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The Home Server Cometh
narramissic writes "Apart from Apple's 'I'm cooler than you' ad campaign, you don't hear much about the Windows versus Mac battle these days. The reason: Today's battle isn't about 'what brand of computer sits on the desk in your spare room, or even what operating system it runs, it's going to be about who gets to dominate the market for home servers that will control your entertainment, television, telephony, and your home automation system,' argues Dan Blacharski in a recent article."
http://files.myopera.com/agony_/sig/linux.png - any questions? :-P
What the consumer wants is full interoperability so that there is competition. I might buy an iPod today and a Zune tomorrow. I want to be able to port my music or video or whatever without being locked into a particular vendor. But the tech companies want to carve the market into multiple walled gardens. Theoretically free market should react and break it up. But free market depends on customers being informed and making rational decisions. In the tech world, a huge majority of the customers are not well informed. So all the fuddged studies like TCO, columnists paid and bought out by money or laptops or praise will continue to confuse the customers. And DRM and patent lawsuits will proliferate. And it will be business as usual.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
How can you tell if the iPhone will be a hit if it's at least five months away from entering the market?
Then Sony is well positioned? Or Charter's cable offerings?
For the past few decades, I'd say the trend has been to bring toy/home systems into the business. For example, desktop PCs of the '82 vintage eventually became mission-critical servers and the Linux you played Doom on in '93 eventually became a viable business OS. If this keeps up, will we see Nintendo rack-mounts in the server room in 10 years?
If home servers are a commodity, they will not be worth the expense of maintaining them, much like PC's right now.
To diagnose problems with a PC, back up user data, reinstall everything, restore user data is still quite a time consuming task. Usually the cost of this task is greater than the worth of a PC.
Will people sign service agreements, such as with HVAC ( heating/AC ) units, or will they die from slow neglect like many PC's. Are people selling their home going to "brag" about the cool server their house comes with, or will they take their server with them when they move?
If the bandwidth to the home ever reaches a critical level, will people even want a server in the home? Would a simple router/switch/local non-hd based cache appliance be all they need?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I am unfortunately forced to agree with you on the apple TV. When I saw the announcement for it at work yesterday I instantly checked it out and was extremely disappointed to see that it will not support divx and such. It seems all this $299 piece of hardware is, is a TV output device for ITunes and pure mpeg4's that apple will like. I asked in the support sales chat about all this stuff and it won't support much. My Radeon 9800 all-in-wonder provides me with much better options... the only thing that the apple TV provides is wireless connections for your downloads. And will it even work with Amazon Unbox videos you download? With the new version of Media Player for Windows, you can easily hook up your XBox 360 wirelessly have games to play and serve divx movies/videos with aftermarket software from your PC and is only what? $100 more... what exactly am I getting for the $299 that I can't get better with the XBox 360. I love Apple, but I hope to god that they improve upon this device, as I would really love to purchase it and use it with everything I have on my mac and various PCs.
-- Josh
"Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me!" - Pete Conrad
I've been hearing the same "the future of computing is home automation" line for at least 15 years. Yeah yeah, the computer's going to turn on the coffee maker in the morning, shut off the back porch light at night and keep tabs on who called during the day.
I call fluff piece. Weren't we supposed to be vacationing on the moon by now?
Care to address any of his points instead of spewing anti-microsoft irrational hatred from your keyboard?
Yeah, but to show them on the AppleTV you'll have an extra step of reencoding the files that the EyeTV spits out. You can't send the MPEG2 that the EyeTV makes to the Apple TV. Same thing with ripping DVDs.
From the AppleTV tech Specs page: Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
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Media Center may be "winning the war", but it's more like the first volley. The real battle hasn't begun, because no one is REALLY serious about it.
AppleTV is a still-born idea. For $300 more, you can get a fully functional mini that can do everything the AppleTV can do(ok...it can't do component video out, but it has a DVI port...you add the DVI-HDMI cable), and is still a functional computer. Add a an Eyetv 250, and it's a DVR. Granted, this all costs money, but about the same as a "comparable" Windows Media box.
The products, so far, a little more than attempts to enter the market. Most home users don't want things that connect to other things, wirelessly or otherwise, they just want one thing they can sit down in front of, plug in their video camera/digital camera, have it suck out the content, and put it one the screen. Also, they can put in a DVD/CD, have it rip the media, and be able to watch the movie. Finally, they want something that they don't need to pay for TV content they can get free(or have already paid for from the cable/satellite company), and record on their DVR. They want it in HD(if that was the original resolution), not "near" the resolution.
What home market? That market doesn't exist yet. It has been crippled by proprietary standards and DRM. When there is a setup where I can stick all my DVD's in like itunes with CD's, where I can load in my photo's easily and its all available on my TV, then we'll have something. I'll be able to check the latest online videos as easy as I check things like blogs.
I kind of think that is where Apple TV is a start (just a small piece). There will have to be a "media server" with a LOT of storage in the background. then on the one hand the interface to the large components - the TV and big speakers - that is Apple TV, on the other hand an interface to handheld devices - which the iphone is the start. That is where a tablet or really a good reading device would come in - the new newspaper - wirelessly attached at home or away - with stories and video. The computer kind of dissappears in this - the old "ubiquitous" computing stuff from long ago finally realized (forget the phone and look at the other features of that Apple product). That might be part of the reason for "Apple Inc" now with Apple Computer gone..
I talked Apple, but Microsoft could be coming at this from the angle with the Xbox and Zune front end, back end Vista server. Its just that a large part of their earnings are from business software - which is really a different market altogether that right now happens to use the same equipment.
Well Microsoft is the only one of the two that has a true product in this market so far. However, I know of many people who are using MacMinis and MacBooks with FrontRow in the living room.
One problem MS has is the same problem it had with MP3 players. MS only makes the software. It has to rely on hardware makers. The 360 is a step into leveraging both hardware and software. For people who don't want a game console, MS itself has no hardware option.
Another problem is form factor. All MS Media Center PCs from HP or Dell are PCs that have with media center functions. They are not HTPCs. Setting up a true Media Center is still in the realm of computer hobbyists. Your average consumer has no idea the complexity involved. AppleTV is Apple's proposed solution to this problem. Your average consumer needs little knowledge is setting one up.
Microsoft and Apple are taking two different approaches to this market. Microsoft approach has been to leverage Windows into new markets. Much like with PDAs and smart phones. With Media Center, they take the PC and try to conform it to the requirements of the market. In the first iteration, throw everything into it and work out the kinks in later iterations. That's why the first Media Center editions sucked.
Apple has taken the other way. Add functionality to existing devices that sorta fulfills a purpose. Then make a device specifically designed for the purpose. Later add functions in subsequent iterations. Look at the AppleTV. It's not a computer. You can't use it as such.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Still, DivX is MPEG4. With XviD, at least, all you have to do is change the fourcc and Quicktime can play it. AppleTV might need it to be in a quicktime container, though. I have no idea.
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Intel having suffered the wrath of Redmond has recently started to close more and more of their chip specs to the Linux crowd. So have many OEMs, hardware manufactures and retailers. Ever since Intel released a Linux optimized I386 compiler that was more efficient than the Windows offering, Intel has been trying to get back into Gates and Balmers good books by making hardware specs for things like Wifi impossible to reverse engineer.
That said I have no doubt that until the United States Government finally does in the Microsoft hardware cartel we will be faced with no real choice of software in both the fields of home entertainment and business.
The author is Dan Blacharski. As in THE Dan Blacharski. Apparently, "He and his wife enjoy spending time restoring his 1888 Victorian home, and spends winters in Bangkok. " (for some reason, mentioned at the bottom of TFA)
/. summary is all you need to know. It's just a short essay about why computer -> TV is the next 'big thing' according to M$ and Apple.
It sounds like a made up name I gave to the cops in Mexico once while looking at a black car.
On Topic, I just read the article (it's less than two pages)... Oddly enough, the
I'm really not so sure. You can't even download DVD quality movies off the internet yet, and with ('unrippable') HDDVD or BluRay being the next big thing, it seems even less likely that a computer will be the center of media. Then there's TV shows, which look better ripped off analog cable into a TiVo (which is cheaper than an Apple TV) than bought and paid for from iTMS.
The future of media has already been decided: TiVo and high-resolution optical, not the Media PC.
Latewire
Yeah - I also like the idea of the appleTV but think that they missed the boat by not including at least a tuner or svideo input. Also, the HD output ONLY is a mistake too IMHO. If you have an HDTV, you are going to want more (and can spend a little more) than the appleTV can do. The fact that it doesn't have composite or svideo out either means that the low-end market in which this product fits better, is unserved.
There is no "home server" market, except for .1% of the population that is geeky enough to need one. Home DVR setup? Rent a Tivo from your cable company. Who rips all their DVDs to a PC to watch on demand? Who needs their own mail relay? Who needs a media server to share pictures with? The media whores that this guy is talking about already have iPods and camera phones, what else do you need?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
My experience exactly. I got an Xbox360 for my son this Christmas and I was pleasantly surprised how easily it made itself into a media hub. I bought the thing to play games but I'm using it to stream media quite often. It just *works*...it found my PC on the network and the music I have on it. I'd planned on building an HTPC but I'm not sure I need to now.
The only reason I'm not Mac-only in the house is Mac's poor support for things like, I don't know, RAID. And please don't mention their giant steel monstrosity or the an XRAID server or whatever. I can go out and assemble a cheap Windows-based file/print server for my home. Why can't I do that with Apple?
2 5-121.html) running new Windows Server Home. Because I don't like to be locked into propeitary formats I'm going to end up going with my original plan (build your own) but it shows that at least MS is sensitive to the need.
Their iDisk backup is ludicrous: 1GB of storage. I have 38GB just of MP3s. Of course even if they offered 100GB of storage space (or more) that's a lot of data to push out through a cable modem/dsl, etc. Even with incremental back ups.
I'd be much more impressed if Apple were to come out with a simple Home Server than with this iTV. I need a Mac-Mini style device (headless, small, lower-end hardware, althogh obviously with more space for extra drives) that look beautiful and serves as the center for my home network.
MS, to their credit, is responding with exactly such a device. The HP MediaSmart (http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/447351-0-0-2
In the rush to get the PC to your living room we have seen a proliferation of computer devices (Ipods, consoles, laptops, desktops, printers, etc.) with no way to tie those things together. Before we add yet another extension of the home network, we need a decent commodity server.
Apple, are you listening?
-stormin
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rant warning...
What I don't get is why these devices have to "like" a certain media at all. The AppleTV likes Apple-friendly MP4. The Xbox 360 likes WMV. Or you need third party software to transcode. Processing power required for any modern codec isn't an issue. Is it licensing costs that limit the amount of codec support? Pressure to include/account for DRM?
I really hate to keep beating the topic to death, but where is the XBMC work-alike? I don't fucking care what codec is used, I just want to play it. All the set top box by my TV needs to do is decode the media and put it on my TV. All the source server needs to do is serve the damn file from a Samba/Windows share (or NFS mount, I wish). That setup is half as complex as any of these other systems. The entire world was shown the exact device that would do that with XBMC.
How expensive would it be to make a little set top box with computer guts, 512MB of flash storage, and a DVD drive? With economies of scale, I'd bet that it could be done for a cost of under 50 $USD. I don't have the background to engineer a device like that, but I know from seeing XMBC on an original Xbox that it would be stupid simple on today's hardware. Hell, the Xbox with XBMC can do 720 by 480, and it wasn't even designed for it! Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo each had a chance with their consoles to strike a major blow to the others with this unencumbered capability and each of them missed it.
I have a feeling that while Microsoft, Apple, Sony, and media companies are all squabbling over how to play protected content or leveraging another type of business, a Chinese, Korean, or Taiwanese company will deliver a cheap little codec-agnostic device that does all this, and all other crippled devices and services will be made irrelevant.
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Amen to that. You hit it right on the nail and previous posts are missing the point:
/. is.
1) Hook it up
2) View your iTunes content in your living room.
Simple, which means it actually works for the 99% of consumers that are not geeks and don't even know what
It also brings about a whole new way of consuming content (like iPod did): Soon the value proposition for consumers will be "why pay $90/month for cable when I can just subscribe to the entire seasons of the 3 shows I watch for that much?"
This is not just a great product, it is much more important than iPhone, and has a great chance of cementing Apple's media dominance quickly ( 2 years).
The HTPC will still be useful to act as a content repository for the Xbox.
This is like a happy MythTV user stating that he doesn't need a big fat backend box. He might not see the value in it to begin with but he will eventually. It's like the lure of those big fat upgrade disks at Weaknees.
The living room media hub isn't the best place to put even a DVD jukebox or two, nevermind a bunch of 750GB sata drives.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yes, USB hard drives. And printers.
:(
;(
But only 1 USB port. So if you really need to purchase an additional USB hub to use with it.
And that gigabit ethernet will be awfully useful since you're going to be using it as a fileserver for assumedly 1-5 people in your house. With all that traffic - videos and music and whatnot (throw 2 kids plus you plus s/o or friend(s) on the lan, irc, watching movies from the share, plus a bittorrent or two, ichat/aim/jabber, Tivo/ReplayTV video download from the devices, web and email traffic on your lan, and some game traffic UT or Quake or something). Oh, wait, it doesn't have gigabit ethernet on it.
With this thing they are really trying to push wifi it seems. I hope 802.11N works as well as they hope, because from experience 802.11b/g bandwidth can be used up mighty quick by just a few people.
Seriously, they must've put effort into looking for an ethernet chip-set that doesn't have gigabit in it.
What'd have been nice would have been a firewire 400 port. If Steve really wanted to knock my socks off it'd have f/w 400, 800, and gigabit on call cat5 ports. I'd have already ordered it if that were the case. I guess not
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Tell me again, anger-boy, where exactly you specified that your cheap home file server must do RAID inside the box. Sorry, I forgot to use my psychic powers to figure that out. Illiterate? More like lacking telepathy.
SuperKendall is right. Throw a couple of Firewire disks on there and you have yourself a RAID system. Or get one of those all-in-one "big disk" enclosures that does hardware RAID without a couple of disks inside, connected via FW. Your choice.
If you want it internal to the box and inexpensive, you're out of luck. I wish Apple would make a cheap Conroe (or whatever the latest desktop cpu is these days) tower with room to grow, but apparently they're not interested. Too bad.
If you really want Apple RAID inside the box so much, pick up a second-hand G4 tower. Mine is 5 years old and going strong with nearly 1 TB in the box. It's more than adequate for serving the rest of the household over gigabit ethernet.
Sheesh.