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Windows Media Center Edition vs. The World
sam_christ writes "An article in today's Investor's Business Daily (Google cache) and an article by TV industry pundit/predictions-huckster Philip Swann say the same thing: that Microsoft's Media Center Edition will be a big flop in 2005. Meanwhile, from what I can tell much more powerful alternatives to Microsoft's MCE bloatware are thriving: commercial products like Snapstream (see their 6-tuner Medusa PVR built for about $1200), Showshifter and open-source freeware like Mediaportal and MythTV. From what I've read about Microsoft MCE and all of its DRM and content restrictions, I have to agree with both of these articles."
So if I want a MythTV box, I just have to build a computer out of parts that are compatible with Linux, select an appropriate Linux distribution, install everything, configure all my hardware, build some kernel modules for the esoteric hardware, load the modules, download MythTV, install, configure, upgrade, install extra crap, configure, upgrade, and then I'm finally ready to begin the final process of tweaking my system until MythTV 0.17 comes out.
If I want a Windows Media Center box, I go to the store and buy one.
Looks like MythTV is still a myth to me...V.
No bloatware, no Microsoft vulnerabilities to patch and works just like my toaster oven.
I think the real advantage to "rolling your own" is that you ultimately control the hardware and software on your own equipment. If you want to ignore the broadcast flag (gasp!), increase the storage capacity of your PVR, change the format(s) that can be supported, etc. the only limitations are your knowledge (or lack thereof).
-- Gargonia
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.
Wasn't the iPod launched before the iTunes Music Store was launched?
Let's see:
.16 .0.1.0.3
MythTv is at version
MediaPortal is at version
Do you really want to run what is essentially an alpha product? I don't. These people also are happy with the fact that it sorta works, but not all the way. If you had a high end media room with a 100" screen and a projector, the image quality is not where it should be. It proably looks great on your 17" lcd or 4:3 ratio 27" television.
I'm not even sure what the snapstream product is. You can do everything it lists for the tv stuff with the software that comes with any pc tuner card.
MCE 2004 was a disaster. Horrible product, run away as fast as you can. MCE 2005 is loads better, though not perfect yet. Numerous companies offer a ready-to-go unit ala a DVD player. Just plug and go. The HP z545 and the Alienware DHS series are great machines that you can setup just fine to output to a HDTV projector and it looks great. You can also play Doom on them and surf the net. Nice integration.
Nobody YET offers a MCE with OTA or QAM HD support. You can add the card yourself (the ATI HDTV wonder is on the short list of cards supported by MCE) and you're good to go.
Until you can buy a pre-made box from a company with Myth loaded and ready to rock, I don't think you'll see myth in the living room. Microsoft got a computer in every home, now it wants one in every living room connected to the tv. If MCE 2005 is where they are going, they are headed in the right direction.
...Apple, in the form of Steve Jobs, has said numerous, numerous, numerous times, publicly and very specifically, that he doesn't believe in any kind of convergence, or any interactivity between TV and computers. As he has said numerous times: When you use a computer, you turn your mind on. When you watch TV, you turn your mind off. They two worlds are not compatible. Now, whether that's just gimmicky-speak, and whether it's ultimately true aside, Steve himself believes it. And on top of that, Steve, even as CEO of Pixar, is one of those "kill your television" types, so I don't see him getting behind a PVR/AV component type project.
HOWEVER, some evidence points in other directions:
AirPort Express: an AV component that lets you stream music from your computer to an analog or digital audio output on a wireless device that's part of your entertainment system
iPod Photo: an increasingly large hard drive in a product that has a dock that is, in part, intended to be part of an entertainment system that has audio and composite video and S-video output (think iTunes Movie Store: download movie, sync with iPod, drop in dock that's hooked up to your TV, and play)
New headless sub-$500 iMac: ThinkSecret is almost ALWAYS spot-on with these stories, so it's probably true. This could easily be an AV component IF it includes tuner capabilities, or some provision for adding them
Apple/Motorola cell phone, possibly co-branded or even Apple-branded: Yes, this really is happening, folks. If an Apple VP talks about it to Forbes, it was explicitly approved by Jobs. This proves Apple is willing to branch out into other markets.
With the "Digital Hub", Apple has addressed every possible kind of connectivity and device: scanners, printers, digital cameras, digital camcorders, phones, PDAs, the computer, movie editing, CD creation, music, DVD authoring, portable music players, etc. - everything, that is, EXCEPT TV. Yes, there are sticky issues here, of copyright, of rights management, etc., probably even worse than what was dealt with for the iTunes Music Store. Not to mention the problems of dealing with different TV reception standards in different countries, and the fact that you'd need to be able to DIRECTLY TUNE encrypted digital cable and satellite services, in all markets, to even begin to make this worthwhile for Apple. They're not going to have people hook up crap to random external equipment. So until there are universal standards (like CableCard) for allowing devices OTHER than set top boxes to tune the digital TV services, it just doesn't make sense.
But if Apple made a device in this space, it would be the iPod of PVRs, and would have the ease of use, integration, and fabulous attention to detail and usability we've all come to expect from Apple.
We can only hope...
Oh yeah... it runs linux.
Some cats swing, and others don't. Don't you be the kind that won't.
This suggests to me that the recording flag on, say, football games, will only stop owners of MCE from distributing their copy of the game. From what I've read on Slashdot, the flag is actually meant to stop all recording.
Are they just lying? I've been hoping that, as a poster above mentioned, the unfairness of DRM would enter the average American's mindset once he realizes that he won't be able to timeshift a lot of TV anymore. If the restriction is this more limited version, that won't happen. In fact, I might even start using MCE if all the DRM means is that I can't make torrents out of my recordings.
What do you guys think?
Please, for the love of God, no more car analogies.
I can't reburn it without adding silence or rearanging the tracks
No. All you have to do it delete the playlist and just re-create the same one again.
Yep, I've been grabbing shows from btefnet - mainly the network ones that I get anyway - and it's really so much nicer & faster to watch them sans commercials. The downsides are that it takes a long time to download them, and that I have no control over what I get - someone else has to post it. Enter (someday) MythTV :)
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
I only have experience of MCE2005 so I cannot comment on the other products, but MCE05 works wonderfully well (and I am no big M$ fan). I took a PC we don't use much (P4 2.4GHz, 1Gb RAM, 120Gb hd, Nvidia FX5200), added a 802.11b PCI card, wireless Logitech keyboard/mouse, Hauppauge 150MCE, an MCE05 remote control, and I was in business. A small investment, and I can watch/record TV, watch/record DVDs, get online, play games, etc. The computer is hidden away in a cabinet next to the TV. In my book, MCE2005 is a very good product, and I don't think its quality is going to decide if it's a flop or not. Rather there needs to be more options in terms of buying a MCE PC (most are too expensive). I also think it's like with many other M$ products, they eventually get it right and often dominate the market (look at PocketPC).
Because I know a lot of people with multiregion players here in the UK. I think everyone I know with a DVD player has chosen to go multiregion. That's not just geeks but normal people from 18-70. Because the discs can often be cheaper, released earlier and sometimes are only released in region 1.
If you want a linux-based alternative to XP media center PCs that is far cheaper for both hardware and software, you need only look as far as CAC media and the work they are doing for the MediaReady 400 - there is a link to it off of the home page.
Check it out - you will see a lot of them next year starting at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.
I might be wrong, but I don't think the elimination of the VHF and UHF spectrums will affect terrestrial analog cable. At least the FCC has no control over what's sent over a shielded copper cable, there's standards, but that's about it.
So that leaves it in the cable company's hands, personally, if my cable company ends analog service, and forces me to purchase a cable box for each of my analog TVs, for anything more than $1 a month additional, they lose their appeal compared to satellite TV, and I'll be switching to satellite at that point.
On the topic of tuner cards, don't do what I did and buy the damn Hauppauge PVR-150 if you plan to use it in Linux. There's no fully functional drivers available for it yet. There's a group working on drivers but last I heard (last week) one guy on the team disappeared, so they're stuck right now on the development. The PVR-250 is identical in functionality to the PVR-150, it just has more chips and costs more to manufacture, it's being replaced by the cheaper 150, the 250 supposedly works great in Linux.
grep -iw skynet
Where is the startup with the $400 MythTV-based solution?
I have been spending some time with Boston-area venture capitalists on some new ideas. To a capitalist they use 'Tivo' as an example of a solution with massive consumer appeal but an unprofitable business model. Even with a $13/mo. program guide subscription.
I agree with earlier posts that this business is destined to be eclipsed by the cable and satellite providers.
A MythTV product would be an awesome, more flexible solution than Tivo, but I suspect that at $400 would virtually impossible to deliver profitably. God forbid someone had an issue and required support from a salaried human :'(.
The art, methinks, in coming up with an idea that drives the notion of more flexible management of video content in a model that provides *reasonable* profitability for those producing and distributing the content and the equipment used to manage it.
While it is fashionable here to think of e.g. cable companies as 'evil' and 'controlling', that anthropomorphizes something that can be explained much more simply: they exist, as agents of their stockholders, to be profitable.
Really? It runs fine on my old P3 933 w/ 512Mb RAM. Software cost's aside. I only had to spend $79 on a capture card, $30 on a remote and and extra $145 for an ATI's video card and HDTV dongle. It was easy to setup and the interface is great. I might give another PVR such as mythtv a try at sometime, but I never get round to it because MCE works great.
> No. Sorry, I know it's sad, but the average consumer that knows about DRM accepts DRM as "the
> way things are". One of the biggest mistakes that tech knowledgeable folks like you and I make is
> assuming that things like this make any difference to consumers. You see, they make little or no
> difference to average consumers because these people accept DRM as the cost of buying, renting,
> or owning a copy of someone else's IP. To most people, it is nothing more than a type of use tax,
> and most consumers have no problem with this.
That certainly isn't my experience. Consumers don't understand what DRM is, do want to be able to tape reasonable copies of television programs, and do want their CD players to properly play CDs they play from the store, without having some play badly or not at all due to copy restriction technology. Consumers do get mad when equipment doesn't work the way they thought it did. They do take it out on the pimple-faced kid at the cashier of their local MegaElectronics2000.
This isn't a tech-savvey thing. I've had a CD I bought from the store not play properly on my DVD player (which doubles as my stereo CD player) because of some copy-protection scheme. I was as mad as hell. Worse, because of idiotic copy-protection laws up here in Canada, once I've torn off the shrink wrap, I can't even get my money back despite the fact that I was sold a defective product.
This isn't "tech" guy getting mad here, it's "consumer" guy who spent twenty bucks on a product that I couldn't play in my stereo. You know what the ultimately ironic solution was? I went to my Linux box downstairs, and ripped the goddamn thing, due in large part to the fact of the right combination of CDROM drive and operating system. "Tech" guy saved "consumer" guy's ass. If I had just been "consumer" guy, I would have been completely screwed, unless I wanted to buy new audio equipment, which might or might not have the same problem as my old equipment.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Wonderful program, handles multiple tuners, cable boxes, universal remotes, plays well with Multiple Hauppage PVR-250s. Easy to use. And it records plain vanilla mpeg2s which rip straight to DVDs. Built a micro-ATX box with two PVR-250s a GeForce 5200 and a UIRT-USB for remote control / cable box interfacing. Works perfectly.