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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.'"
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.
Hauppauge's MediaMVP.
I use three of them as my Mythtv frontends using http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/. Low energy consumption, boots Linux over the LAN from my Mythtv server and supports slimserver's protocol for listening to music.
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...
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.
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.
Isn't it good to know that Intel is about to validate what we've been doing for some time, now. I felt so terribly exposed with my MythTV backend up in the study, streaming video to MythFrontends elsewhere in the house, until it became "Strategic." Of course I'm sure MythTV isn't "strategic" to Viiv.
As for cost, there's a PC up in the study, anyway. It's just a bit more powerful, has a bigger hard drive, and has a capture card to make it a MythTV backend. Yes, there's cost. But it's not a whole PC's worth of cost, just the additional stuff.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Imagine it? I can already remember it...
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
Oh my, how much will the 401th disk will cost you...
... everything on a couple of HDDs. Backup is trivial (for pics and home movies, the rest still has its original media).
When a 300GB HDD costs less than 100Eur, the PC is the obvious solution, not mentionning it serves as a backup as well. All my DVDs, CDs, home movies, pictures,
There is NO MATCH to that as of today, anywhere.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
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.
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
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
XBMC. The Xbox may be a PC a heart, but everything about it, from the (fairly inconspicous) case to the interface, remote control support, instant-on, low noise and 5-minute setup tell a different story. The best part is that it plays fair with protocols and standards, so you can stream from Mac/Win/Linux over Samba pretty much any format of video or audio you care to choose. Only downside is having to softmod the Xbox in the first place.
KnoppMyth is perfect for this. Just pick hardware that is known compatible if you aren't familiar with compiling kernels and such to get them working.
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!
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
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.
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?
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.