Slashdot Mirror
Viiv 1.5 May End Traditional Media PCs
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au makes an interesting case for why the next revision of Viiv will kill off living room PCs as we know them. Instead, we'll be streaming content to digital media adapters from a PC in our home office. From the article: 'The existence of digital media adapters will totally remove the need to have a media centre PC taking up space in your living room, unless you're one of the few users that finds it practical to do anything other than passively soak up multimedia content whilst relaxing on the couch.'"
a media adaptor that doesn't suck or require so much effort with the server software that it takes longer to set up then building a pc by hand does.
Apart from the squeezebox I cannot think of any adaptor that is even bearably useable.
From Wikipedia:
"Viiv is a platform marketing initiative from Intel "...
(bolding mine)
Nothing else needs to be added...
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
MythTV box in the basement with terrabytes of storage. Mac Mini on top of the TV acting as a client to the MythTV box with an IR receiver for remote control.
Of course there is still one major sticking point. Price! MythTV box plus Mac Mini = $Thousands versus DVR rental from your cable company $10/mnth. Sure the rented DVR will cost more in the long run but, people won't see that. All they'll see is $2,500 starting cost, forget MythTV.
Not everyone has a 'home office'
The future of the home media center is the mac mini (perhaps with viiv chips in future)
A simple to setup, simple to use feature filled vertically integrated experience is what people want - and Apple is the company to deliver!
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Isn't long cables to you elsewhere placed computer enough?
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
commentary The forthcoming update to Intel's Viiv will see the media centre PC move from the living room to the home office. Asher Moses explains why.
Before anyone mentions it, no, we haven't been smoking any particularly potent herbal products lately, nor were we repeatedly beaten over the head with a two by four on the way to work this morning. Hear me out.
Thus far, every play to bring the PC into the living room has revolved around plonking an entire machine down in the lounge, right next to your existing home theatre equipment. In our opinion, this method was doomed from the outset.
The only moderate success of Windows Media Center-equipped PCs has highlighted the fact that most consumers aren't interested in having an all-singing, all-dancing computer in their lounge room. We're not interested in editing word documents, manipulating spreadsheets, browsing the Web or playing games in a three metre interface from the couch (as opposed to sitting directly in front of the screen like we normally do when interacting with a PC). Rather, we'd simply like to watch/record TV, view DVDs and play other audio/video files on-demand through a simple, intuitive interface.
This is where the genius of Viiv comes in. Shortly, Intel will release a range of "digital media adapters", which connect to your existing home theatre components (e.g. your TV, stereo system, etc) and can stream content wirelessly from any Viiv-certified PC. Bingo!
The existence of digital media adapters will totally remove the need to have a media centre PC taking up space in your living room, unless you're one of the few users that finds it practical to do anything other than passively soak up multimedia content whilst relaxing on the couch.
As a result, the PC in your home office will likely act as a digital media hub, distributing content wirelessly throughout your house to various media adapters. And since the Windows Media Center Edition operating system used by all Viiv-enabled machines is virtually identical to Windows XP when it's not in media centre mode, you can go about your regular office-related tasks -- word processing, web browsing, etc -- while others are seamlessly streaming content in the lounge.
Such multi-tasking makes dual-core processors a necessity, which explains why Intel requires all vendors of Viiv machines to adopt a dual-core processor before gaining certification.
Suddenly, the logic surrounding some manufacturers' decisions to offer Viiv machines in an office-like tower form factor -- for example, the Acer Aspire e650 -- is beginning to make sense.
What do you think? Will the PC pull out of the lounge room, leaving your home office machine to act as both a media hub and a productivity workhorse? Have your say below!
Does linux support the viiv spec?
Will I be able to run a cutom built "media linux"?
I like xbmc so I am thinking of doing something like that with linux....ohh, it must exist already...no?
FTFA : "Such multi-tasking makes dual-core processors a necessity"
Hahaha ! What about requiring a good scheduler ? Multitasking has nothing to do with multi cores...
Marketing push or simply cluelessness ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
You're going to end up with a DVR device that can record video, play DVDs, play VHS tapes, and play music CDs. You're not going to download torrents of movies from the web and then play them back from your PC.
You're going to be like everyone else and rent or buy DVDs and live with the warnings and advertisements in them. Viiv isn't going to change anything.
The whole home theater industry has been moving in that direction for quite some time. You have a home media storage "furnace" that serves up video and then a small client box for your TV.
You see that already with the XBox hacks, XBox 360 and Windows Media Center, and networked DVD players
Now VIIV may help that along but the technology has already been in existence (and in use) for years.
Well... except for maybe the DRM controls that VIIV will provide...
Somewhere between a small laptop and a PDA / phone to transmit input via WiFi maybe, but replacing a home stereo component with a traditional PC will not catch-on.
Sounds like you are validating what the article said....
you mean.. a pc in a box with a wireless nic running RSVP or some propriatary intel protocol, that isn't a pc?
umm.. no thanks.. i'll stick with mythTV on a notebook.. about the same size.. still plugs into the TV.. is wireless and well.. does everything i need a remote to do.. and when i don't want it to stream tv.. it can function as well.. a notebook..
Also nothing new.. d-link media lounge does the same damn thing..
Just like the Media Center PC's from Microsoft, that have gained "less than favourable traction" since their release, Intel's brand of Viv marketing to bring digital content to the living room is lacking the user friendly features that the average consumer is looking for.
The idea of building a server to house your media collection is fascinating to the nerds out there, but for the average movie fanatic, the thought of mixing the right hardware and software on a file server that resides else where in the house is not appealing. Further, like any other home computer, this server will require maintenance. The last thing most consumers want when they come home after sitting in front of their office computer for 10 hours is to have to retreat to the home office, patch their server, download their favorite shows, etc. etc. just so they can finally veg out.
I dont want a "Media Centre PC". I dont want to have a PC with GB's of movies and TV shows. I want to be someone else to sort, manage them and back them up. I don't want a set top box that connects to my PC so I can watch this massive collection.
I want video on demand. I want my local video store or cable company or telco to manage all the GB's of TV shows and movies. But when I want to watch a movie, be it the latest flick staring Angelina Jolie, some old movie a friend recommended or a movie I've watch 50 times, I just want to select it from a list, pay my 50c (or maybe 4.95 for a new release?) and watch it (pause it, rewind it and maybe see some "making of" style doco).
I have a soft modded xbox that has samba access to the Ubuntu pc in my bedroom, plus NAT access to the net. Trivial, and all it cost was a 2nd hand xbox.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
The computer industry seems to have this idea that we want to combine all our gadgetry into a single box. There's always bee this assumption. The fact is, people prefer separate dedicated equipment.
Just because somethign can be used for several purposes doesn't mean people want it to. They have a dedicated TV for a games console, and generally don't even use a DVD player as a CD player. If a device has a single dedicated purpose, it becomes a lot easier to use, and usualy does the job its designed to do a lot better.
Imagine your entire CD/DVD collection available at the touch of a remote. No fiddling with hundreds of cases, finding the one you're looking for. No limit of shuffling songs on only 5 CDs. Instant access to everything you own. The ability to make instant playlists of whatever songs you like, or the ability to dynamically change the potential of a song to be played.
All in a box smaller than your current DVD player, and, coincidently, able to play CD/DVDs as well. (OK, so the drives that store all this are located remotely, cuts down on sound and size of the box in your living room)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
That's what you think
It already has caught on in a big way for some. I use XBMC to stream audio and video from a media server, and there are other devices out there built to do the same, like MediaMVP, Avel LinkPlayer, D-link DSM-520, and many others. Heck, there's even an entire forum dedicated to such devices over at avsforum.
It's an advertisement.... which is why this article was so light on details; they are not doing any critical thinking. It reads almost like it came straight from a press release.
I would have been more interested to read numbers on the media PC market. Is it really failing or is it that people ARE just plunking down regular computers in their living rooms because it IS good enough?
Feel free to add to the list:
1. Media hoars need money too and will do anything to encite crowds into viewing their clickage.
2. Self-absorbed pontificating asses never think anyone wouldn't want to hear them.
3. We don't trust the manufacturers. They've tried to swindle, corral, trick, and change laws to make our consumption subject to our continual feeding of money to lease rather than own.
Doesn't Apple's Airport Express do this already for audio, with video capability soon to be released?
You're missing the point. The idea is to use the PC to manage all your digital content but to control it remotely. Nobody is talking about the user having to walk into another room to queue things up. In fact, the whole point is *NOT* to do this. Instead, the user will use a handheld remote control device that wirelessly accesses content on your PC (where ever it may be) and streams the content to your home theater system. The goal is to let you do this from your couch.
As TFA points out, all of the existing solutions have drawbacks (too bulky, too loud, too inconvenient). A more elegant solution is to harness the power and disk space of your PC to store and manage your digital media but wirelessly feed them into your theater system with a simple interface. That's what the new VIIV products claim to do. How well they do so remains to be seen, but if they can pull this off it could be a great product.
Most media center PCs were too expensive to be mass market items anyway. What they should have done instead is come up with a very low end PC that costs $200-$300 that focuses everything it has on serving up high quality content instead. BeOS would have been great for that. They could then sell add ons like home NAS devices that would have been automatically detected and added so that you could just keep expanding your home media collection painless by buying a new device and plugging it in.
Today, most families don't have the money to spend on another $1500-$2500 PC that is basically a TiVO and DVD player with a few little wizbang features thrown in. The dollar has been shot in the head thanks to Clinton (yay for the most corrupt SEC in decades!) and Bush (deficit spending out his ass), many good jobs have left the country and so quite simply, the media PC was about as useful and affordable for many families as a $60,000 luxury car for its size and role among electronics.
I sell HP Media systems. Most computer users that come in have no idea that something like a Linksys Media Extender even exists, and the price shocks some of them (and others the idea of moving the plasma *anywhere* in their living room is a delightful one).
I love to do PK (product knowledge) and in my search for info about Viiv... I didn't find anything that would make it stand out above and beyond any other HP Media system.
To summarize -- cool things can now happen in your living room. Users that come in talking about Viiv -- I always remind them that it's a catagory, not an actual product, feature or specific technology -- to me it's more of a brand standard.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
The household PC is in the kitchen for general use with an XBox 360 in the living room streaming live TV and recorded media to the TV over my wireless network. Win MCE 2005 and Extenders have allowed this for a while now without Viiv.
I can see the benefit of this sort of setup to a degree. I run something similar, with streaming media devices in various rooms, all streaming from a centralized machines. It is quite nice to have your entire media library available from any location.
A friend of mine discovered a cheap, low tech solution for pushing audio as well, using playlists and a small FM transmitter. Basically, you run your own custom radio station. No remote control, but available throughout the house and yard, and no streaming devices required.
Good point. I think I used my DVD player once to play a CD (my stereo was apart).
Maybe at some point convergence works, but right now you get things that are so-so at a lot of things and excellent at none. Cell phones are a good example.
I don't want or need a shitty camera built in. What's the point? The quality sucks, bad resolution, bad picture quality, maybe an LED for a shitty flash. I rather carry my small digital camera instead. Having one company as your gate keeper is perilous too. Take the cell phone example. I got a LG PM-325 from Sprint. I used the camera twice before realizing unless I paid X dollars a month for "Picture Mail", there was absolutely no way to retrieve them from the phone.
The future downside is that if they every do make the ultimate device that does everything, you're fscked if it get's stolen. There goes your media, your pictures and probably tons of other stuff that you wouldn't want other people to have access to. Carrying your life in your pocket might be convienent, but also dangerous.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Microsoft...Intel...Microsoft...Intel...sounds like yet another advertisement.
To meet all the prerequisites listed in the article, how about: mini-itx form factor, linux, mythtv. Bingo. No full sized pc needed, it'll record your shows like a Tivo box, it'll play your mp3's, it'll play your dvd's, it'll let you burn off your shows to dvd, and everything else you might need.
And it'll be cheaper to boot!
Oh, but gee...it won't be Windows or Intel certified...shucks!
We basically need a VCR/DVD player sized component that can do everything. A Mac Mini would be a good start, small, quiet, and has enough power to do most PVR like features. It could be made twice as wide (lets hope not too much higher) and probably be able to do everything we need for the living room.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Apple's Airport Express already does this, and I believe soon it's going to be able to stream video also. Is it possible for Apple to gain a Viiv certification? And if so, would this be an opportunity for Apple to really start gaining market share from Windows? With the latest Vista Delay (tm), Apple may have a real chance, if they use their legendary ability to stir up the market, to create the livingroom presence that Windows has been trying to get. Apple already has the technology (or I imagine they will soon), they just need to make the necessary marketing push to get the ball rolling.
unless you're one of the few users that finds it practical to do anything other than passively soak up multimedia content whilst relaxing on the couch.
Ever since I got a bright, hi-rez projector (Dell 5100MP 1440x1050), my couch is where I do everything except programming. It is great for email, web-browsing, IM, video-phone, games and yes, even the occasional TV show or DVD.
I highly recommend using an 8 foot wide screen with a wireless keyboard - it is amazingly comfortable to sit back in the laz-e-boy and use the entire wall as a monitor.
Intel is just trying to make themselves appear the only way to work with media, you know...marketing. Basically they're riding on coattails here. Viiv isn't ANY different than an AMD system similarly equipt. It's only "certified" to be able to do what they say it will. AMD could do the same thing, but they don't try forcing vendors to buy into their CRAP.
Oh, and no, I don't like Intel. I've been lied to enough by that company over the years.
I'm thinking this product means two things.
1. License fees to Intel, so no Linux support.
2. DRM.
I dont know about going to extremes saying it will REPLACE traditional PCs...
I get my work frustrations out with gaming. During the last 14 days, I came to the conclusion that gaming on the PC is "for more expandable then any console" but The maintenance involved is just not worth it. It SHOULD just work(tm?) I deal with machines problems at work, nothing fancy just your usual monkey help desk. So in theory, You just reformatted your pc, reinstalled windows, and started the painful restoration. (blockers) virus,spam,firewalls,blah blah blah. Once that is completed, you begin to reinstall your game lineups. And if you're a gamer, you got 10+ titles . Within a week you begin to feel a "sluggish" response. You click on the Yellow Shield in your task bar, and get the latest critical updates. Couple days later, your game begins to stutter. Even tho You/I took ALL the precautions, Not running IE,using (virus/spam) scanners etc etc... Within 2 months your Gaming RIG is now crawling. Drink a 12 pack, and back Step 1. Am I wrong in saying IF YOU ARE a daily, heavy windows users (downloading, running various apps, gaming) Your WINDOWS machine has about a 1 year lifespan before some thing critical begins to happen. Whats my point? I packed up my PC and got a console. It just works. Now, for the conclusion, since im sure you're already sick of reading this, and are preparing to mod me down, What if i had a so called MEDIA PC. TONS AND TONS of crap, movies, music etc etc. DO you actually think that user is going to backup 250-500 megs of shit? Do you really think that windows based machine will run smoothly? When will the next life saving critical patch come out and screach your system to a hault? For a media PC to work, it has to have uptime reliability. One of my web severs has been up for over 2 years. No, it doesnt run windows. This whole Microsoft Media PC is just a marketing ploy. Sure it works out of the box... but for how long?
-- I Dont Deserve A Sig I Have Bad Karma
Maybe I'm missing something. I've got a DSM-320 media player sitting right on top of my DVD player. While it could certainly be improved (its like 2 years old - so I'm sure they have), its a hell of a lot better than having a PC sucking up all the air in my family room. PC's are a PIA, fixed purpose hardware is the way to go. I've got 20 Gigs of music and video on a PC in the basement that does just fine with streaming and automatically refreshes the catalog every 30 minutes if I download or rip something new.
Per usual, the CNET article doesn't really say much new or interesting, just kind of glosses over a subject to try to make it sound new and exciting.
A Upnp DVD player that rips and plays DVD's and streaming media and memory cards is the way to go. Why have a $1000+ "Media Center" PC dedicated to your television when you can have a $300 Media Appliance (adapter)?
I'm amazed that an otherwise erstwhile publication could get so sucked in. There are numerous other form factors and ideas for 'media centers'. No one has offered the model that will have a high-uptake by the public so far, and many have (and are) trying to capture the public's fancy. The early success of Tivo was an inspiration, but the Tivo model has numerous problems, well-documented in this very forum.
Integral electronics, set-top boxes, media center PCs, WiFi-controlled media centers, home IDFs, and other schemes have all been tried, and none have caught the public's fancy. The Viiv chipsets and DRM methods are costly and aren't particularly inspiring.
It's one more attempt to try to gain mindshare-before-marketshare that may have some success, but it's far too early to tell how home configurations in 2009 will look. The HDTV signaling standards are barelly inked (and more will likely be added to ATSC) before it's all over. The DRM methodologies aren't settled. The inter-device media sharing methods aren't finished; the content isn't locally cached yet.... there's lots of work to do.
And so, fie.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
In addition, we do not always have sufficient runs of network cables. This means that we may be talking about a wireless solution, which will be fine for audio, but is not yet enough for good video.
In the end, we will probably see that a central solution is significantly more expensive than a distributed solution, without the advantages of reliability and power.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The Xbox 360 has a built in Media Center Extender. You never have to get up and walk into the office in order to queue up data. Instead, it offers an on screen guide of all artists, albums, movies, etc and you choose from there.
The current concept of HTPC can't last. The average home has multiple TVs and even more viewers...a decentralized entertainment system makes no sense at all.
I envision (using existing methods and technology) a "server" with massive amounts of storage and six or so TV decoders. It will handle all the requests for media, from live TV to DVDs (in a carousel? since they don't want us copying them) to recorded TV to music and stream those out to what amounts to a thin client connected to the TV.
Microsoft is starting to do this with the XBOX 360 and its connectivity with MCE, but the problem there is that the 360 doesn't really extend the functions; as I understand it, it only has limited playback abilities. Imagine if the 360 could connect to MCE, select a channel, and display it...or schedule a show to be recorded by the server while you continue gaming.
We're just scratching the surface of how networking is going to affect the way we distribute and view television and movies.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Viiv isn't the first; it's more like the 8th but with over 300 million bucks for buying "reviews".
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
Here's the thing people. Most users already have computers in the home office somewhere. To tell them they have to buy a $500 or $1000 dollar media center pc that is louder than any of the other components and larger to boot kills most purchases.
I've had been debating a media center pc for over a year. Finally I heard about the devices based around the SigmaTel media chipset. I bought a Pinnacle Showcenter 1000 for about $100. IT handles all the movie files I have (excluding the DRM ones which I don't have any of). All you have to do is install the media server software on your PC.
Now that's the typical end user. My rig is actually different. I run Oxyl Box for the streaming server portion on a my Linux server that has a 800GB RAID 5 under it for storing all of my media. What happens the first time the Media center PC has a drive failure from cooling issues? Now you have to have a redundant setup on the media center which increases heat and noise. Joe Blow isn't going to rerip his ENTIRE DVD and CD collection the second time around.
The Showcenter even includes wireless. Now what's easier for the "typical" home user? Installing a media center PC with all its warts or being able to move 2 devices and have your media in any room you want? All you need is a power outlet. You don't even need a cable connection. Your PC can do all the recording and streaming of live TV (with a TV tuner of course) and you need your streaming appliance and an output.
I imagine that some smart vendor will eventually integrate these into the TV itself. I can see my next TV being one with either Wireless or Ethernet out the back and software installed on the PC I already have.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
Bingo.
A few years ago I remember someone telling me about a Sears Roebuck catalog he'd seen from the early 1900's. One of the more expensive items was an electric motor which came with a variety of specialized tools and adapters. The idea was you would take a drill, saw, whatever, plug it into this motor to draw power (mechanical power, I mean; probably incredibly dangerous, to judge by similar setups on modern farm equipment, but presumably it worked), do the job, unhook the tool, and then fit the next weird adapter to the next tool.
And in those days, when electric motors were fairly expensive all by themselves and had a low power-to-weight ratio, it probably made sense. These days, of course, every power tool has its own motor, and that's how people prefer it.
Considering that most TV's and DVD players and stereos and, hell, microwave ovens now have more computational power than the average user had on his desktop a couple of decades ago, I see no reason to assume that the trend toward divergence isn't continuing into the present day.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Man, it's hard to be "Funny" on such a freakin' boring topic.
OK, the first obvious question is, how do you "end" something that never got started? How many people do you know that have HTPC's? Zero? That's what I thought.
Viiv is just another solution to a problem that nobody has, or even cares about.
I think it is more that people like things that are easier to use, and seperate devices tend to be easier for newer technologies.
My mom really likes her TV/VCR combo. She bought a second one when the first one broke. It was a perfect second TV.
Convergence is a secondary reason why people buy laptops, it's one box instead of three or four(primary reason is portability).
Plenty of people use thier Xbox or PS2 as DVD players.
Some people might like seperate equipment, but I don't think everybody does. Nobody likes crappy combined stuff, but if one box does two things as well as two seperate boxes, I'm gonna buy it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Instead, we'll be streaming content to digital media adapters from a PC in our home office.
No we wont. I'll be back on the couch as he describes, and certainly not walking into the "home office" to queue up my next piece of media.
Somewhere between a small laptop and a PDA / phone to transmit input via WiFi maybe, but replacing a home stereo component with a traditional PC will not catch-on.
*sigh* You don't have to do this (get up and change media) NOW. You can have full control over your "office" located media server and stream it to a network client near your TV and control it all from your couch with a regular remote control.
Here's an old article from my site where you have an office PC, a pvr x50 card, and a MediaMVP to make a budget network streaming PVR that's controllable from your couch/remote control.
It's not like network adapters and media "clients" are new ideas/technology. I'm sure several people will point to using lightweight/quiet mini-itx mythtv client boxes, or modded xbox's w/XBMC as clients to some media store in a closet somewhere.
Viiv is the "centrino" branding of new DRM lockdown...
*sigh*
e.
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
Not everyone has the room for all those gadgets. The PS2 was brilliant in the fact I was able to ditch my DVD player, and that it stands up on its end. When it goes out (or when I get the money) I'll replace it with a Mac Mini.
I'm doing this already I guess.
The DboxII will connect to your PC (Suse 10 in my case), show your pics, play your movies via VLC, record with commercial skipping, play your mp3 files, check your email, receive news feeds, check the weather......blah blah blah
Oh yeah, it also receives Cable or Sat TV too!
Isn't long cables to you elsewhere placed computer enough?
(Fragment) Consider revising.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
who else does this? I have been looking for something like this. Ok, I haven't been looking too hard. :)
Excellent wordage.
What the hell is a hoar though?
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
I, for one, would appreciate if my laptop could do so much more than it currently does, including TV and radio.
Yesterday was the time to do it right. Are we having a REVOLUTION yet?
Another Intel marketing term masquerading as unique technology like Centrino?
For example, D-Link's media players are little slim pizza boxes (nowhere near as small or light-weight as a Squeezebox, sadly) that would seem to be a great fit for a media viewer and relatively inexpensive -- until you find out that they only support modern Windows installations as the file server. (That I later learned you can effectively hack up an NFS server on *nix is in this case irrelevant; it's not supported and apparently doesn't work very well anyway).
Being one of those crazy nerds who actually has a 1.6TB RAID5 in a dual Opteron rack-mount box under the stairs (which isn't running Windows, it may shock you to learn) means I actually care about the quality of the software offering of the media server in question because it isn't going to be yet another TSR to crash Explorer on my Windows desktop; If the hardware vendor says, "You have to run Windows on that server to use our media player," or better yet, "You need to have an Intel VIIV processor in that server," I'll be glad to tell them where to stick their media player platform.
I mentioned SqueezeBox before and their perl-based "SlimServer" app. The implementation isn't airtight (the player still hangs occasionally on a very small number of mp3s for some reason I haven't divined yet), but they got my money because the server platform is written in Perl and because it's open-source, with all of the benefits that implies. Slim Devices also donates 10% of their net profit to the EFF to help protect our rights to fair use, which is more than any other vendor in the market is doing, to my knowledge. The hardware is also, incidentally, awesome compared to any competitor in the same ballpark -- but you can find out about that for yourself if you're interested.
When the folks at Slim Devices announce that they have a new device available that plays video as well as music I'll be the first in line to take the plunge; Until that day my Freevo-running EPIA-M will do just dandy, thanks.
Other vendors like D-Link and Intel are going to be left out in the cold (from this house, at least) until they can come close to making a similar offering across the board -- not just a lower price point nor being able to walk into a big-box store to go into debt over such a device on 18% interest store credit.
a more elegant solution is to harness the power and disk space of your PC to store and manage your digital media
browsing, selecting, decoding, and displaying all your media is the hard part. You don't need powerfull box to store all that media.
Why not have the "media adapter" connect to a NAS box in your home office?
In fact, why not skip the NAS box, and get a cheaper USB enclosure for the drive?
In fact why not skip the expensive USB enclosure and put the drive in the "media adapter"?
Oh wait...
(PS. how common is it to have a "home office" to put your PC in, instead of putting it in the living room where everyone can use it?)
From the article:
Such multi-tasking makes dual-core processors a necessity, which explains why Intel requires all vendors of Viiv machines to adopt a dual-core processor before gaining certification.
No web browsing and serving a file does not require a dual-core processor. That intel can charge more for a dual-core processor explains why they require it.
I've already got a "media adapter" in my living room, it consists of a tiny silent passively cooled VIA 800Mhz mini-ITX board in a small case with a TV card, 300Gb HDD, and slimline DVDRW. It looks the part and seamlessly integrates with my TV.
I don't see a problem with this "media centre PC taking up space in your living room" at 12.7"(322.58mm) x 2.7"(68.58mm) x 10"(254.0mm), intels forthcoming "media adapters" will probably take up as much.
Isn't this what the Media Center Extender already does?
Hi,
Apple's new Intel-based Mac mini does something very close to what is described in the opening blurb with the new version of its Front Row software included with it. Reviews have been good.
Why look elsewhere if you need something like that now?
look, if not for the complete and total lack of ability to easily creat a digital library on a basement media server which handles your tivo-esque timeshifting, storage of dvd movies and cd quality audio, channel tuning, etc., we'd all be doing it.
The cable companies won't let a decent PC card cable tuner onto the market which can handle all the channels to which you subscribe. The music people work to prevent reasonable in-home music storage and access for the desperate fear that *GASP* you could share music across a network. The dvd people work to prevent any reasonable disk based storage and access of quality video.
What's really needed is a different paradigm altogether. Ideally, a pass through set top box on one tv in each room, which uses IP to connect to a base unit in the basement or media closet. The base unit is a PC. The set top box provides user friendly tv based menus to the device. The device itself controlls one or more cable company tuners -- the cheapest ones they have that will give you your content descrambled. For additional concurrent non-scrambled channels, regular PC tuner cards could be used. The device would be responsible for which tuner is being used by which tv or whatever.
The total number of tuners would then reflect the number of LIVE concurrently different channels of content you could capture or watch. Once captured, the limit is bandwidth in the house. If two tv's were looking at the same content, it would require only a single tuner. Suppose you mostly watch network TV but also like HBO. You now would need one cable company tuner which you'd use for capturing the HBO content, while you could have several tuner cards (or external USB versions of same) to capture unscrampbled video. Each tuner could supply one or many tv set tops within your house provided they were on the same live channel. Content could be captured to disk just as it is with most dvr's now, so that each set top box could still have pause/rewind/fast forward capability independant of each other.
Additional menus on the set top box could easily stream back to the main box from a dvd player or whatever, effectively making the act of watching a dvd tantamount to capturing that content and adding it to your library. You could get fancy and automatically record new feature movies as your subscribed channels show them, and add them to your home library. The same could easily be done with a sat. radio subscription assuming your can read the track data while capturing the audio.
Hell, we can already be our own phone company with Asterisk. Its time to think about being our own media companies.
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
Am I the only person who read "vim" not "viiv"?
Why must we always make this so complicated in the name of simplicity? So mom and pop that can't keep spyware from killing their machine can have this "fun new technology" in their living room.
Honestly, this shit will never fly. The Geeks will figure out how to do it themselves..and the technologically challenged will use their dvd players.
I'm not anti-social, I'm anti-idiot.
Quite, I think. In fact, I can only think of one person I know with a computer in their Family Room. We used to back in the day, but mostly due to a lack of room for an 'office'. I think this is caused by all the periphreals,etc everyone has now. Who wants the scanners, printers, ipod dock, digicam, 19" monitor, etc, etc in their living room?
:x
Yes, the author is a clueless moron. Currently, dual-core processors bring something like a 40% performance boost. However, current processors do fine with these new-fangled things called "threads".
I'd mod you up, but I lost the mod points conch two days ago.
The only limitation is locally installed codecs which is fairly easily to get around using live transcoding from your MCE server.
Infact the functionality of the 360 is only limited as it is because previes extenders were horribly under powered and thus developers artificially limited functionality.
360 is great as a MCEX. I regularly play HDTV over mine and its pretty flawless and smooth. I typically do 6-8mpbs hd s treams or 3-4 mbps dvd rips WMV no problem.
but it took Apple to create the iTMS and the iPod to turn it into a mass media darling and sell 42,000,000 of the things (and counting, by the second!)
And its success is just an indication of how uncoupled the office really is from the home.
The reason Microsoft can't make inroads into the home is that they're too intimately tied to the office. (And the 'innovations' that they're they're trying to bring to the office OS are being firewalled from that office as a waste of time. Multi media features aren't WANTED in the office. My client went to Win2K only after NT 4.x was EOL'ed, killed off by MS. And they've got tens of thousands of PCs.)
Sorry Mr. Gates but they're not even interested in XP or Vista until they're forced into it.
Look for Apple to make BIG inroads in the 5-to-9 world and for Microsoft to stay stuck in the 9-to-5 world.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
http://www.itvdictionary.com/set-top_box.html
The MediaMVP is quite neat its way, but it sounds pretty awful. Its audio support seems to be nothing better than MP3.
It also has the disadvantage (in the UK) that when you buy one the vendor reports you to the government, saying you have just bought a television. And they start sending you threatening letters, demanding money for a licence. I have no TV and no use for one, but the government clearly finds this suspicious.
For music, the Squeezebox works very well indeed. Fed FLAC, it sounds as good as any CD player I've ever heard. But nowhere near as good as vinyl.
Nick
who else does this? I have been looking for something like this.
MythTV
Enigma
The computer is in the home office so at night I can close the door when I surf "educational" websites. (if you get my drift)
Can't do that in the living room.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Media extenders are here and now. I would consider my Roku SoundBridge to be one, but that doesn't mean there aren't times when I wish I had a media center PC! This is just Intel marketing bull. Sad that News.com is buying into the hype. VIIV will no more kill the media center than the iPod killed radio. People have different needs and different devices meet those needs.
multifunction tools that share either the same motor or engine are quite common now, go to any hardware store to see them. I have cordless "drills" that by pushing one button you remove the drillhead and can make it a jigsaw, or a sander or a...depends on which attachments you get. I have a basic string trimmer with a gas engine that you can swap the power head out and make it a pole saw, or a flowerbed rototiller or a... whatever attachment you buy. Different makes and brands have different attachments, but most of the big name vendors have those devices now.
It's common and not strange at all, a lot of people have them, from various vendors, it's a big market.
Back in the 80s, I used to dream of the type of set up I have now, although I haven't seen anyone else who has it, surely there must be many. I no longer have a tv, instead a 24" monitor; wireless keyboard on my lap, mouse on a small table to my right. As i am typing this, I am comfortably ensconced on my couch, one foot up on the coffee table in front of me on which the monitor sits. This is *so* much better than sitting at a desk. I do all my pc work and play here, as well as watching 'television,' whether these are torrented files or the occasional DVD. I can't imagine it any other way now. I'm not sure why anyone would think a pc in the living room would only be useful for 'soaking up passive content.'
I just checked Sprint's website and 5 out of the 14 phones shown don't include a camera. I'm not sure how Sprint does it, but I don't pay Cingular a monthly fee to get pictures off my phone, just got a USB cable to hook it up to my PC -- unlimited free pictures. Sounds like you should have done some more research before spending money on a cameraphone when you apparently prefer just a regular cellphone.
Now there definitely are advantages in having specialized devices. When I know I'll want good-quality pictures (such as vacations, family gatherings, etc) I'll take along a Canon digital camera. But personally, I'd rather not lug around a 5-megapixel all the time "just in case". A cameraphone is great for getting quick snapshots in circumstances like a workplace or car accident where immediate documentation of the scene is a big help, or just capturing some spontaneous event. Just like I won't read Slashdot on my mobile browser, but it's extremely useful to be able to check weather forecasts, get sports scores, find directions or search for local businesses while away from a computer.
Oh, and that same phone USB cable lets me save a backup copy of everything on the phone as well, so my address book, pictures, ringtones, etc are all backed up in case the phone is lost or stolen. Amazing how a little precaution can save a lot of future trouble!
Another thing, I don't think anyone ever intended for a living-room media-pc to be used as a normal, everyday computer. TFA mentions surfing the internet and typing papers, which leads me to believe the author has never even used MCE before. While MCE can be used on a dektop pc, the "media" UI is dominated by exactly what you are going to use a set-top or living room pc for...media. And the current HTPC offerings are not necessarily designed to host every type of media you have, and there is nothing keeping them from streaming media from your server/desktop. Most are designed to be PVR and DVD player replacements, so there is nothing stopping you from using the included hdd for the sole purpose of recording tv shows, while you back up dvd's and host your music library on your server/desktop.
Personally, I think CNET is just a bunch of morons who get paid to act like journalists to advertise the highest bidder's product.
The computer industry seems to have this idea that we want to combine all our gadgetry into a single box.
Hrm? I thought that single box was something we called a "computer" and I already have one.
You know... That thing I can do excel spreadsheets on, surf the web, play Half-Life, write an email, download a movie, play my Mp3s, edit a photograph, or rather do anything that I can think of the top of my head.
Sure, I could have bought a game console, dvd player, and maybe hand write my excel sheets on a peice of paper, but I don't really see the need to spend all that extra money and time on things dedicated to something I don't use all the time. Maybe I'm ADD or poor, but I've already got convergence on my desktop PC.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
It'll never happen. The whole point of a home theater system is to have everything as big as possible, whereas with computers...
wait, the original Xbox launch was a conspiracy to put a PC in your entertainment center *disguised* as a receiver!
you can have my violent video games when you pry them from my cold, dead hands.
Prime UID Club
Why is it that just about every missive I've ever read about how people never use multi-function devices was generated on the most powerful multi-function device in history?
I like my Leatherman. I like my Treo 650. I like my various personal computers. Well designed "converged" devices mean that I can schlep less stuff, and that's good.
In my stereo cabinet, the convergence argument is definitely a more open issue. However, I haven't had a dedicated CD player in my stack for ten years.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Yeah right, they just want us to stream directly from the Studios. Why have all that pesky content laying around when we can just license everything and let the Studios keep it in-house?
I use a LinkTheater High-Definition Wireless Media Player talking to An open source media server. Running on Linux with a large collection of media ( 8 discs hanging off a 3ware sata hardware raid controller ). Works very well, I like it, the children like it. Wife has been convinced the media player as a fine idea (eventuallly).
Sure, my HTPC is used for media, but it's also used to run emulated games. With two wireless gamepads (logitech knockoffs of the PS2 pad), whenever my buddies come over, it becomes the center of attention, above any other activity planned for the night. Oh, I forgot, we're not supposed to interact socially, just vegitate and absorb what the content providers feed us.
No, it wasn't a matter of research, I researched it quite well. I got the phone for it's bluetooth connectivity and the ability to subtrovert the unlimited "vision" plan.
The fact that it had a camera was incidental, but one day I had it on me and took a couple pictures and to my chagrin, couldn't get them. It was aggrevating and very deceptive as it was no way stated the camera was useless without it "Picture Mail". I don't know if it applies to all phones, but the phone I bought, I bought it knowing it was missing the bluetooth file transfer abilities.
Though if I had bought it for the camera in mind, I'd be furious and would have demanded a refund.
I have a small Olympus I usually have on me. Only 3MP, but small and takes decent shots. Pretty much every pair of jeans I have have the same leg pocket which conviently can fit a camera || Zaurus || mp3 player.
I could certainly see the convienence for some people (like the people Halley Berry sideswiped, ca-ching!), but for me, I've got one one video camera permanently mounted in the rear and another going in facing forward shortly hooked up to a security vcr (but that is another story)
Another thing that irks me with the complexity is that my phone needed to "boot". Turning it on could take a bit and on more than one occasion it locked up while using it requiring a battery pull.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
This sort of thing is already available in many forms. For Mac users its in the form of the EyeHome unit from elgato. http://www.elgato.com/
The EyeHome unit accesses media content from any Mac in your home network and displays it on your TV. It requires a small server (OK, maybe not so small - its a modded version of Tomcat) to be installed on the Macs you want to access. The EyeHome unit can then access all the media in your music and movies folders etc. I've been using this for a while and its a good alternative to having your EyeTV computer next to your TV.
This sig kills fascists.
Well, I use a CD player to play music, a DVD player to play DVDs, a games console to play games, a PC to do spreadsheets and manipulate photgraphs, and a PDA to send emails. The PC is primarily used for editting data. I could use a PC to do a lot of other stuff, but dedicated equipment does the job a lot better. My PC only has a 19" monitor, or a composite video output, and it's a hell of lot noisier than my DVD player. I'd quite like a device that I could plug my camera into and rotate, crop and print the photos as well.
Will you be my friend now?
Intel Viiv is stupid and broken
Intel to cut Linux out of the content market
DRM: Three dirty letters you won't hear in a CES keynote
Nathan's blog
Why is it that just about every missive I've ever read about how people never use multi-function devices was generated on the most powerful multi-function device in history?
Precisely! I think the issue so many people have with "convergence" is that the devices which have that term applied to them are devices which at one time did a single utilitarian function, and had OTHER single-function devices stuck in the same box with it, and so on until you've got the digital equivalent of a Swiss-Army knife. I too dislike this: if I'm getting a phone, I want *a phone* and not also a camera and a portable web browser stuck into my phone.
On the other hand, if someone were to make a tiny portable computer with telephony software, photo or video capture software, and so on - and of course a camera and speakers and microphone to make those usable - that would be awesome. Because it wouldn't just have "phone mode", "camera mode", "web mode", and so on. Such a device is not a modal swiss-army knife - it's a general-purpose computer. I would expect to be able to add and remove programs, organize the data on it in my own way, and so on: in a free-form, non-modal, general-purpose fashion.
The problem is, nobody seems to want such a thing, because they don't know what they'd use it for. Tiny pocket multimedia computer? Only a geek needs one of those. But a phone... well, everybody need a phone. And hell, it's got a camera in it too. And it can surf teh intarweb k00d d00d! I need to get me a phone like that!
Not.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
"The computer industry seems to have this idea that we want to combine all our gadgetry into a single box."
It's good marketing. We all have this dream of the perfectly reliable infinitely durable all-media-playing box that is the size of a box of matches and costs under $200. Of course, reality is that these devices have mechanical components, capacitors that have limited lifetimes, fans that wear out, etc.
But the dream remains alive in the minds of customers. That's probably enough to keep the manufacturers going. Ten years ago, they were trying to sell 486/Pentium PCs as "multimedia centers", complete with cheap speakers, a microphone that clamps to the monitor, a fax/modem for "VOIP", and a cute encyclopedia CDROM.
They completely sucked, and the encyclopedia was a novelty at best--yet every new PC was like this.
Why, why, why is it that PC makers only think we'll want to watch TV on our TVs? I ONLY have my TV as a monitor, and I love it! How can you beat being able to watch TV on half a screen, then use the other half for checking e-mail, ordering a pizza, getting directions, etc? And GAMING!?!?! I'm sticking with my mouse and keyboard controls, thank you very much. The only thing not 100% perfect about my set up is that I had to make a board that my keyboard and mouse would fit on. I kinda wish there was a better way, but I'm really, really happy with the way things are. Maybe if you still have a crappy non-HD TV, you'll have a hard time reading the text on screen. Hopefully Microsoft will allow scalable text and icons for an entire window (toolbars and all), instead of just increasing the text size. Then everyone will be happy.
including Viiv.
"New iPod killer" -- "Viiv replaces PCs" -- "Origami to take over entire planet" -- these headlines are just silly. Revolutionary changes in tech happen, but they aren't common. Even the PC, arguably one of the most revolutionary technologies in history is essentially an evolutionary step on the road from mainframes to ubiquitous computing. As a general rule, video doesn't kill the radio star.
It's extremely unlikely that Viiv is going to wipe out the PC as we know it. Possibly (it isn't likely, IMO, but it's possible) this technology will make some inroads into the consumer market. It's even possible that a similar technology (the ability to separate video storage and playback from the physical display) will eventually dominate consumer sales of video devices. But there are a lot of folks who are happy to plug their TV into a cable box and DVD player. Probably always will be.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
No, we won't. There is simply no need to be streaming content from a computer to this Viiv device. People put DVD into player, player plays DVD - works pretty well. It's not as if people haven't thought of steaming stuff throughout the house. Only technically minded people are doing that currently and it just isn't practical on a widespread basis. People have enough trouble as it is with today's TVs and devices.
Getting a MythTV frontend for under $100 sounds fantastic, but I have MythTV convert everything to MPEG-4 to save disk space, and that mvpmc page only mentions "supports mpeg1 and mpeg2 video". I don't suppose it'll handle any more CPU-intensive codecs?
Isn't long cables to you elsewhere placed computer enough?
Long cables am you elsewhere if computer placed between Viiv can't do it.
Duh!
It's generally true that dedicated devices perform better than combination ones, but there are still niches where it's preferable to have a single high-quality device that can do many jobs at a reasonable price. The Dremel I bought last weekend illustrates the point quite well. If I were going to open a metal shop it would obviously be inadequate, but it should meet most of our household hobby and craft needs just fine.
The ubiquitous Swiss Army Knife is another good example. I may have a box of tools that work better for each of its tasks, but I can't carry them all around on my belt.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
Make a box I can hook up to my broadband connection to stream content. Make it cheap. And make it ubiquitous.
Separate big media from my PC (and everyone elses'), and I'll be forever grateful.
... Seen a paperless office lately?
This isn't exactly news nor does it have anything to do with ViiV. We all know we don't need a computer in our living room, who would want that.
Since the original xbox which was a media center client, plenty of people have been accessing their windows media center via a media adapter, and now microsoft plans to have the new xbox360 act as a media adapter for everyones tv. I can say from personal experience that the 360 does a great job of connecting to my Media Center PC, with the exception of the missing DIVX support.
There must be 20 other media adapters that have been available for atleast a year, for linksys, dlink, etc.
Big ones, small ones, some as big as yer 'ead!
Give 'em a twist, a flick o' the wrist...
The computer industry seems to have this idea that we want to combine all our gadgetry into a single box. There's always bee this assumption. The fact is, people prefer separate dedicated equipment.
Some people seem to have this idea that it is an "exclusive or" proposition. Some people want convergence, others want dedicated equipment. To paint "people" as wanting a certain direction would be a poor claim because not everyone has the same goals and priorities, such as maximal quality vs. maximal convenience or something between the two, as very often both can't be achieved in the same unit at an affordable cost. The market for both types of equipment is pretty large and it is a mistake to cast it in one direction or the other.
Keep in mind that a stack of dedicated devices may be simpler per device, the whole system generally gets more unruly as well, in terms of space, wiring, number of remotes and so on.
. . pimp an Acer Aspire e650. Hint it in cnet and post a /. article. Nice buzz.
Not only that but the "converged" devices end up costing more than the equipment separately. And they might not do the job as well. I much prefer a dedicated stereo (better quality sound) then playing through my computer.
I'd wager a computer would burn more electricity anways.
All I'd like to see is a touch screen system ala iPod interface (w/o actually hooking up an iPod don't have one anyways) which can use to play music from instead of a remote control. I use DVDs which I've ripped a lot of the CDs I own to converge to one media esp for hit songs. Then I play it in my DVD player. I just find its more convienient then swithching CDs.
We're not interested in ... playing games in a three metre interface from the couch (as opposed to sitting directly in front of the screen like we normally do when interacting with a PC).
Speak for yourself. I am interested in playing video games while seated on a couch, and I am not interested in limiting myself to the titles published by those few publishers that are large enough to negotiate with the video game console makers, and I can't afford enough legislators in each English-speaking country to make console modchips legal.
And have quite the jog to that home office when we want to control the video we want, change to another media file, or figure out why I keep getting the MSN message sounds through my living room.
The core purpose, I'd agree is to watch movies. But you also need control over the PC. You need to be able to search for a video file, insert a DVD, pause/rewind/etc, use your portable phone without interfereing with your wireless signal of your TV.
In a connected world, people want the ability to, in a minor role, check movie listings as well. That capability is there- why not provide some functions to capture the whole screen as well and forward a trackball's signal? In contrast to a directory of files served.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Having BOTH a media PC and a DLink DSM-320 media lounge I can definitely say that there is a place for a full-blown PC in a home entertainment unit. My media PC talks wirelessly to a 4TB file server to retrieve content and such; no content is stored locally except those needed to boot the machine or play local games. The first advantage of a PC is that it can play any kind of video format out there: the media lounge I have has some problems with OGG files, some AVI formats, etc. Of course, if the industry standardizes on a well-supported handful of formats then this wouldn't be an issue--but I don't see this happening anytime soon. The second advantage is processing power. Full blown PC's tend to be much faster than the processor they stick in these standalone components. The DLink 320 (albeit a low-end player) skips and stutters when playing CPU-intensive formats such as XVID or DIVX. Third, PC's are more flexible. When I first installed my PC, I tried to use 802.11b (which of course was insufficient for full video). I then used 802.11g... but because of conflicts with other wifi devices, I moved it to 802.11a. If a newer wireless technology comes out, there is a 99% chance I can upgrade the PC, and 0% chance I can upgrade the DSM. Then, of course, there is games. The PC is already hooked up to the large screen TV. Playing games in the living room PC is a joy. There are advantages to the component approach: noise, power requirements, form factor, etc. But given my experience with both, I don't think that my media PC will be leaving the living room any time soon.
On windows, hardly anybody pegs the CPU meter from pure processing alone.
What does seem to happen is the CPU goes to 100% and the PC becomes unresponsive during I/O operations which has never made sense to me, unless either Intel MB's or Windows XP is fundamentally flawed.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
...otherwise erstwhile...?
:)
I don't think erstwhile means what you think it means
I rarely use the PVR. I'm rebuilding the media PC for gaming.
'once erstwhile' was what i was thinking. This is what one gets when one reads /. before the first cup of java (not a trademark).
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
I have a Media Center Edition PC in the living room and I surf the net, do office documents, watch TV and record shows when I am out of the house. I do it because it's free. The other PVR option is to pay a monthly subscription to Tivo and buy a single purpose device that takes up space.
"Never say Never."
A lot of people blame the SEC, but I think they're really a product of their environment. For my money though, I think the Big 10 does the best job of managing athletics and scholarships at big-time universities and also turning out great teams.
I'm a republican, but I think blaming Clinton for the SEC just because he was from Arkansas is a bit much. I don't think Arkansas is even *in* the SEC.
Of course not. DVD players, these days, are not designed to be used without the TV turned-on, which eliminates their usefulness as CD players. Because of prices, they've removed the LCD-screen on the DVD-players, which were standard on earlier models.
In-fact, it's sperate components that fit the model you've listed... They each do a crappy job of their own simple tasks, rather than being very good, and infinitely flexible for each task, as a single all-in-one computer is.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The MythTV system was built with this in mind. You don't need a big powerful PC to access your media in the living room. Just build a MythTV box appliance with a single board computer or a small form factor box. Not to mention, that if you play your cards like I did, and get a standard widescreen LCD monitor with a DVI in and wireless KB/mouse, the PC can be the next floor down in a sealed closet...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I am build a new PC at the moment...is there anything special that is required to achieve a setup like this? or is just WiFi required (on the pc end)? Viiv sounds cool.
Hard work is just an accumulation of the easy things that you didn't do when you should have.
... on why Apple chose Intel, and why they've been so strangely reluctant to develop a standalone media centre.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
The way I see it, what intel is trying to push, is basically a server + desktop idea (and hence dual core)
You have one core for all your normal desktop needs, and one core for your 'media server'. Some prefer it seperated, other combined. It's obviously a big marketing hype, Allthough those media 'extenders' sound interesting, allthough I doubt you could run mythtv on it, as that does kinda the same thing, only you need thinclients with enough umpf to decode the video. On a side note, I think they'll still should have dvd drives, as you obviously don't want to run upstairs to change a dvd when you have friends over.
As far as I can tell, this allready exists, and has for quite some time, if you knew how to set it up/follow some howtos. Hell, I run freevo on my secondary head (for now, still want a dedicated myth box) on my desktop without even noticing it's there (I either watch something, or use my PC so aren't using them simulatinously, maybe it's time for dual-core, erm ViiV : p. So yeah, marketing, nothing more, nothing less.
I bought the Snazio Net Cinema HD for $250. It is plays everything I throw at it. MPeg-4, DivX, Xvid, MP3, Ogg Vorbis... Has DVI out and Component out. Plays up to 1080i and 720p. Wireless 802.11g and ethernet connections. This list goes on and on.
Take a look at the specs:
http://www.inside.nl/php/netcinema.php
http://www.snazzishop.com/cart_netDVDHD.asp
Viiv is being treated like a video game platform. A software developer can say "This requires Viiv" instead of "This requires a 2ghz CPU with 500megs of ram, 1 gig of free disk space..."
Is Viiv revolutionary? Not really, but keep in mind that the VCR, iPod, and DVD player were all just consumer-friendly copies of existing products.
In the long run, what do I think will happen? Instead of having a VCR, DVD player, and a bunch of video game consoles plugged into the family TV, there will just be one Viiv PC that is replaced every 2-5 years.
They've been trying to push this UPnP/Viiv on us for 4 years now and it's never felt like it's taken off, but maybe it's just taken off for ultra high-end managers in some parallel universe while the flat broke 99% are being left out.
For the 99% of us who don't have offices or mansions, the "Viiv rendere" is going to be an HDMI cable from our studio apartment walk in closets to our discount LG LCD panels. Intel fanboys will rant about HDMI not being long enough. Why don't you come to America and find out what "tiny apartment" really means.
Moses wrote:
> Such multi-tasking makes dual-core processors a necessity, which
> explains why Intel requires all vendors of Viiv machines to adopt a
> dual-core processor before gaining certification.
So all along multitasking was impossible without Intel dual-core processors and Intel never did want our money. Moses is a genious.
In France, the 'Free' ISP provides a freebox (modem) that can already do that, ie stream content from the computer to the TV. The feature is based on VLC and works with Windows, Linux or MacOS. More information here (in French, but with screenshots).
Of course, that's just one more feature of the free service, on top of TV (100 basic channels + channels you can subscribe to), phone (using VoIP, calls are free to a lot of countries), and internet (ADSL 1 mbit upstream, up to 20 mbits downstream), oh and video on demand too (no TV shows so far, only movies, costing from 2 to 5 euros). All that for 30 euros a month.
So why should I care about Viiv?
It's not the utility of a small, shiny, blue-lit PC doing useful things in my entertainment center that makes it so cool. It's the having of it. So no fancy city-slicker chinese stamped out workaround is going to replace it. Recotons (wireless speakers) are nice, but they're not cool. If it's in the basement streaming media, it is no longer show-off material. Let the Jones' get the silly things; I'll stay geeky.
Now if you can get it to stream media to the entire neighborhood! That would be cool!
And *really* piss off the MPAA.
FTA: And since the Windows Media Center Edition operating system used by all Viiv-enabled machines is virtually identical to Windows XP when it's not in media centre mode, you can go about your regular office-related tasks -- word processing, web browsing, etc -- while others are seamlessly streaming content in the lounge. Such multi-tasking makes dual-core processors a necessity...
From my experience, it's not the processor that's the bottleneck. Windows sucks at doing 2 or more disk-intensive tasks at once. My laptop (Dell D600) can't play a video file without hiccups while a second file is written to its disk. So to make this feasible, Windows needs better scheduling for disk access.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Basically, I finally just broke down and connected my PC directly to my home theater system. I ran s-video and audio out of the video card and sound card, through ground-loop isolators, and into my A/V switcher. It was the only way to ensure that I could play ANYTHING on my TV. If it will play on my computer, it will play on my TV. Best move I ever made.
The fact is, there is as yet *NO* stand-alone media player that will play every format, or even most of them, with any reliability.
Either build yourself a small computer to hook up to your TV or hook up your existing computer. And don't forget the video and audio ground loop isolators (they eliminate almost all noise and "electronic hum" from the connection).
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.