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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.
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!
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!