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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."
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
Thank you. That annoying ad campaign has done more to turn me off to the idea of buying Apple products than anything else. I'd like to get an iPod, but I just can't bring myself to do it because of the prospect of joining the legions of annoying faux-hipster Apple fanboys out there. Worst. Ad. Campaign. Ever.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
And, predictably, I get modded down as flamebait for not participating in the Apple Kool-Aid Drinkers' Club. It's *not* about the products (which are great), it *is* about their snotty advertising tactics. Get that through your skull, please.
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
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?
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
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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.
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.
Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium