoft software for this task", said George W. Bush. "They are not with us, so they must be against us." Bombing of Japan begins tomorrow.
As soon as someone figures out how to get these digital TVs to send shows from one TV to another (and from one home to another), Hollywood will do to this what it did to ReplayTV and SonicBlue... crush them with legal fees.
TiVo Upgrades
To get around Sony's patents on Beta, JVC with a few other companies created the VHS standard and made it free to everyone to implement. This is a potential nightmare scenario for Microsoft if the companies quickly reach an agreement and stick to it.
The only threats to this commoditization are the companies involved falling out with each other and Microsoft quickly poisoning the market for this commodity TV/Internet box. I wonder if Microsoft can handle this many threats to its business model (the Office monopoly cracking, the licensing schemes being rejected by its customers, etc.) at the same time?
The other home entertainment companies don't have much to worry about because they make their money from hardware, so they can just adopt this if it ever comes together. The other group to crap its collective pants is the cable industry. They fear the PVR already, and this gives the Baby Bells an easy road in for pay-per-view and other previously cable-only franchises.
If these Japanese companies can get it to market and adopted in Japan, this could be the beginning of something interesting.
The bitter lessons of a veteran coder: http://bitterprogrammer.blogspot.com
I have seen the article in Japanese Newspaper reporting same announcement like, http://www.asahi.com/money/topics/TKY200303290203. html(sorry Japanese only).
Linux is on topic, but in the same time TRON-OS is also mentioned as a candidate of standard. There is another article that API of TRON OS could be merged into Monta Vista's Linux.
Why do people never give up on that idea of internet on the TV? Why would anybody want to surf on a eye straining device that is usually placed in a position inconvenient for work. WHy don't they focus their energies on phasing out TV for good, replacing it by something internet based... Oh well, one company I wouldn't invest my money in.
What? 400ms satellite vs 150ms 28K modem?
:P
If I was trying to play games online I know which one I'd pick!
What? 400ms satellite vs 150ms 28K modem?
:P
If I was trying to play games online I know which one I'd pick!
I had satalite for several years (was one of the first customers) until less than a year ago, they put cable out here in the sticks.
I could get a 400 ping, if all i did was PING, but for online gaming, my EFFECTIVE ping was really about 800+. This holds true for other tests I had done as well.
Oh, and Hughes service sucks. Absolutely sucks. I had been on hold with them for over an hour, many times. When my BRAND NEW system was installed, it took 3 months of replacement parts to get it to work (not true now tho) and when they had a network down, they would NEVER admit it, so you are trying to figure out if its on your end. After a while, you learn that if the hold is more than 20 minutes (the average on a good day) then lots of people are calling to complain, so its not on your end. Really, they absolutely suck at service. If they did not have a monopoly of sorts, they would be out of business. Not bashing, ask anyone who has been with them a long time.
As a note: they also THROTTLE you down to 56k speeds if they think you are using too much bandwidth, it is NOT unlimited. Read the fair use clause. And yes, thanks to a.b.w. I had been throttled a few times. If you download a few ISOs a month, then no, but anything else, yes. This is one reason I would never consider a TV/Internet package from Hughes here in the states. I switched to cable, and was never happier.
And I get 150 pings on a modem in town. 300 in the country.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
You obviously haven't had the utopian vision of a society that shares its code for the common good, unlike other evil entities that exploit, control and enslave its users with a monopoly that can, and apparantly does have the money to pay off the corrupt politicians.
Thats swell. But you still have to eat.
I think somewhere in there is some truth, but the GPL was started by people who were trying to STOP you from making money off it, but to entice you to add to the pool of useful code, at least thats the impossible dream I had when I read it.
I don't believe for a minute that the GPL was designed to STOP you from making money. Not for a second. It was designed to keep IMPROVEMENTS basically in the public domain. My company and your company may compete, but one wont have an advantage only because of software. Of course, this is not true either, since I can take ANY GPL software and make tons of changes, and NEVER release my source code. Legally. As long as I don't distribute the binaries, I don't have to release the the source. The main limiting factor of the GPL is to the DISTRIBUTORS. Not users. It keeps RedHat from changing Apache in a way that will only work with their brand of linux, without releasing the code. It helps prevent forks in the code.
But the GPL was not invented to STOP you from making money. I wonder how many people actually have READ the damn GPL instead of just talk shit about it?
Quoting from the GPL...
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, not price....
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, and you may at your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
GPL is free as in speech, NOT always free as in beer. I can make all the profit off of GPL I want, it was designed so I COULD, so everyone could. It insures I can't stop YOU from making money with it. I can't distribute it modified without sharing the modified source. This point seems to get missed all too often.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!