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Cable Boxes With DVD, MP3, Networking
Bruha writes "It appears that Charter Communications cable division is in the first phase of rolling out a new home media center-style cable box. The article on CNN describes the box with a 80 Gig hard drive, dual tuners (With HDTV), DVD, and WiFi networking capability to allow music to be transferred to the unit along with pictures from your PC. Copyright protection prevents recordings from being copied to the PC, and Charter has ordered 100,000 of these boxes." We covered a preliminary announcement of this box, which uses the Linux-based Moxi software, last year.
If its anything like DTCP, it might not even be broken at all. And infact, that's probably what it uses, since the units support HDTV.
Apparently, investors aren't worried about it.
Watch this get modded up to 5. How is this copy protection any different from normal copy protection? There's no difference? How have "we" been asking for this?
Because they're not trying to eliminate mp3's or give you a hugely restricted POS hardware. The only thing that you can't do with it is move recordings off the box to the PC. You can still use it as a recorder and move them to some other media.
This is like exactly what I built for myself.... down to the letter, including the WiFi! It's runnign MythTV. I should have patented it!
...then the competition has nothing to worry about.
My parents have Charter digital cable and the channel guide--IMO the reason to get digital--is the worst implementation I've ever seen.
About HALF the screen is a constant ad, you can see about an hour of time, and a total of about 8 channels at once, whereas with TimeWarner, you can see about 4 hours at once in a big full-screen guide, and about 15 channels at once. Everytime I visit, I can't help but go off about what a poor quality channel guide they have compared to TimeWarner's digital offering. Why must half the screen be used for ads instead of a nice big channel guide? It's easier to either pick up the paper, read a TV Guide, or go to tvguide.com than it is to use the one they include!
I've written them about this and they're reply was something like: "There wasn't any more information displayed at once prior to having ads."
Don't they even TRY what the competitors are offering? I know cable is a localized monopoly, but geez. I would never pay for that after having used TimeWarner's system.
First, one less box sitting in the entertainment center. There is a finite amount of space for AV equipment and a limit to the number of power outlets. Remove a box without losing functionality (at least today) sign me up!
Second, seemless integration would be made easier. There was a comic over at Penny Arcade that pretty well described the situation many AV geeks are living in. If I could remove a single device from my cabinet, it would make my wife's life easier and thus my life easier. This would be a Good Thing(tm).
Third, there is an opportunity for new services. Perhaps my cable company is unique (Wide Open West), but they have continued to add services while maintaining or lowering costs. In my opinion they "get it" and know who and what there competition is. I feel certain that when a new use for these boxes is invented (perhaps an iTunes like player and purchasing system) they will be right there trying to offer the services. Would TiVo? Maybe the hacker community could, but that's not the same thing.
These are just my thoughts, but I suspect that there are a good number of people who feel the same way and will speak with their wallets.
It's nice to see a consumer product support timeshifting of HDTV material. Along with a plethora of HDTV programming, this might be a nice step towards making widespread availability a reality.
Myself, I ended up building my own, centered around the MyHD card and a RAID array with about a terabyte of available storage. Music, movies, and HDTV. Technology's wonderful!