Google and Apple Finally Teaming Up?

nieske writes "Rumors are spreading about Google and Apple teaming up to form a video alliance. Google might provide streaming video content for Apple's upcoming iTV, which was revealed in last week's Apple event. The only thing that seemed to be missing in the iTV preview was streaming video, and with Google's Eric Schmidt on the Apple board of directors, this alliance might actually not be so far-fetched."

Comments

Poo Pooing ITV

[esconsult1]

Lots of people dismiss this product, but the kicker for me is that its priced so I can put one in each room with a TV, instead of a PC beside each TV.

Imagine watching Youtube on your bigscreen... (on the other hand, with that crappy video, perhaps not).

Re:Poo Pooing ITV

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

That's the situation NOW, but give it ten years and we may have all the bandwidth necessary to stream hi-res. The technology's still in its infancy, really.

Re:Poo Pooing ITV

[Firehed]

Let's not forget a DVD player. Yeah, they're cheap, but the fewer devices I need hooked up to my TV, the better. And not only for space purposes - I don't want eight sets of cables and need two strip outlets just to hook everything up. As far as I could tell, it didn't have one - which I understand for space purposes, but I really think that it could end up as a fatal flaw (or at least not making it available on a slightly taller $349 model).

Seeing that it's not a DVR, there's really no purpose to have a tuner in there anyways, as you should be able to assume with reasonable certainty that your TV is going to have one... though it would be absolutely bitchin' if it could act as a wireless DVR device (that's to say, stream the TV signal input from the tuner to a computer that would then store that content). However, that's not going to happen - Apple wants you to buy the content from iTunes, not pseudo-TiVo it. I suppose the real question is whether it'll interface to the iTunes Store and let you download the content to your computer from your TV, then stream that content back to your TV (and doing so as it downloads, a double-streaming of sorts). Of course, it'd be borderline-hellish to navigate iTS with a six-button remote, but I think that's too big of an opportunity to be missed.

Re:Poo Pooing ITV

[stubear]

The iTV is nothing more than a Media CP extender. You still need to have the main system that captures the audio/video or handles the DVDs. The iTV lacks a tuner card and DVD player. While you can put one of these in every room of your house that has a TV, you wouldn't get the same functionality as a Media PC in every room of your house with a TV.

Re:Poo Pooing ITV

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).

Does that happen? I've never, ever broken any of my USB ports, even though I routinely plug and unplug peripherals, especially for my laptop.

Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).

If you go back to the Elgato Web site, you'll see they offer a half a dozen different PVRs, including several designed to stack under a mac mini. I bought one of these years ago and it has happily been storing my TV shows since, including easy archiving to DVD. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good.

Re:Poo Pooing ITV

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Unfortunately, I looked at Elgato's site after I posted the link, and the "old style" breakout boxes are all gone in favor of that crappy USB dongle one.

Perhaps you're having difficulty with their odd Web site design? They seem to be selling 250, 310, 410, 610, as well as the USB dongles. The 250 is available directly from their store if that is what you're interested in. Here is a link.

What exactly is an iTV?

[acb]

Does anybody know what exactly the iTV is based on? Is it based on a special edition of OSX (akin to Windows MCE), a new real-time OS based on Darwin/xnu, Quartz, Cocoa and QuickTime (though lacking large chunks of OSX which are irrelevant), the iPod RTOS, or something else?

Re:What exactly is an iTV?

[enjar]

The iTV is based on equal parts marketing, product mock-ups, and Reality Distortion Field :)

Bandwidth?

[cca93014]

Back of napkin maths...

My MythTV box in the UK consumes about 1.4 GB of data per hour of programme. That equates to about a 400kbit/second bandwidth requirement to be able to stream broadcast quality standard definition video (I think? Can anyone confirm that?). So basically I'd need at least a 4Mbit ADSL/Cable connection to stream video in real time and that's without enough of an overhead to ensure a 99.9% free picture.

What resolution did they say the iTV was running at? If I download a film from iTunes, what resolution is it? 640x480? That's a fair bit less than PAL. Maybe they could use a different codec to squeeze some more performance out of it, but it seems that the bandwidth requirements are pretty high right now...

The problem is that my dad, for example, expects the TV to work, when he turns it on, all the time. If he turns on his TV and gets some "buffering" messages up, he's going to take the thing back to the shop and tell the guy that sold it to him that "it doesn't work properly"...

Anyone else think that streaming TV is just not ready yet? I'd say we need another couple of years at least...

Re:Bandwidth?

[Siberwulf]

Anyone else think that streaming TV is just not ready yet? I'd say we need another couple of years at least...

Honestly, I think _quality_ streaming TV is just a pipe dream. As we introduce new TV standards, such as HD, we increase the size and standard of "Normal". With Normal going higher and higher, is it feasible to think that the web will catch up? Will Normal even plateau? I'm not sure, but I venture to say "No"

Re:Bandwidth?

[xoyoyo]

I think you've fallen for the bit/byte conversion there.

1.4Gb of data equals 400kbytes a second, or 3200kbits a second. Your calculations are right though. The 3-4Mbits speed is the sweet spot for MPEGII: judging by the crap on the screen I'd say Sky runs some of its channels way below that, but yes you'll need a fast connection to make broadcast streaming work, for very low values of broadcast.

As to iTunes movies being 640x480 - Apple has only rolled the service out in the US so far and 640x480 is NTSC. I expect we'd get something more appropriate in communist Europe. This is below HD, but then again 128kbps AAC is way below SACD and guess which format people buy. Availability beats quality over and over again in consumable media.

What excites me about iTV (and I will buy one) is that *anything* on my Mac ends up on the screen. Not just YouTube or porn. No need to burn stuff to DVD before watching it.

Re:Bandwidth?

[stunt_penguin]

Honestly, I think _quality_ streaming TV is just a pipe dream.

Exactly, exactly, exactly! TV over t'internet needs to learn to crawl first- technology writers talk about IPTV and TV over the web as though it's something that can be deployed in the next few years, or as if it's something that isn't going to cost trillions of dollars to roll out. We don't have the means to deploy that kind of network yet, nor do we need to.

We currently have a way of deploying streaming video to hundreds of millions of TV sets across the globe at the same time; it's called satellite and cable TV, and although it costs a bundle to put up there, one satellite can serve (hundreds of?) millions of homes with the same content all at once, and it doesn't mean putting lines in the ground to every home. Oh, and if 6 differnet people want to watch 6 different programmes, well then that's okay, since all you need is 6 different receivers, not 6x as much bandwidth on your cable connection.

Can you imagine what it would take to stream live video to the 1 billion people who watch the World Cup? Or the hundreds of millions of people who watch the superbowl? That kind of information infrastructure is as far beyond the capabilities of our current series of tubes as I care to imagine.

In the meantime, a much better solution is video recording that has a satellite/cable/terrestrial connection for watching and recording TV that's on right now, plus an internet connection (for downloading video that you missed, scheduling and interactive services) . It's a lot more practical than everything-over-IP, and gives enough bandwidth for HD programming, which is somethign we're supposed to be working towards, right?

Re:Bandwidth?

[mrchaotica]

Oh, and if 6 differnet people want to watch 6 different programmes, well then that's okay, since all you need is 6 different receivers, not 6x as much bandwidth on your cable connection.

Not really; the only reason cable doesn't need "extra" bandwidth is that you're already sending all the possible data. The better comparison would be that you'd be sending all those 6 different programs all the time, and if 6 people didn't want to watch then the bits would just be piped to /dev/null.

Speculation of course

[robinf1]

While this item is pure speculation it is at least interesting. I'm unclear why Apple needs Google to stream video though. I don't see the win-win scenario for either. A more interesting idea is presented by Bob Cringley (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914 .html). And yes an Apple TV with iTV built in is a great idea and will happen.

Huh?

[diesel66]

From TFA:
"It's not hard to imagine a Gapple iTV that that would not only allow you to consume media files on your home theater system, but also stream television content and display relevant advertisements from Google..."

Let's see, iTV plays movies, TV shows and music I buy from the iTunes music store, why do I need Google? To show me targeted ads? No thanks.

"...especially since this device requires a network to do anything useful."

Yeeeaaahhh.... I have broadband just like all the other people the iTV will be made for. What the hell is he talking about? My computer needs a network to do anything useful. My cell phone needs a network to anything useful.

Another crappy blog to ignore.

So is this...

[Morrigu]

meaningful or YAGAAR (Yet Another Google-Apple Alliance Rumor)?

Re:Apple iTV

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

But Apple will have to change its product's name: ITV...

Apple announced the iTV device as a preview of things to come. iTV is a product code name, not what it will be shipped/marketed as. This was practically the first thing they said about it.

Dumb, dumb, dumb rumor...

[donnacha]

This is a particularly dumb example of classic "slap-2-big-names-together" rumor production. All Apple really has going for it in it's negotiations with the studios is that they, Apple, are the experts when it comes to online distribution. Why in the name of God would they blow that by being seen to defer to Google?

Re:no streaming content?

[thefinite]

The iTunes movies are DVD quality. The trailer Jobs showed *was* HD streaming, apparently, from their trailers website. I doubt many normal broadband connections will get the same speed as Jobs' demo setup, however.

The math gets worse for HD

[jmichaelg]

An obvious response to your post is to say "download instead of stream." So say you try to download a HD stream on a 5 Mbit link (cable speed)...25 GBytes at 5 Mbit/sec works out to a 136 hour download - almost a full week day and night. 680 hours if you're on DSL.

Run fiber instead of copper and you get 100 Mbit/sec or a tad under 7 hour downloads. So for those lucky folks who have fiber, downloading HD is feasible today if you're willing to download overnight or while you're at work. The rest of us will have to wait.

The interesting thing is that there's the killer ap for fiber. If the telcos get there first, they save their telephony business. If they keep farting around with DSL, they're toast because you'll be able to talk and download huge files simultaneously over fiber. That's one thing that's driving them to kill net neutrality. They have to invest in infrastructure or go out of business and they don't want to do either. Hence the bribes to Congress.

Another benefit of an iTV-like device that supported HD would be that the whole Blu Ray/HD-DVD issue goes away. You don't care how the bits are written on your hard drive as long as they show up on your HDTV in full 1080p goodness.

A Small Spat

[Nom du Keyboard]

But will it be iTV or gTV at that point?

Or just split the difference and call it hTV

No they aren't.

[pavon]

The iTunes movies are DVD quality.

DVD is 720x480 for both fullscreen and widescreen. The iTunes movies are 640x480 for fullscreen, and for widescreen the number of vertical pixels is decreased to keep the same pixel shape (around 640x270 depending on the aspect ratio of the movie). The end result is that widescreen movies have half as many pixels as DVD.

You may or may not notice the difference on an interlaced fullscreen display, but you will definatly notice the difference on a progressive-scan widescreen display.

Net Neutrality

[ModernGeek]

With net neutrality, cable companies pretty much HAVE to allow it. The reason they don't want net neutrality is so that they can tax the providers using their services (i.e: Bell South can tax Vonage, Comcast can tax Apple, etc). It is a threat, and the threat is real. Vote YES to net neutrality.

Re:ITV

[n2art2]

In the Keynote, Jobs stated that iTV was just the code name, and that before distribution, another name would take it's place. It's a code name. It's a name that will generate buzz, and that is, afterall, why they showed the box at the media event to begin with.

Oh the Humanity

[Borland]

The true question is if the Earth is a large enough mass to contain the resulting Fanboy pride. Two perfect entities, merging together into something better than perfection? The mind cannot retain its sanity in the fact of such truth, anymore than it can gaze upon the face of God.

Whole religions were started for less my mortal brethren.