A Hackable Media Player For HDTV

An anonymous reader writes "Embedded Linux and an open, hacker-friendly architecture power the world's first high definition media player, the $499 Roku HD1000. The brainchild of ReplayTV inventor Anthony Wood, the device could touch off a cottage industry of third-party applications and media packs that work with its Linux-based OS and user-friendly media APIs. Out of the box, the HD1000 can stream MPEG and MPEG2, play music, loop JPEGs, and more to an HDTV -- all at the same time. Roku is selling "Art Packs" of everything from museum-quality art to hot-rod cars as memory cards that work with the device. And, the company will release a C/C++ SDK for the HD1000 before 2004. Finally, there's something to actually show on your $5,000 54-inch plasma TV or 37-inch LCD TV." (Roku is also one of the companies mentioned in an earlier posting about using hi-def displays as digital art galleries).

Comments

yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

"MUSEUM QUALITY ART"!??!

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

We all know this is going to used exclusively for porn; you aren't fooling anyone.

Re:yeah right

[Pig Hogger]

We all know this is going to used exclusively for porn; you aren't fooling anyone.

Who are you fooling? You know very well that at that very intense moment right before the orgasm, where you're shaking your pecker like hell, the resolution of the picture you're looking at doesn't matter in the least!!!!

Re:yeah right

[rworne]

Ah yes, that's called "the vinegar strokes". Be sure to lock up the cat beforehand...

I'm just not sure...

[xerxesVII]

How am I supposed to spend all that money on a fyoot-schar tv and then only spend 500 on the box? Where are the bragging rights?

I need to spend, dammit.

Re:I'm just not sure...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well you could always tell microsoft about it. They'd decide because it's based on linux so it might be a threat to their monopoly, so they'd create an inferior operating system for the device with tons of bugs that they'd call 'features'. Then they'd force the manufacturers to bundle their software with the device, and we'd end up with something that costs more and does less.

The most expensive solution isn't always the best one.

Re:I'm just not sure...

[-Maurice66-]

Well, you can always buy one of those linux or windows versions off me.

I'll be happy to print a new logo for it and market it to be exclusive at three times the price if you like.

Off course if you succeed in bragging, your friends are welcome to buy one for four times the price (you'll get 10% of that, then)


Cheers,

Maurice

Re:I'm just not sure...

[Blue Stone]

Well I was reading somewhere that there's a new trend in people buying cheap jeans - bragging about finding a great bargain - and wearing expensive jackets, and the like.

This could be the technological equivalent.

Great...

[slantyyz]

Now people have something to shorten the life span of their expensive Plasma displays... I think it would be cheaper to just to buy a few art prints (cheaper and higher resolution too) and rotate them every few months. Of course, the expensive "I've got way too much time on my hands" coolness factor would be diminished somewhat.

Re:Great...

[ballpoint]

Excerpt from the flattvpeople site:

"High altitudes can affect the performance of plasma displays because the gas held inside each pixel is stressed, and has to work harder to perform."

Pity the hard-working gas, held captive inside an eeny-weeny-tiny pixel cell.

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Also many people have hard-working gas trapped inside them. Let freedom ring!

Re:Great...

[Rew190]

Plasmas have a life of roughly of 30,000 hours. It comes out to be something close to 8 hours of TV every day for 10 years.

Re:Great...

[Anonymous Coward]

"Plasmas have a life of roughly of 30,000 hours. It comes out to be something close to 8 hours of TV every day for 10 years."

or about 3 years if you LEAVE IT ON 24/7.

Which may be where he got the 3 year figure.

Re:Great...

[jo42]

Plasma displays suck. Period. Resolution is low, resulting in grainy images. Do yourself a favor and get a nice CRT or DLP-based display instead of pissing away money on Plasma cr*p.

NO UK HD TV

[Space cowboy]

... well, I guess it won't be coming over to the UK :-( HDTV is absolutely nowhere in the UK :-(

The only thing that will accept HDTV is my projector, and using it as a digital picture gallery would be a bit expensive on the bulbs...

Simon.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Anonymous Coward]

*shrug* So what? The big thing in most of Europe is 16:9 WideScreen displays, but you won't find many of them for sale in the U.S. Personally I'd rather have a 16:9 display with digital transmission. It's horses for courses.

Anyway I'm pretty sure that if you fork out for any plasma display on sale in the U.K it can do HDTV via. the DVI connector. There arn't any HDTV broadcasts to use it with, but then there arn't many in the U.S either. You could get an HDTV capable 16:9 display and one of these boxes on import and take advantage of HDTV if you really want it that badly.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Blue Stone]

If I recall correctly, HDTV was being proposed for the UK during the mid-to-late 80's, but effective lobbying from a certain Mr. Rupert Murdoch, who had recently introduced his very expensive and (then) loss making satellite tv system "SKY" (which wouldn't be able to carry HDTV signals) killed the matter stone dead.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Goth Biker Babe]

It's all to do with relative gains.

NTSC to HDTV is quite an improvement. PAL and PAL+ to HDTV is less of an improvement. 768x572 vs 800x600 is a negligable gain and 768x572 vs 1280 x 1028 is a gain but not enough to warrant the additional expenditure by the service providers/cable companies and the like. The additional bandwidth required would reduce the number of available channels and no broadcaster will go for that scenario. Then there's obtaining the content which is thin on the ground.

I would rather have good quality digital PAL widescreen broadcasts in number than a few HDTV ones. PAL widescreen projects fine to about 4m x 2m using my cheap projector system.

HDTV is partly marketing and it is being as a carrot, a way of getting people to upgrade to digital in the US. In the UK where there's a lot of digital usage already it's not needed.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[oRiCN]

There is Euro1080, Their broadcasting 1920x1080 @ 50hz on one of the Astra sats @ 19.2E, They have a free to air channel as well. I know a couple of ppl with DVB-S cards in there PC's receiving the test signal fine.

More info at www.euro1080.tv.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Anonymous Coward]

The big thing in most of Europe is 16:9 WideScreen displays, but you won't find many of them for sale in the U.S.

You obviously haven't been to a US Circuit City store in a few years. All the new DTV compatible screens are 16:9. I can't say they outnumber the 4:3 screens yet, but there are plenty.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Alan Partridge]

"768x572 vs 800x600 is a negligable gain"

And what do those two combinations represent, pray tell?

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Chris Carollo]

768x572 vs 800x600 is a negligable gain and 768x572 vs 1280 x 1028 is a gain but not enough to warrant the additional expenditure by the service providers/cable companies and the like.

Of course, 720p is 1280x720 and 1080i is 1920x1080. Not sure where you're getting 800x600 or 1280x1024.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, whereas here in the UK 16:9 screens now far outnumber 4:3 screens (Unless you're buying something smaller than a 19" display, then you're back in 4:3 land) I didn't say there wern't any 16:9 screens in the US (I have seen one or two for sale), just that they're way less common than in Europe.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[Goth Biker Babe]

Of course, 720p is 1280x720 and 1080i is 1920x1080. Not sure where you're getting 800x600 or 1280x1024

Those are both 16:9 formats. Although uncommon the 4:3 ones (including computer resolutions) are usually available in the hardware.

Re:NO UK HD TV

[steve_bryan]

Oh please, I've been in London and I've seen at least a smattering of TV in PAL format. I also have HDTV here in the US. Trying to pass off HDTV as just a little better than PAL is complete crap. You have zero credibility. Maybe it doesn't matter enough because of issues of program quality having nothing to do with resolution (essentially all of prime time programs except for reality and news magazines are already in HD). But it sounds just like sour grapes (like the fox said in Aesop "I don't care about those grapes I can't reach. They are certainly sour in any case") or your eyesight needs significant correction.

Storage capacity?

[ChangeOnInstall]

I'm just curious to know what magnitude of storage capacity is required to effectively record HDTV data? Tivo requires about 1GB/hour for basic quality and 3GB/hour for best quality. I don't recall if Tivo what encoding Tivo uses to store data though. Will such a device simply store the broadcast digital stream, or will it reencode it?

(Please excuse me for being a bit of a newb on HDTV here)

Re:Storage capacity?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't give the specifics but it'll be a lot less than that since this device can encode on the fly in hardware.

Re:Storage capacity?

[Y2K is bogus]

Broadcast HDTV is allocated 19.2Mbps for 1080i (1920 x 1080 x 60Hz interlaced)
The speeds go up in 40Mbps, 200Mbps, and 1.5Gbps quality steps depending on the
edit level (contributor, studio, and raw).

To store broadcast 1080i, you'd need 19.2Mbps. DVD is around 9Mbps.
19.2Mbps * 60s = 1152Gbpm or 140MB/min or around 8.2GB per hour.

Re:Storage capacity?

[DaHat]

I'm going to have to say you are wrong with your numbers...

A terrestrial ATSC stream runs at roughly 19.39 megabits per second, regardless of what it contains. Thus, recording the stream it's self requires about 8.7 gigs per hours. 19.39/8 = 2.42375 megabytes per second * 3600 seconds/hour = 8725.5 megabytes.

It is possible to extract the MPEG2 stream from the ATSC stream with out much effort (if you know what you are doing), however such an ability is the reason for the implementation of the so called broadcast flag to keep you from being able to have access to the raw MPEG2.

Re:Storage capacity?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no "Good, Better, Best" for the soon to be released HDTV Tivo. It records the already encoded/compressed signal so there is only one quality setting which is HDTV. The box simply records what is transmitted and does not attempt to extract, re-encode and re-compress the HD Stream, there not NEARLY enough processing power or bandwidth for that kind of processing.

The Tivo is expected to use 9 GB per hour for HD.

Re:Storage capacity?

[WuphonsReach]

I have a 10 minute HDTV clip that is 1.3Gb (1440x1080). That's 7.8 GiB/hr so it must be well compressed.

Not sure what format it's encoded in... DV is 25 megabits/sec (or 3.6 MiB/sec) and that's about a quarter the resolution of HDTV.

Re:Storage capacity?

[Y2K is bogus]

Do some more research, it's 19.2Mbps and higher. The data rate at the camera is 1.5Gbps and then it goes down from there when compressed. The lowest quality and highest compression is broadcast.

Re:Storage capacity?

[steve_bryan]

Why are people who have never recorded any HD so anxious to jump in and insult each other? It takes a little over 9 gigabytes to record an hour long program. After removing commercials (easily done because at least for now they are essentially all in SD) and filtering out null packets it is about 5.5 gigabytes. Some people on the AVS forum have worked out a procedure to transcode (or re-encode, I'm not sure which) to Windows Media 9 format with excellent results and even further size reduction. But reducing to 5.5 gig is as simple as falling out of bed and just takes a few minutes.

Re:Storage capacity?

[DaHat]

Just a lil FYI, unlike most on this topic, I have extensive experience in dealing with ATSC transport streams. This summer for my employer I designed and built a self contained application which builds an MPEG 2 stream into an ATSC stream. Other projects for this company I have worked on is an ATSC analysis device and a separate display/decoder test device.

For a side project this week, I've been working on my own app to remove the MPEG2 data from the transport stream as I got sick of trying to make HDTVtoMPEG to work the way I wanted... so I wrote my own from scratch.

An ATSC digital television transport stream operates at 19.392658 megabits per second over an 8VSB connection (coax), no more, no less. This is the bit rate that a consumer level decoder works at and is the speed of what ever source you will find in your home.

At the production and broadcast level, 27 megabits is the standard. Very often a second decoder of sorts is used to down sample the 27 megabit ASI stream into the 19.39 8VSB stream, just as higher bit rates can be used in production, but ultimately they must be at the 19.392658 level in order to be decoded by the decoder in any home with a consumer level decoder.

Re:Storage capacity?

[steve_bryan]

Well, that's good for you and I don't mean that in a sarcastic manner. The issue remains that a fairly simple request for information was made and instead of providing a concise answer there seemed to be a lot of arguing over numbers that could eventually lead to an answer. I suppose I'm as easily tempted to get into less than illuminating arguments but I thought it would be useful in this case to cut directly to the answers to satisfy the curious. Again it requires a bit more than 9 gigabytes per hour to record and it is easily edited down to 5.5 gig if you want to save without ads.

Re:story text (mod karma whore down)

[Anonymous Coward]

site shows no sign of being slashdotted, but if you want the article test, here it is.

Device Profile: Roku HD1000 high definition digital media player
(Dec. 1, 2003)

Roku calls its first product, the $499 HD1000, "the world's first high-definition digital media player." The product displays content from memory cards or networked PCs on High Definition TVs (HDTVs) including LCD and Plasma TVs. The HD1000's open, Linux-based architecture makes it especially interesting to embedded hackers, and Roku encourages such use.

Roku was founded by Anthony Wood, who, according to Roku, "created Dreamweaver," "created ReplayTV," and "invented the digital video recorder." "Roku" means six in Japanese, and the company claims to be the sixth company founded through Wood's inventions.

Roku bases the HD1000 on "Roku OS," a Linux-based operating system optimized for digital media and open for application development. "Developers can extend the home entertainment experience to include new types of digital media and applications," says Roku CTO Don Woodward. Roku will actively cultivate third-party applications through an SDK it will release before 2004.

Woodward adds that Roku is focused on consumer-oriented design, "[We build] products from the outside in, so to speak, in contrast to inside-out PC-based products, which tend to be unattractive and complicated to use."

What'll she do?

High-definition TV content remains scarce, according to Roku, and the HD1000 is intended to help fill that gap, letting HDTV owners actually use their machines rather than just having them hanging there, on the wall, with nothing to do. "The Roku HD1000 gives HDTV owners the ability to create a high-definition showcase for art, music, and photos that is individual and unique," says Woodward.

The Roku HD1000 range of media capabilities comprises digital photos, art, music, and "dynamic media applications." Content is displayed through memory card slots for CompactFlash, MMC, SD, Memory Stick, and SmartMedia. Or, the Roku HD1000 can connect via Ethernet or Wi-Fi to a home network.

The device works with any TV, though it was built specifically for HDTVs.

Roku says that industry analysts predict 42 million U.S. homes will have an HDTV by the end of 2007. HDVT prices are falling, it says, and approaching regulatory deadlines will ensure implementation of high-definition standards and programming, in turn stimulating consumer demand for HDTV.

Along with the HD1000, Roku sells "Art Packs," which provide collections of high-definition still and motion art, called LiveArt, on removable memory cards. "Art Packs can transform any HDTV into an inspiring home gallery with endless digital media possibilities, from museum collections to nature scenes, dream cars, and professional photography," notes Woodward. "Looping HD MPEG2 clips, JPEG, or MPEG are all supported."

The Roku HD1000 and Roku Art Packs are available now in consumer electronics stores nationwide, but are only the first of the company's planned products. For example, the company is working on "visualizer" software to graphically represent music played through an HDTV system.

Third party opportunity

Roku says its HD1000 is the only digital media player that opens the door to third-party developers. Though transparent to the consumer, the Roku OS allows third-party developers to build applications that enhance enjoyment of high-definition digital media players.

The Roku HD1000 is based on the Roku OS, an open platform that includes Roku's advanced media APIs and the Linux Kernel. Roku says that developers can quickly craft innovative and custom applications that take advantage of the TV-centric user interface elements, network and memory card access, MP3, MPEG, windowing system, graphics library, and other media engines. A C/C++ SDK will be available by the end of the year 2003.

In addition, custom installers can control the Roku HD1000 without the SDK by using simple ASCII control co

Not quite on topic...

[Associate]

My neighbor just bought a $4000 Plasma from Gateway. I tried to find the nicest way to tell him it sucked. I said it was mature technology. Was I being too nice?

Re:Not quite on topic...

[minasoko]

Heh, if it's Gateway's own model, it's merely a re-badged Sampo screen. Not the best around and certainly not worth $4000. You were being kind.

Re:Not quite on topic...

[Associate]

Doh! Should have read "was NOT mature technology."

Re:Not quite on topic...

[satanami69]

You could always tell him that his Plasma from Gateway is not an HDTV monitor. It is only capable of outputting 480p. It will accept a 1080i and 720p signal, but will downgrade the signal to just 480p.

Maybe he's happy because it looks neat on the wall.

$5000?

[chillmost]

Finally, there's something to actually show on your $5,000 54-inch plasma TV or 37-inch LCD TV.

I love tv and media and all but $5000 for a tv? Thats just crazy talk.
And no! I'm not new here!

Re:$5000?

[Eccles]

I love tv and media and all but $5000 for a tv? Thats just crazy talk.

I agree! Where did they find a 54" plasma, and for only $5K? 50" ones are usually $6K and up.

How much more will people pay for a "nice" car vs. a practical one? If you buy a Honda S2000, you'll probably spend less time driving it than you do watching TV, but it's at least $10K more than a decent used Miata. We're not used to spending $5K for a TV, so it sounds like a lot, but the utility value is pretty high.

Re:$5000?

[Rew190]

The truly funny thing is that a plasma TV has lower picture quality than (in general) to CRTs or CRT projections. Next time you see one, walk up to it and check out the blacks and note the patterns that are evident on the screen. Then check out a directview XBR or a cinema series Toshiba.

Re:$5000?

[Eccles]

I agree on the image quality of direct-view CRTs, but they don't really go larger than 40", and even those are very large and heavy. The projection sets tend to have a nice sweet spot in the center, but their quality varies more by viewing angle. Also, the projection TV don't seem to want to work with computers much. Any patterns seem to be as much a product of the scaler as the set itself, I've seen some plasmas that looked very nice with the right signal.

But I'd prefer a lower-power tech such as LCD or OLED, once they get the image size large enough and as long as they can avoid dead or stuck pixels.

Re:$5000?

[Rew190]

Agreed. There are some really nice plasmas out there, but you do have to pay a lot to get 'em. For the same money, an LCD projection would look much nicer.

I was just trying to point out that most people think that plasmas are simply the best TVs money can buy simply because they're expensive. I definitely wouldn't say no to that 61 inch Marantz that's hanging in my store's display, though ($24,999.90).

Why no DVI output?

[ethank]

I don't understand why they would create a system to showcase HDTV sets and not include DVI output on the system? Most, if not all newer HDTV sets include DVI inputs in order to facilitate pixel-perfect representation on the screen.

I would buy one of these (once I buy my nice little 42" LCD rear-proj from Sony :) ) but with no DVI output I think my other plan of putting my G4 out in the living room seems like a better plan.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[Anonymous Coward]

your tv doesn't have a HD component in?

Re:Why no DVI output?

[olddoc]

I agree completely. I want to put a Shuttle based computer with a DVI output ATI All in Wonder next to a Panasonic LCD projector one day.
It must be a quiet computer though.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[slantyyz]

Unless LCD Projector fans have gotten extremely quiet over the past couple of years, I doubt the noise emanating from a Shuttle SFF PC would be your biggest noise producer.

Having used a Shuttle in my stereo cabinet before, however, _any_ device with a fan will generate annoying sound levels in an otherwise silent room.

You're better off looking at a passively cooled PC or something using liquid cooling. Even the relatively quiet Shuttle won't cut it in a home theater room. But then again, either will the noisy fan from an LCD projector.

And unless you're going to completely black out the room, you probably shouldn't consider an LCD projector, because any ambient light will ultimately reduce the picture quality coming from the projector.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[olddoc]

I mean an LCD rear projector. It uses a 100watt bulb. It looks OK with the ambient light in a BestBuy or Circuit City retail store.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[Babbster]

The most obvious explanation is maximum compatibility using the least space and hardware. Looking at the picture of the back panel, it's pretty crowded and a solid 99% of HDTV sets with DVI (typically only one) in also have component in (typically two or more). There is also the fact that the DVI standard on HDTV sets is designed to accommodate HDCP (the evil anti-copying flags), so a consumer is most likely to use their DVI input for their HDTV set-top box/tuner while using the component inputs for other devices (particularly consoles and devices like the one in this article).

Finally, you should be aware that the DVI inputs on HDTV sets will not necessarily accept PC/Mac DVI signals, so keep this in mind (and try before buying) if you're looking for an HDTV to interface with your G4.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Most, if not all newer HDTV sets include DVI
> inputs in order to facilitate pixel-perfect
> representation on the screen.

If I'm paying 5000 bananas for a TV, I sure as hell don't want to see any pixels! I want to see the image, not the building blocks.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[L0C0loco]

Glad others share the same thoughts on this. Without DVI I'd hardly say it is targeted for HDTV. Lose the other connectors and stick a few DVI in's and out's on the back to provide me with a DVI switching capability. It would be a lot cheaper than the Sony STRDA9000ES. Then I'd be interested.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[LazyBoy]

I don't understand why they would create a system to showcase HDTV sets and not include DVI output on the system?

To avoid on-the-fly MPEG2 encoding (or transcoding) ?

Re:Why no DVI output?

[abischof]

I would buy one of these (once I buy my nice little 42" LCD rear-proj from Sony :) ) but with no DVI output I think my other plan of putting my G4 out in the living room seems like a better plan.

If you're thinking about LCD anyway, you may also want to consider a projector -- and they don't cost as much as you might think. For instance, Sanyo's just-released PLV-Z2 (review) lists for around $3k but the street price is closer to $2,000. It has DVI input and 1280x720 resolution which gives full 720p at 16:9. Why settle for a 42" image when you can have a 100" image? ;)

ObForums: For more information on projectors, you may also want to check out AVSForum.com and HomeTheaterForum.com (not explicitly linked to avoid Slashdotting them).

Re:Why no DVI output?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't use an AIW. Get separate TV and Video cards. Get a PVR-350 or 250 and a good 3d card. The PVR-350/250 has hardware MPEG2 encoding so your CPU wont get bogged down while recording and it has much better support under linux than an AIW. Besides a year from now when it's time to upgrade your 3d, you won't have to replace your tv as well.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[pellis23]

We didn't choose to add DVI because of the additional cost and complexity. We felt that customers would overall be well served with component and and vga. Of course, DVI is being considered for future products.

-Patrick
-Sr. Software Engineer, Roku.

Re:Why no DVI output?

[dirty]

Uhm...why does DVI = MPEG2 encoding? DVI transmits uncompressed digital RGB.

Lack of Optical support?

[erik umenhofer]

I didn't see any optical audio ins/outs. I paid top dollar for the ability to use optical audio on my home system, why doesn't this device have it? You are paying a premium for super quality video, why skimp on the audio??? Any ideas?

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[minasoko]

I didn't see any optical audio ins/outs. I paid top dollar for the ability to use optical audio on my home system, why doesn't this device have it? You are paying a premium for super quality video, why skimp on the audio??? Any ideas?

You answer your own question, sort of. This device is cheap, really cheap as far as HDMPEG2 decoders go, so you're not paying a premium for super quality video, quite the opposite.

The market they are aiming for will be quite happy with digital coaxial SPDIF audio output. Having said that, I'm sure if this device takes off, it will be revised and optical output could be added. That tends to be how these things go.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[matticus]

did you miss the Optical Audio Out connector in the picture?

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[minasoko]

Care to point it out? There is no optical audio out from this device.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[mOoZik]

As others have said, this is supposed to be a budget box. What do you expect for 500? The target audience is probably the average person with an average setup. Optical ins/outs is way above that. It does have S/PDIF Coax outs, so why are you complaining?

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[matticus]

my bad. you're right. i apologize for wasting your time.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[CptTripps]

Because optical (TOSlink) is at the bottom of the digital-out food chain. The bandwith of optical is a little less than 2/3 of Coax. Sorry to burst the bubble that BestBuy told you. Above Coax is AES/EBU and above that is ST-Glass. THAT is the only optical that has some bandwidth...So I was happy that there was no optical on that. I've got coax cables that cos several hundred dollars that I can use in my home theatre. ::: already warming up a spot for one :::

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[aonaran]

Not to mention that the more connections (ie electron to light and light to electron convertor circuits) the more potential to introduce errors.

Coax just makes a lot more sense, I'm surprised to see things like Playstations and Minidisc player/recorders unnecessarily complicating things by using optical outputs/inputs.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've got coax cables that cos several hundred dollars that I can use in my home theatre

If you believe that those cables make any difference (Real or percieved) in the quality of a digital signal, I've got some Happy-Sound-Super Anuated Balanced Oxygen Free stones that will smooth out the waveforms generated by the crosstalk in the discreet TTL components on your setup and illimate bad mojo in the capacitor gain, resulting in a fair and balanced warmer sounding wave envelope that can induce orgasms in all mammals at five hundred yards. Only $40,000 each. And you'll need a pair to keep the ying/yang balance in harmony.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're proud to pay 100$ for an ordinary piece of wire??? I've got some magic cables right here...

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[dododge]

Not to mention that the more connections (ie electron to light and light to electron convertor circuits) the more potential to introduce errors.

Yes, but the more electrical connections you have, the more potential to introduce ground loops and hum into the entire system. I usually prefer optical over coax because it keeps things electrically isolated. Especially if I have the equipment spread out over multiple circuits.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[aonaran]

That my friend is what ground loop isolators are for. If you have a ground loop problem (and you'll know it if you do) you pop one of these simple little devices onto the problem connection... and problem solved. Of course you could also solve it with a well wired home.

Ground loop problems aren't as common as the guys at Best Buy would have you believe.

Re:Lack of Optical support?

[dododge]

That my friend is what ground loop isolators are for. If you have a ground loop problem (and you'll know it if you do) you pop one of these simple little devices onto the problem connection... and problem solved.

Yep, been there, done that. When I hooked both my cable and OTA antenna lines into the system, which are grounded together outside the house, I got a noticable hum out of my mains amp. Currently I use homebrew isolaters on both lines made from baluns wired back-to-back, which solved that problem (I had to make sure to get the type that don't have a sneaky little ground wire across the transformer :-)

The problem with the isolator approach is finding the source of the loop, getting the right type of isolator, and isolating enough of the lines to kill it dead. Which is why I still prefer optical, since it completely eliminates that connection as a possibility. Plus there's the whole issue with it preventing an electrical spike from using that connection, though I know there's a zillion other interconnections I'm not going to be able to isolate.

Of course you could also solve it with a well wired home.

Don't even get me started on that situation. I do intend to put in several new runs to the equipment, so that I can spread the load out a bit and contemplate things like kilowatt amps (e.g. for Buttkicker devices).

Ground loop problems aren't as common as the guys at Best Buy would have you believe.

I know better than to believe anything that comes out of the mouth of a BB salesman. Granted some of them might know what they're talking about, but I want better odds before I'll place that bet.

Now all we need..

[Channard]

.. is for some bright spark to add a recorder function/add-on-box to this that will negate the bit that sets HD programs as non recordable.

Re:Now all we need..

[kristopher]

Why not integrate ReplayTV or something similar, and put in a couple big hard drives, also up the recording quality. Who would not want the ability to easily record High Definition Streams without any degradation, while being able to store them until you want to watch. Perhaps I'm not up to the latest tech news but I see no HDTV capable recorders. Especially with the new flag system law, why not create it now before such a law could be implemented? Is there also a rule that prevents such a thing?

Re:Now all we need..

[man_ls]

What's going to be able to record for very long at 8.9 GB/hr?

At that rate, a 200gb hard drive would be good for about 1 full day's stored programming -- less if you're trying to timeshift live TV.

Re:Now all we need..

[steve_bryan]

Um, have you been around here very long to see the trends? How long do you think it will be until 20 terabyte drives are as common as 20 gigabyte drives are now? How long ago was a 20 megabyte drive considered capacious? Don't forget that disk capacity per dollar is growing exponentially and even faster than processor speed. There do not even have to be any novel innovations to get the next two orders of magnitude according to experts in the field. Forget P2P and all the other minor developments, cheap mammoth hard drives are the nightmare facing Hollywood and the RIAA.

Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

A modded Xbox can do the same thing (play mpeg2, divx etc.) off dvd-r or streamed off the network with HDTV output up to 1920p. See www.xboxmediacenter.com and www.xbins.org/xbmp.php.

Re:Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all well and good, but if they can't even post the binaries so a use could install them on their xbox they don't amount to diddly... :(

Re:Xbox?

[GrassMunk]

key word being *modded* which is grey area at best. This system is legit and requires no modding. Yes i love my XBMP but i would have rather had a system that was just easy and didnt take up more room than my receiver.( the xbox is HUGE ).

Re:Xbox?

[Anonymous Coward]

They aren't hard to find, try #xbins on irc/efnet. Torrents also get posted. You can blame MS for only allowing licensed game developers to use the XDK to produce Xbox software...

Re:Xbox?

[Intocabile]

Not to mention being able to play mpeg satellite streams, while not at HD resolutions yet it's still very cool. xboxmediaplayer.de

Re:Xbox?

[pellis23]

Sure, but can the XBox do it with no noise, in less than 1RU while allowing to play back HD Transport streams that you've recorded from the ATSC tuner/capture card in your PC?

-Patrick
-Sr. Software Engineer, Roku.

Re:Xbox?

[Comen]

I miss something, I didnt read where this box would play back any more than Pictures not even full video? Is that right?

how is it controlled?

[zuzulo]

One key component that I did not see addressed in the article is how you control this device. Is there a remote that lets you interact with a TV friendly menu system?

This question arises because one of the main headaches associated with my current streaming media system (home built) is that using the wireless mouse and keyboard to navigate is difficult from a reasonable TV/audio viewing and listening distance ...

If they have addressed this issue at all, I will have to buy one. I would love to get away from requiring a full PC in my entertainment rack since all it does is stream data from my fileservers anyway.

And yes, I have tried other embedded devices, but most have proprietary OS, and linux ones do not generally support my specific set of audio and video requirements.

Re:how is it controlled?

[Anonymous Coward]

It says it has an RS232 port so you could just use your PC/Crestron/AMX whatever control system.

Re:how is it controlled?

[pellis23]

One key component that I did not see addressed in the article is how you control this device. Is there a remote that lets you interact with a TV friendly menu system?

Of course there's a remote. You can also control it via the serial port or by telneting into the HD1000. And, if you'd like to control it in ways we don't currently provide, grab the SDK (once it's available) and code away.

-Patrick
-Sr. Software Engineer, Roku.

Re:how is it controlled?

[zuzulo]

One key component that I did not see addressed in the article is how you control this device. Is there a remote that lets you interact with a TV friendly menu system?

Of course there's a remote. You can also control it via the serial port or by telneting into the HD1000. And, if you'd like to control it in ways we don't currently provide, grab the SDK (once it's available) and code away.

So I guess I have three main questions.

First, does the HD1000 support IR based remotes out of the box, or would I have to install appropriate hardware and drivers myself?

Second, if the HD1000 does support IR hardware, is the software interface designed to be used while looking at a standard television from a respectable distance?

The reason I ask this is that I have yet to see an embedded media player that allows me to use a IR remote device to navigate directory structures on remote fileservers, play, pause and stop various media players, etc from standard viewing distances with any degree of sophistication.

Third, if this capability is not available, would you be interested in paying 'someone' to design and build either the hardware required, the software interface, or both. ;-)

Re:how is it controlled?

[dododge]

First, does the HD1000 support IR based remotes out of the box

The stock Roku remote is an IR unit. I don't know how programmable things are on the Roku itself, for example if you can get the unit to understand additional codes.

is the software interface designed to be used while looking at a standard television from a respectable distance?

Certainly from an HDTV, which would tend to have a large screen. I don't know about a "standard" TV. They have some screen shots of the current interface on their web site, so you might consider what those would be like on your TV. It may be that you'll be able to customize this further (larger fonts or whatever) when the SDK comes out.

Cool another slashdot purchase......

[MegaHamsterX]

Where is the slashdot credit card with karma points for every purchase.

I paid cash for the following, but don't think I wouldn't have used the slashdot card so I could troll more often.

First it was the netpliance

Then the apex dvd player that plays mp3s

then the tivo and tivonet

now it's a box to display hdtv stuff without a computer

cool, but I think this has more in common with the netpliance than with the other three which are still used.

For its price I would expect more, like something to read straight from a dvd, harddrive or something, no wait that would be useful.

Re:Cool another slashdot purchase......

[whatsit]

I'm not sure if slashdot covered this one or not, but I'm sure aching for one.

The Kiss DP500 plays anything you can throw at it via ethernet connection or cd. They have regular firmware upgrades that allow the box to use new codecs. On top of that, how cool would it be to have a server full of high quality DivX (Xvid, MPEG4, etc., etc.) accessible via your TV!

The box in the article doesn't sound like it does all of that right now. Mega props, though for the SDK for "home users." Just look at where the hacker community has taken the Tivo!

Re:Cool another slashdot purchase......

[Cajun Hell]

Ha ha, you missed one of the big ones. It turns out that if you used your slashdot credit card to get one of the free Cuecats, you still got karma points for the retail value of the Cuecat, even though you didn't have to pay anything. It was a great hack; I got like 100 Cuecats and karma up the wazoo!

Re:Cool another slashdot purchase......

[MegaHamsterX]

I did actually get a cuecat, but I lost the mail in rebate for the karma points.

DVB

[shaka]

Being that I live in Europe, I'd rather spend my hard earned money on building my own box for Digital TV (DVB) using this great, open-source, system:
http://www.cadsoft.de/people/kls/vdr/

The DVB standard also includes metadata, so the EPG (electronic program guide) is broadcast together with the actual TV-stream, and it allows for easy recording, editing and storing, as well as playback of mp3, mpeg (or anything else mplayer can handle) and loads of more interesting stuff.

Re:DVB

[Anonymous Coward]

Being that I live in America, my box does all that and captures the raw HDTV stream.

Europeans are so pretentious.

No vga in? ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

I have to say as someone with a HDTV that has NO vga or DVI in, it's a shame this box doesn't have a vga in for pass through/conversion purposes (beats buying a cheap tv out adaptor ;-) )

Re:story text (mod karma whore down)

[Glock27]

Many embedded developers are used to hard real time schedulers and this business of process priorities with nice values seems a bit odd. I don't want my scheduler to be fair, I want it to be strict. On the other hand, I want to leverage open source that may rely on the behavior of the scheduler.

This issue is solved with the 2.6 kernel. Current userland code will run fine on top of the hard real time underpinnings.

Great stuff!

No DVI!

[Lorphos]

Aaaargh! The pain...

1080i?

[Glock27]

So, am I correct in my assessment that this device won't play or record 1080i? *sigh*

DAMN the DMCA. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

Lobby for Fair Use. It's our only hope.

Re:1080i?

[pellis23]

So, am I correct in my assessment that this device won't play or record 1080i? *sigh*

No, I'm afraid your assessment is incorrect. The HD1000 is a HD Media Player. We couldn't (or at least shouldn't) call it HD without supporting at least 720p or 1080i. Of course, we support both, in addition to 480p and 480i. Of course, the HD1000 doesn't record anything, but can display your photos in 1080i and playback HD ATSC trasport streams in 1080i or 720p (or 480p or 480i if you really want to)

- Patrick
- Sr Software Engineer, Roku

Re:1080i?

[Anonymous Coward]

• So, am I correct in my assessment that this device won't play or record 1080i?

Why would you want it to? 720p > 1080i

Re:1080i?

[Glock27]

No, I'm afraid your assessment is incorrect. The HD1000 is a HD Media Player. We couldn't (or at least shouldn't) call it HD without supporting at least 720p or 1080i. Of course, we support both, in addition to 480p and 480i. Of course, the HD1000 doesn't record anything, but can display your photos in 1080i and playback HD ATSC trasport streams in 1080i or 720p (or 480p or 480i if you really want to)

- Patrick - Sr Software Engineer, Roku

Thank you for the response! I am a little confused though...I thought your device at least facilitated video recording. However, what you're telling me, if I understand correctly, is that if I manage to get the 1080i data bits on my disk I can play it back? What are the copy protection issues?

At any rate, it sounds a very interesting device, I will keep an eye on it!

Re:1080i?

[Anonymous Coward]

What video formats can I throw at this? By looking through the info on the website, it looks like standard mpeg and mpeg2 streams shouldn't be a problem, but how about divx, etc? Is that something we'll have to wait for a 3rd party add on to use, or is it planned in a current/future software release from Roku?

Also, what sorts of audio streams can this output out the SPDIF out? Can it output AC3/DTS if properly enticed?

Is the hardware at least capable of the above audio/video possibilities if some enterprising hacker were to write a 3rd party extension to make it happen? If so, this has some real possibilities as a killer app.

Very ironic

[arvindn]

that linux is majorly used on all these media devices, in the movie industry, and in cell phones, and sound still doesn't work properly on linux desktops!

(No, I'm not trolling. I use linux exclusively but its foolish to pretend that it is perfect. And yes, I know about the recent projects like gstreamer, jack and efforts by freedesktop.org to improve the situation. But all that is a long way off from widespread adoption.)

Re:Very ironic

[wolrahnaes]

It's the same reason why Xboxes can do more than a PC with the same parts. Having controlled hardware makes for easier driver and API design. All of these Linux powered devices only come in a few variations, if any at all, so the hardware dependant code is much easier.
OTOH, desktop Linux has to support everything from the original SB to the latest and greatest like the Audigy2 (note: I am not a SB fan, those were just the only examples I could think of)
This is also why Apple machines are generally more stable: Less hardware to support = less drivers. Drivers = primary source of hard crashes in any modern OS.

I realize this post is kinda rambling, but you get the point.

No good for Sport

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone watching the Rugby World Cup notice the really lossy compression of the broadcasts?

I witnessed the same poor quality with the Soccer World Cup last year.

Broadcast image quality in general seems to be going down not up.

Re:No good for Sport

[azzy]

I watched it on digital TV (UK), and it was good.

XBox

[unixbob]

Sounds like a modded XBox. XBox media player uses a port of Mplayer to allow the system to play Mpeg's (1 & 2), AVI, DIVX, MP3 as well as browse JPEG's etc. Only thing it can't do is record. It's got quite an active homebrew dev community

A Different Perspective.

[kristopher]

This could be like a non recording VCR/ dvd in a way, great for rentals. Let me explain; One could take a media card with enough storage. The equivalent of a VCR tape/dvd. This way you'd only need to rent something that had a particular movie on it, and also watch it on your High Definition capable Television. Since it would obviously have the Broadcast flag set in the cards, and unit, you'd not be able to copy and/or without restrictions with any technology which also was compliant with the Broadcast Flag Law. It' be the great next thing in line to rentals. Like Dvd was to VCR. This would be to DVDs. Can you see people renting movies like this with such great quality?

Business Buzzword .....

[deek]

• "We are glad we chose Linux," adds Woodward, "Since it has enabled us to bring a feature rich product to market quickly by leveraging the excellent work of the Linux development community.

• BINGO!

... do I win anything?

I'm confused

[arvindn]

Something doesn't add up. If linux costs $699, then how can they sell the whole thing for $499?!

Re:I'm confused

[arvindn]

Parent was modded "interesting" ;^) Priceless. Absolutely priceless. In case that's no longer the case by the time your're reading this, I made a screenshot. Enjoy.

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. The license wouldn't cost $699, it's far cheaper for embedded devices, right?! :-)

Re:I'm confused

[Technician]

Something doesn't add up. If linux costs $699, then how can they sell the whole thing for $499?!


Simple, It's pirated just like MS Longhorn. It was released to the internet without the copyright owners permission. ;-)

Re:I'm confused

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll make it up in volume?

Re:I'm confused

[spitzak]

That's counting SCO's $200 mail-in rebate. You need the original sales receipt, UPC symbol cut off the box, your birth certificate, and a urine sample.

Worlds first?

[CelticLo]

3rd party software, XBMP, on chipped Xboxes have been doing this for quite a while now.

Re:Worlds first?

[DerProfi]

Get yer lingo straight, partner :P otherwise you'll be ridiculed by the youngsters.

According to my 14-year-old neighbor(who keeps stepping on my rosebushes...YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE, PUNK!) you "chip" that sweet used Civic that you just bought, but you "mod" your Xbox.

Picking herself from the floor...

[Anonymous Coward]

Name with held to protect the guilty!

The HD1000 is based on an ATI Xilleon x225 processor which includes a 300MHz MIPS architecture CPU core, 2D and 3D graphics engines, video and graphics scalers, and a high-definition MPEG2 decoder. It comes with 32MB of 133MHz DDR system RAM and 32MB of 133MHz DDR video RAM.

Having coded for an ATI Xilleon x225, in fact I have a box with this almost architecture sat on my desk at home, all I can say is Good Luck.

Oh yes, it's not the worlds first HDTV box. I know of at least one product that predates this with the same chipset which can support HDTV if required.

Who cares? It's still digital

[Namarrgon]

Optical, coaxial - whatever, it's all digital, boys & girls. The ones and zeroes - and therefore the sound quality - is the same.

The advantage of optical cable is it's immune to RF noise, but you'd have to live in an unusually noisy environment for it to be bad enough to corrupt a relatively low-speed signal like that. I used to run ordinary S/PDIF over 20m of cheap-ass audio cable (computer to receiver's DACs), and couldn't pick the difference between a CD played on the computer to one played on the local CD-player.

I have a friend with an overpriced stereo system that actually uses fully balanced AES cables to run the digital signal from his CD transport to the DACs, but even he admits that's pure overkill.

I'd be more concerned about the picture quality loss from using analog component cables - a DVI connector would solve that, as someone else has pointed out.

Re:Who cares? It's still digital

[Paradise Pete]

Optical, coaxial - whatever, it's all digital, boys & girls. The ones and zeroes - and therefore the sound quality - is the same.

If you lay it flat, sure. But studies have shown that when cheaper cables have been coiled, or even (to a lesser degree, admittedly) routed 90 degrees, that the zeros work OK, but some of the ones get "stuck" or delayed. Obviously with the more expensive optical cables this can't happen.

Re:Who cares? It's still digital

[davegust]

You missed the only real advantage of optical connections - elimination of noise via grounds. Optical cables can't transmit power supply or other EM noise, nor can they transmit harmful power spikes.

Re:Who cares? It's still digital

[Freedom Bug]

Unfortunately, there's still jitter: most DAC's are unclocked or clocked by the input signal. And jitter can introduce nasty artifacts.

But if your components are reclocking, it's all good. Bring on the cheap cables. And since you need to reclock it to do many things that people want to do these days, more and more components are doing that reclocking, even if it's not listed anywhere.

Bryan

Re:Who cares? It's still digital

[runderwo]

You forgot to mention two things: 1. Optical cables are expensive, easily destroyed, and can't be grafted to fix a break like coaxial cables. Roll a chair over one, or step on it in the wrong way, and you're in for a whole new length of cable. 2. Optical cables won't propagate ground loop current like coaxial cables will. Optical cables can be useful in solving connections that go from room to room (or house to house) and pick up a ground loop hum somewhere along the way.

Re:Who cares? It's still digital

[YetAnotherName]

I'd be more concerned about the picture quality loss from using analog component cables - a DVI connector would solve that, as someone else has pointed out.

I'm currently sending 1080i as analog component video over 60 feet. Such a long length does muck up higher frequency signals, but it has no perceivable effect on HDTV.

(I will admit these are some pretty darn expensive coax ... the cables came from Blue Jeans Cables.)

No need...

[Namarrgon]

...since this box doesn't receive or output a digital picture signal. Analog connectors only, so you avoid any evil bits (in exchange for a generation loss in picture quality).

Sure it does

[Namarrgon]

From the specs:

Video Output
Component Y/Pr/Pb: 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i
VGA: 1080i, 720p, 480p

No recording though.

Re:Sure it does

[Glock27]

From the specs:

Video Output
Component Y/Pr/Pb: 1080i, 720p, 480p, 480i VGA: 1080i, 720p, 480p

No recording though.

Thanks for the link, I was lazy. ;-) So, it will successfully pass-thru 1080i...great. I wonder if it's processor is even powerful enough to decode a 1080i digital stream...?

Perhaps someone will successfully hack some interesting functionality. That is the big allure of this thing, after all.

Re:Sure it does

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did it say it passed it through? It says it outputs 1080i. Says nothing about playing, recording, or passing through.

Re:Sure it does

[dododge]

I wonder if it's processor is even powerful enough to decode a 1080i digital stream...?

The CPU is an ATI Xilleon, which ATI claims can decode two HDTV streams simultaneously (it has integrated hardware MPEG decoding). The Roku engineers have put transport stream decoding into the latest beta firmware, but I haven't done any stress testing of it yet. There is certainly a lot of interest in using the device as a playback engine for HDTV captures.

"Media" Player?

[Dunark]

This thing doesn't have a CD or DVD drive. The last time I checked, Blockbuster wasn't renting movies on memory cards.

Where exactly is the user supposed to get "media" they can play on this device?

Re:"Media" Player?

[glenrm]

Off of the server that contains every DVD/CD you have ever owned that has now been ripped and stored on a massive series of hard drives...

Re:"Media" Player?

[/dev/trash]

Exactly. This is just meant to trade illegal files.

Re:"Media" Player?

[Absoluttt]

"Fair Use" copies? Oh, nevermind - we can't have that..

How much?

[Namarrgon]

Sure - except, can you imagine the cost of a flash card that can store 2 hours of movie at 8.9 GB/hr? Or perhaps you take home an external 1394 drive, plug it into your PC & stream from there? You'd have to leave a big enough deposit to pay for the Roku itself.

Maybe with future plastic memory developments, or simply HD-DVDs, but not this thing.

PC

[Ed Avis]

If this thing lets you load your own software, you could presumably use it as your main PC, at least for non-computron-intensive applications.

Re:PC

[unixbob]

There is a version of Gentoo Linux for the XBox. The system runs a Celeron 533 & 128M of RAM. so it should run OK.

Re:PC

[molafson]

FYI, XBox runs a custom PIII at 733MHz.

Re:PC

[NMerriam]

As I recall, the XBox is a PIII @ 733, with only 64 MB of RAM (though folks have modded them to 128 successfully).

Re:story text (what a great product)

[Ed Avis]

# malloc doesn't return NULL.
Many embedded developers are used to writing code that relies on the fact that malloc will return NULL when physical memory is exhausted. The 'over-commit' strategy of the Linux allocator confuses the traditional embedded developer - particularly when there is no actual paging file in use.

I never understood that - if the machine doesn't have enough memory to guarantee that you can use the block returned from malloc(), why does it pretend to? Should there be two calls malloc_if_youre_lucky() and malloc_yes_i_mean_it(), with the latter returning a non-null pointer only if the memory really is available?

Refreshing!

[Anonymous Coward]

In a world where everyone seems to be in a rush to incorporate DRM, this is really a welcome breath of fresh air. Mad props to these guys, I'm definitely putting in my pennies.

OpenSource beats them to the punch

[pridkett]

Hmm...that's funny, I could have sworn that MythTV has had this for a while. It's pretty easy, pick up a pcHDTV card for $200 and make sure you've got some significant hard disk space and you should be ready to go.

Reminds me of Microsoft bragging about their future "Implicit Query" technology when dashboard already has it.

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[miTTio]

I was taking a cursory look at the MythTv solution a while back, but I was curious as to how to get the hi def signal back to the TV?

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to build an open source PRV but I haven't found one that will control channel changes on my cable box like TiVO.

Am I missing something?

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[Anonymous Coward]

DVI out on your video card.

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[linuxguy]

Mythtv will do this. Read the online documentation
for MythTV for instructions on how to do it.

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[DrCode]

Mine just as an SVideo output. Would that yield HDTV quality?

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[crow]

SVideo is limited to NTSC or PAL resolutions. You'll need something better than that. You can get video cards with DVI or component outputs. You can also get converters that will give you component hookups from a VGA port.

Re:OpenSource beats them to the punch

[dododge]

I too have a pcHDTV card. And I have yet to find a computer that could play back those transport streams at full resolution completely smoothly. The strongest machine I've tried so far was an Athlon XP 2400+ with GeForce FX 5200, Nvidia drivers, and Xine with XvMC support -- and it was not up to the job.

The Roku has HDTV decompression hardware in it, and certainly costs less than any machine for this job that I could build myself. It's also small and fanless. I plan on doing some stress tests in a few days to see how well the latest Roku firmware handles my pcHDTV streams.

Re:story text (what a great product)

[4of12]

if the machine doesn't have enough memory to guarantee that you can use the block returned from malloc(), why does it pretend to?

It's kind of like airlines overbooking seats.

In Linux 2.7, an improved malloc() will return memory 4 hours later and also give you a free voucher good for memory allocation anywhere that your computer can fly.

Not a PVR?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, it looks to me like this thing isn't a PVR. It doesn't record -- it's just a player. It will play High-Def quality MPEGs, but, ummmm...., if this ain't a recorder, how do I get the HD MPEGs in the first place? Neither ReplayTV nor TiVo record at HD. Does this make sense only if you already have a HDTV tuner for your PC? If you've got that, though, and a way of getting HD signal out of the PC, why do you need this?

Re:Not a PVR?

[bighoov]

Having this device allows you to keep your noisy PC in another room, but still watch the HD programs you've recorded on it on your TV. For many people, having a PC sitting next to their entertainment center is not very convenient.

HDTV Media Center OS = linux killer ap

[Anonymous Coward]

HDTV Media Center OS = linux killer ap

HDTV Media Center OS = linux killer ap

get it ? got it ? good !

Yes but does it play Ogg Vorbis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does this doohickie play Ogg?

HDCP optional for receiver

[Anonymous Coward]

> There is also the fact that the DVI standard on HDTV sets is designed to accommodate HDCP (the evil anti-copying flags)

I've always heard that digital displays will accept both HDCP or raw signal. HDCP only becomes a pain in the transmitting device, not the receiving. Make sure your DVD player or whatever only has a normal unencumbered DVI output and you are fine.

Not seeing the DVI output on this device really disapointed me.

Should be

[Anonymous Coward]

Should be "a HDTV", not "an HDTV". "Haitch" begins with a consonant sound. It may be permissible to refer to it as "'aitch" if it is not the first letter in a non-euphonic abbreviation {i.e. one which is read letter by letter; such as PHP, pee 'aitch pee} but if it is the first letter, the initial H gets pronounced {haitch tee em el}. It should also be "an SQL database" {S is a consonant but ess cue el begins with a vowel sound} and "a URL" {U is a vowel but you are el begins with a consonant sound}. A hotel. A historic day. A herb garden. &c. This is the BBC Home Service for mothers and children at home.

Re:Should be

[BridgeGarth]

I think I've replied to you on this one before. What you say is just not true. I always pronounce H (the letter) "aitch", as do very many people.

• PHP as pee aitch pee
• HTML as aitch tee em el

There is no "rule" that it is pronounced "haitch" under any circumstances. You do that if you want, but don't claim it as a rule.

Further, most people, I believe, would say:

• An HDTV
• A hotel
• An heir
• An historic day

The latter two are in disagreement with most other words.

It's all nice, but...

[Pig Hogger]

... can it be reprogrammed to ignore the "do not home-videotape" bit????

Other interfaces?

[Anonymous Coward]

Where's the Firewire? What about Bluetooth? USB would be ok, I guess, for the Intel-based weenies, but not very useful.

The Interface Nazi

colour me philistine, but

[Anonymous Coward]

why would i buy such a thing if i can output video and audio signals from my computer?

or are the plugs on HDTVs different and proprietary?

modding isn't illegitimate

[mapmaker]

Modifying hardware that you own is perfectly legal, legitimate and allowed. There is nothing "grey" about it.

Fight that corporate brainwashing!!

No DVI out? Analog only display?

[GodWasAnAlien]

If I spend thousands on a plasma or projector or lcd display, hopefully I was smart enough to get one with digital input (DVI).

The device is incomplete unless it supports SPDIF and DVI.

Re:No DVI out? Analog only display?

[Anonymous Coward]

The device should support DVI or Firewire for video, preferably both. Who knows, maybe someone here will make a Firewire mod for it or better yet, make one for the soon to be released (2004Q1?) HDTV DirecTv TiVo since it is rumored not to have one.

I'm New Here

[New Here]

I'm New Here

Modded Xbox CANNOT decode HDTV streams!

[linuxguy]

What are you people smoking?

Modded Xbox CANNOT decode HDTV streams!

[linuxguy]

It simply does not have the horsepower to do this.

RE: plasma TVs and lifespans

[King_TJ]

Ack! If the article you reference is correct, plasma TV's have a horribly short lifespan. Well under 3 years of run-time before they lose HALF of their brightness? If a standard computer monitor did that, people would scream and yell about the poor quality and tell everyone to stay away!

I was taking a really close look at large screen (42" and up) TVs this holiday season, considering an upgrade to my boring old 27" set in our living room. But the more I read, the less I'm impressed with anything out right now. Everyone's telling me the projection sets will likely be discontinued by this time next year, so buying one of them is investing in a dying technology. The plasmas finally seemed to be dropping to reasonable prices, but the technology apparently has some life-span issues. LCD TV's haven't reached their "prime" yet - with nothing but "promises" of larger sizes that compete with the average projection set. To top it all off, HDTV seems like it's about to become standard-issue, but the industry is trying to milk it for as much additional profit as they can squeeze out of it in the meantime. ($500 or so just for a satellite receiver that can get HD - so you can then view only a few special HD channels?)

Nah.... now, my old 27" is starting to look better again.

Roku + 42" Panasonic Plasma = Very Nice

[Crash McBang]

I've had a Roku box since the beginning of November. It's hooked to a 42" Panasonic Plasma (852x480) running at 1080i. The other end of the Roku is hooked to a wireless 802.11g game adapter. Any shared files/directories are automatically mounted and can be browsed with the UI.

The Roku can be programmed via shell scripts or you can use the included remote for selecting music and/or pictures.

The UI is still a little rough, but they are working on it (two beta releases since initial release), and it keeps getting better.

I'm looking forward to the release of the SDK and hacking a screensaver, as the screensaver selection is pretty limited- bouncing Roku logo, string art, or bouncing clock.

I still haven't been able to play any mpeg files, but the still picture slideshow looks great. Roku Support says more picture/movie formats are coming 'soon'.

All in all, it's a good off-the-shelf solution for playing music that is easy for the family to use. I expect it will get better with each release...

no HDTV capability in this player

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the Roku is that it is HDTV.

Re: plasma TVs and lifespans

[cayenne8]

"I was taking a really close look at large screen (42" and up) TVs this holiday season, considering an upgrade to my boring old 27" set in our living room. But the more I read, the less I'm impressed with anything out right now. Everyone's telling me the projection sets will likely be discontinued by this time next year, so buying one of them is investing in a dying technology. "

This is news to me...where did you hear or read this? I'd truly be interested!!

I've had my 60" Mitsubishi projection tv for about 3 years now...had been great. I figured then that HDTV was not yet really in full blown use...and I could get a converter box if needed...but, probably not as I never watch over the air tv.

I'm thinking at this time, or soon, to move the 60" into my bedroom...and get a projector for the living room...especially after the /. article a week or two ago about the cost of the digital projectors coming down.

Anyway, your comment on the demise of projection tv's caught my attention, and was wondering about your source of info on this....

no evidence there

[Anonymous Coward]

This says it outputs 1080i, not plays or records it.

Furthermore...

[Anonymous Coward]

The proper choice of "a" or "an" is determined by what the acronymn stands for. It is not "H" that's important but "High".

The example "an SQL" is also wrong. The correct answer is "a SQL" as in "a Structured Query Language". If we could have just said "sequel" but no...

Literacy is so tough these days.

Re:Furthermore...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit. The reason 'a' and 'an' both exist is for ease of pronunciation. It is difficult to say 'a' before a vowel, or 'an' before (most) consonants.

When you pronounce 'HDTV', you begin it with a vowel sound ('aitch dee tee vee'), therefore you use 'an'. When you pronounce 'SQL' as an abbreviation, it begins with a vowel sound ('ess cue el') so 'an' is indicated. If you pronounce it as an acronym ('see-quel'), then you would use 'a'.

Why on earth would the pronunciation of the words being abbreviated affect which article you use in front of the abbreviation? That's as silly as proclaiming that the plural of POW should be PsOW.

Nothing to watch?!?!

[Ossifer]

... on my $5k plasma/lcd? Then why buy one? I got a 40" HD CRT (you know, like television have always been), with an *included* digital tuner. I get over 10 digital channels (not counting all the sub-channels) over the air, for free, here in San Francisco. Most of these broadcast 1080i every evening. All these guys with six pack abs, and I'm the only one with a keg. (H.S.)

Re:Nothing to watch?!?!

[ShavenYak]

You can't hang a 40" CRT on a wall.

Of course, that wouldn't be worth $5k to me (I have a $1500 HD-ready* CRT RPTV), but some people have different priorities, I guess.

* - at the time I bought it, models with included tuners were $1000 more, and no stations were broadcasting digitally in our area. I recently picked up a Samsung tuner for $200 on eBay now that we have a few. SEC football in HD on CBS was awesome.

there is no 1920p

[Anonymous Coward]

Xbox doesn't go to 1920p. There is a no 1920p.

The max would be 1080p, and it is outside the HDTV spec and the Xbox doesn't do it either.

The Xbox does 720p and 1080i, the two HDTV resolutions (480p is EDTV).

1080i is 1920x1080 shown 60 fields a second (30 frames a second). It contains the same amount of information as 720p (1280x720 60 frames a second) but due to the tricks interlacing does to your mind, 1080i appears to contain more info.

I want a...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hackable HDTV Receiver.

FCC says that HDTV equipment sold in the US must recognize the broadcast flag.

What does it say about what the equipment can do after sale?

What does it say about the hackability (as shipped) of such equipment.

All FCC can regulate is the equipment as it's sold. They may set regulations regarding what it does after it's sold, too. But those regulations are really impractical to enforce--especially for devices that don't broadcast!

Just ask any CBer who's bought a linear amplifier. You gotta heat it up and get busted for too many watts before you get that $10,000 fine.

Media Player not... media thin client YES!

[renehollan]

Calling the Roku device (about which I submitted an earlier article to /. almost a month ago, but which got rejected - /me rubs the rump of his ego) a media player is a bit of a misnomer since, as others have disdainfully pointed out, it does not sport a CD/DVD drive for media playback or a hard drive for PVR functionality. Fair enough.

But, the beauty of the device is that it is silent and provides a great thin client for accessing content stored on remote servers in the home -- where the noisy fans and hard drives are.

Disclaimer: I work for ATI, closely with the chip on which the device is based.

What I'm waiting for

[j0hndoe]

Is a multimedia machine running Linux, with a DVD drive, and all the right connections for HDTV (SPDIF, component video, etc) onto which mplayer or xine is either pre-installed, or easily installed via an "unofficial" update (for legal reasons) Furthermore, I want it to have the appearance of a DVD player box so it fits in comfortably with the other equipment. A hacked X-Box comes close, but I want a machine that is

1) more professional looking
2) that is actually intended for this use (don't want to fiddle with mod chips, warentee voiding, etc).

Any takers out there?

PS2 Linux can do HDTV too

[Anonymous Coward]

PlayStation 2 Linux runs on an unmodded PS2 and has 1080i, 720p, 480p. I can do 1080i slideshows off its 40GB HD using the gimp, xv, ee, etc.

Re:PS2 Linux can do HDTV too

[unixbob]

The main story wasn't just about the HDTV capabilities of this new machine, but also about the possibility of it getting a lot of open source development interest becuase of the open standards is supports.

I mentioned the XBox becuase of the modding community and the active development projects that go on around it. As I don't have a PS2, I'm not really very aware of the PS2 scene. Is there a lot of support and homebrew apps / games?

From the horses mouth.

[pellis23]

We didn't choose to add DVI because of the additional cost and complexity. We felt that customers would overall be well served with component and and vga. Of course, DVI is being considered for future products.

-Patrick
-Sr. Software Engineer, Roku.

Re: plasma TVs and lifespans

[4of12]

Quick [OT] warning note about plasma TV's for non-coast dwellers.

If you want to use a plasma TV at high altitude, say above 5000' elevation (eg, Denver), many of the less expensive models hum so loudly it can make the experience not worthwhile.

I vaguely recall some French manufacturer produced a plasma TV that supposedly did not hum, but was expensive and made with thick and heavy glass.

Re:story text (what a great product)

[Animats]

If there's no memory, it should throw an C++ exception, of course.

Except for the retro crowd still using C, this stopped being a problem years ago.

Re:story text (what a great product)

[Ed Avis]

Well yes, and if an airline overbooks you can get kicked off a flight (in the worst case when there are no free seats to bump you to a higher class). Similarly if malloc() allocates some memory that isn't really there the process can get killed later. That doesn't seem like a good way to build reliable systems - wouldn't it make more sense to have malloc() honsestly return null if it can't guarantee the memory is available? At least processes can catch that and handle it gracefully (even if many don't in practice).

I just don't see the point of it - if people really do want 'malloc() with possible overallocation and random killing of processes later on' then there should be a separate function for that. But malloc() is malloc().

Suppose that open() didn't really open the file, but always returned true and hoped that the file would be there later when you tried to use it. It would become much more difficult to write programs which gracefully recover from file-not-found.

OK - your post was intended in jest - I had a temporary sense-of-humour failure and wrote the above rant. Eh, now I've written it I might as well post it.

"flat memory"

[Animats]

The comments on "flat memory" are significant.

The real problem is that the UNIX/Linux world has never been able to get interprocess communication right. The problem is that what the application wants is a subroutine call, but what the OS usually gives you is an I/O operation.

An example of good message passing is MsgSend/MsgReceive in QNX. Once you've set up a connection, you call MsgSend, which passes your message to the server waiting in a MsgReceive, and blocks the caller until the server does a MsgReply. This is all optimized so that if the server isn't busy when the call is made, control transfers to the server immediately, the server processes the request, and control transfers back. The most common case is very low overhead. Yet the same operations work over a network if needed.

The wrong way to do it is to marshall up all the data and pump it through a socket, just to talk to another process on the same machine. This generates far more transactions at the OS level, and the overhead is much higher. Because the OS doesn't know you're doing a subroutine-call like operation, there are several extra unnecessary context switches. Worse, systems like CORBA do conversions to network-neutral formats, with even more overhead.

There was an attempt to fix this in Mach, but it was not very successful, and Mach messaging never became mainstream. Windows has COM/DCOM/etc, which is clunky, but good enough to make Office work.

Re:"flat memory"

[spitzak]

Pretty true, but you are neglecting the need to have calls that *don't* return anything, something which file-type i/o does do very well. Mach and COM and Corba complicate things unneccessarily, requiring either shared memory or complex interpretation of the messages in order to get the data moved. I've wondered why things cannot be done much simpler, combining the best features of file i/o (very predictable arguments), with the syncronous nature of most message passing.

Here is my idea for a system interface. All calls to the system have 6 arguments, probably stuck in registers:

ID: an integer identifier for the receiver of the message. Zero means the kernel itself.

MESSAGE: an integer identifier for the message/method. Bit 0 indicates if the WRITE_BUFFER is to be copied/mapped/etc from the caller to the callee. Bit 1 indicates a synchronous call and it should wait for the callee to finish, copy/map/etc a block of data from the callee back to the caller's READ_BUFFER. If these bits are zero then the buffer pointers and lengths are passed unchanged and just serve as an extra 2 pointer-sized arguments.

WRITE_BUFFER, WRITE_BUFFER_LENGTH: a pointer into the caller's memory space, and the length of that buffer. Somehow (in as fast a way as possible) the callee will get a pointer to a copy-on-write duplicate of at least this memory.

READ_BUFFER, READ_BUFFER_LENGTH: a pointer into the caller's memory space, and the length of that buffer. Somehow (in as fast a way as possible) this memory is replaced on return with a copy-on-write duplicate of some data produced by the callee.

The call returns an integer that is big enough to be used as another ID or as a message.

The callee would be asynchronously called (kind of like a Unix signal) with the same MESSAGE and LENGTH arguments. The pointers may have changed and they point to the callee's memory space, and the ID is changed to identify the local name for the connection.

Everything else is built on that. A number of messages are predefined, such as generic read/write and seek, to provide the huge advantages of Unix style file i/o. Some kernel calls are kludges, for instance memory allocation would use the pointers to indicate the memory to allocate or free.

It would seem that such a system would make there be minimal overhead in the message-passing kernel. Also it would make it easy to stream the messages over another communication protocol, something which is very complex in Mach/COM.

Re:"flat memory"

[Animats]

QNX works a lot like that, but it always copies. All I/O goes through the message passing mechanism. File systems, device drivers, and networking are all implemented as user mode programs. This works just fine; the only downside is the copying overhead, which isn't that bad provided that the system does something other than copying most of the time. (Running a web server on QNX is possible, but for a heavily loaded server that mostly serves plain pages, suboptimal.)

Some OS in the 1980s did do something more like that, moving pages from the sender's address space to the receiver's address space using the MMU. This is very efficient for big transfers, but inefficient for small ones. Plus, you have to align sends on page boundaries.

At one point I looked into the possibility of using IA-32 segmentation hardware to pass data between processes, but it turns out that the "call gate" mechanism can't quite do the job. The IA-32 segmentation hardware looked promising because both small and large segments are supported.

With a little extra hardware support, this approach to an OS could be very effective. What's really needed is something like IA-32 call gates, but with hardware that lets you pass one or two segments and part of the stack into another address space. Then you could pass parameters by reference across address space boundaries in a protected way. Done right, this means low-overhead big objects, like CORBA/DCOM/Active-X.

But it's too late for this. UNIX/Linux assumes a vanilla hardware model; even rings of protection, which are in all IA-32 machines, aren't used. Windows is One Big Kernel for competitive reasons. We've lost the chance to fix this.

Re:"flat memory"

[spitzak]

In my design I have fixed the set of arguments, which I believe will eliminate the need to copy or memory map a portion of the stack. Because they are a small fixed set they can be copied from the stack by the kernel, or passed in registers. By keeping the set as small as possible, and having most of them be things the kernel needs to look at anyway, it seems to me the overhead of this copying is minimized.

The "buffers" do have to be copied or memory mapped. However this is also simplified in that there are only 2, and they are very simply described (pointer+length) and exactly which way the copying has to be done is determined by looking at 2 bits in the message id by the kernel. Since all other systems get exactly the same message id as the kernel, any other system can also make the exact same decisions, at the same speed, so that the contents of the buffers can be sent through communication protocols easily and transparently.

But it's too late for this. UNIX/Linux assumes a vanilla hardware model; even rings of protection, which are in all IA-32 machines, aren't used. Windows is One Big Kernel for competitive reasons. We've lost the chance to fix this.

I don't understand this. It seems to me that it would not be hard to emulate the old api atop this type of kernel, at least for Unix. I intendended that the mapping of the most common Unix calls is simple and intuitive so that users do not feel they are losing speed by running the emulation layer, however even if the interface was completely different, if it was usable as an operating system I have no doubt Unix (or Windows) can be emulated atop it.

Re:story text (what a great product)

[Ed Avis]

Er - malloc()? In C++ you use 'new' for allocating memory on the heap. And yes, that should throw an exception unless you use new (nothrow) or the like.

But malloc() isn't the kernel interface I think - if malloc() misbehaves that's only a symptom of what the kernel is doing wrong. C++'s new would presumably suffer the same problem. Unless you wrote an allocator which tests the newly-allocated memory to make sure the kernel wasn't lying... ugh.

Re: plasma TVs and lifespans

[xkenny13]

If the article you reference is correct, plasma TV's have a horribly short lifespan. Well under 3 years of run-time before they lose HALF of their brightness?

Perhaps this is by design? Planned obsolecense (sp?) is nothing new. Even if they didn't "design" it in, it will help fuel their market if people have to buy new TVs every few years.

Everyone's telling me the projection sets will likely be discontinued by this time next year, so buying one of them is investing in a dying technology.

I hope not ... I just bought a 73" Mitsubishi rear-projection TV. I ended up buying the 2003 model, because it was $1200 cheaper than the 2004 model, and I don't really need the HDTV tuner right now anyway. It comes with the hookups, so I'll add one when they are affordable, and there's something in the HDTV format worth watching. :-)

I also just checked their website, and the 2004 line now includes an 82" rear-projection model. If I had known about it before I made my purchase, I might have considered it ... though I shudder to wonder what the sticker price would have been. It's probably at least double what I paid ($3299).

Anyway, it sounds like Mitsubishi, at least, is still pushing forward on this technology. My TV is gorgeous, and I really couldn't be happier with the purchase. I did consider an LCD projector (room's not really dark enough) as well as the plasma displays. I found that the plasmas were twice as expensive, for half the screen size. I am not hurting for space, so being able to hang it on the wall wasn't really an issue. I sure hope the lifespan of my rear-projection unit is longer than three years, though...

Re: plasma TVs and lifespans

[xkenny13]

82" rear-projection model [...] I shudder to wonder what the sticker price would have been. It's probably at least double what I paid ($3299).

Ooops, I just found one for sale and I was wrong. The 82" model runs for more than $20,000!!

Easy...

[BigJimSlade]

It's a loss leader. They'll make it up with those $10,000 memory cards (hey, fine art comes at a price people.)

Very nice

[dgenr8]

This thing may be exactly what I've been looking for. It's basically a video card in a set-top box. It would seem to elegantly solve my problems of:

- Waiting for a Linux-compatible video card with component video out
- Deciding whether to keep my Shuttle XPC in the office (long video run) or in the office (remote control problem).

One question I'll have for them: I have already have a picture-frame server that uses a standard browser as the client, and I don't think this thing is going to run a modern browser very well with only 32MB.

Shovelware finds a new generation.

[Anonymous Coward]

STOCK PHOTOS At 1200000x2000000 HDTV COMPATIBLE LOOK YOUR BEST, USE YOUR 5900 dollar TV HI RES MONITOR FOR STILL PICTURES!

Re: plasma TVs and lifespans

[Awptimus Prime]

'Projection' HDTV systems are not going away in the next year, CRT based projection systems are. This is because they are bulky, need annual maintenance, and have a relatively poor picture compared to the newer technologies.

If you are concerned with not losing brightness and avoiding burn-in, check into DLP HDTV monitors. They are, IMO, the best bang for the buck on a non-aging display. Basically, you have a DLP chip with 1280x720 microscopic mirrors, a color wheel, and a 100 watt bulb. The tiny mirrors will not scortch, but the bulb will occasionally blow ($150).

I purchased the HLN507W from SamSung and was very impressed with it's performance. It went back to the store for two reasons:

1) it has a 480i/480p component port and two 480p/720p/1080i ports. This will not play well with an Xbox, as some games (MOH series, for example) require 480i. So you have to move around cables for everything to work. This is not recommended with a $4k HDTV and $100 component cable as the ports and plugs will wear out.

2) I discovered after reading on some finance forums, the color wheel can be replaced with a set of mirrors, requiring no motor. I think Phillips discovered this method, I don't understand it but I do understand that no moving parts is better than a HDD spinning a color wheel.

I would avoid LCD projection systems, as they will suffer from burn-in and dead pixels over time. I would also avoid plasma, as it seems more like a temporary step towards smaller displays. Those beasts will eat up 1000w of electricity and die in 3-4 years.

Anyway, about the DLP systems, they are small enough, light enough (70lbs for a 50"), support true HDTV resolutions (unlike 90% of the plasmas that run 856x480p), can be serviced by the user when it comes to replacing the lamp, and fit easily in a room lacking ample floor space.

Also, don't make the mistake a friend of mine made. Do not judge the brightness of a DLP display versus a LCD rear projector in a store. On a showroom floor, the LCD's brightness is jacked up to a damaging level. The DLP can be put on it's maximum brightness 24/7 and not face any ill effects. The one drawback to both DLP and LCD rptv is the fact that there is no true black.

My suggestion: Wait until next summer. New LCoS monitors should be out, in a single-chip design, and there may be new DLPs out with a better black and without color wheels.

Oh, one last thought on color wheels.. They work by filtering the light. You lose a lot of the display's efficiency (~75%) with this method. Expect next generation sets to only require ~50-75 watt bulbs. That should result in a much longer run-time between bulbs, saving the consumer some extra cash.

I'm no expert, I've just done my share of research before getting locked into something. I'm back to using my old 27" non-hdtv. As far as watching DirecTV and 4:3 movie playback, it doesn't feel like much of sacrifice to go back to watching for now. We seem to be very near the turning point of display technology, at least for rear-projectors, that won't break or fade even after years of use.

Neither can this

[Namarrgon]

...and nor does it need to - if by "decode HDTV streams" you mean "capture or interpret incoming HDTV video".

All it has to do is decode an HDTV-resolution MPEG2 file for playback, and output the analog signal correctly - and that it can do.

Re:Neither can this

[linuxguy]

By "decode HDTV streams" I mean if given an HDTV stream (1080i or 720p) a system could decompress the MPEG-2 data and display it on a HDTV capable display at 720p or 1080i resolutions.

I capture my HDTV streams on my Linux system in the garage using the tuner from pchdtv.com. I need to be able to feed these over the network to small, silent devices that can play them in different places in the house. Xbox cannot. This unit can.

And Xbox is *noisy* !

Huh? It's DIGITAL!

[Namarrgon]

Repeat after me - this is not analog. You don't have to squeeze out every last Hz of bandwidth. All you need is enough (< 1 MHz) to get a few ones and zeroes across with enough clarity to tell one from the other. Plastic Toslink fibre or coax will do that just fine.

If you want to spend hundreds on high-quality cables, spend it on speaker connects, or on your DACs or amp stage. Don't waste your cash on ridiculously priced digital equipment (and then boast about it) when a $5 piece of wire and a $20 CD-ROM drive will do the exact same thing.

Re: death of the projection set

[King_TJ]

I can't pinpoint an exact URL to refer you to on this, but it's been often repeated advice I've gotten from salespeople when asking about big-screen TVs, as well as advice I've heard echoed amongst friends into technology and hi-fi.

As someone else posted here, maybe they're just referring to the old projection set technology with the CRT inside and mirrors? Either that, or maybe they're talking about the end nearing for non-HDTV ready big-screens. But with the price-drops I've seen lately on some of these projection sets, I can see how they're about to become the "low end" of big screens real soon. (For example, I saw Apex had a model out that sells for under $900. That's pretty darn cheap for a projection set!)

Does anyone know much about the technology JVC has in a new model of projection set where they claim to "smart scale" the resolution of standard TV images to HDTV resolution, for enhanced pictures from all sources? That sounds promising, if it works as well as it sounds. (After all, there are some pretty amazing scaling/zooming tools out there for Photoshop and the like. I could see how this might translate well to a feature integrated into an HDTV.)

Re:story text (what a great product)

[shostiru]

Well, I'm only 18 hours too late... but since you asked:

Non-optimistic memory allocation is almost always the Wrong Thing. Consider, for example, forking. Forking in just about every modern Unix (Linux included) is done with copy-on-write, so you don't copy the entire address space from the parent, just those pages that get dorked with. If you were to force the kernel to ensure every allocated page were available to a process and its children, your process spawning (and reaping) speed would drop through the floor, and you'd need a 60GB swap drive for a webserver.

If you really care, write your own allocation library (or better yet, hack glibc's malloc and link it in at runtime with LD_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_PRELOAD or whatever). You might be able to use mlock if you're running as root, if not, just touch a byte in each page after brk(). Of course you'll still see processes (possibly yours) eat it if you run out of memory, so you might want to follow /proc/meminfo during page touching and abort if things get ugly. Oh, and kindly warn everyone else in big 8-point type that your code doesn't play well with others. ;)

Or don't bother, and realize that if the system is going to run out of memory AND swap, being screwed early is rarely that much better than being screwed later. Either way, you're still screwed.

Re:story text (what a great product)

[Ed Avis]

Checking that enough memory is definitely available for a fork() wouldn't make the speed drop significantly; all the kernel must do is make sure the memory is available and mark it as used, not actually allocate it and map it into the process's address space. You can still have copy-on-write as long as the space is there in case you need it later.

You would need more swap space, with most of it sitting unused most of the time 'just in case', but I don't think this is too bad: 60 gigs seems like a too-big estimate. Something like ten times physical RAM would be enough, surely, and that is easily affordable on modern hardware. Again, having extra swap space available doesn't mean more swapping will happen - only that if the memory is used later, the reserved swap space is there ready for use, rather than getting out of memory and killing processes.

OK - for desktop systems and most servers I think it's reasonable to have overallocation. Certainly for fork() and probably for malloc(), although I would like a malloc_yes_really() call for writing daemons which need to stay running no matter what and which do their own out-of-memory recovery.

But the article was talking about embedded systems. These often don't have swap space, but do have software which is aware of the memory limitations and tries to do the right thing. It can't do that if the kernel plays games with memory allocation and pretends to have space that isn't there. So guaranteed memory allocation needs to be available as an option, even if it's not the default.

Fair Use?

[/dev/trash]

How is sharing your music and video files with someone fair use? Fair use is to be used so you can quote a passage from a book and not be afraid of being thrown in jail. It's not a catch-all for making copies.