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Neuros Solicits Help From AppleTV Hackers
JoeBorn writes "Highlighting the fact that Neuros officially encourages contributions to its open source device (GPL), it has published an open letter soliciting the help of AppleTV hackers. 'The transition to IPTV creates a golden opportunity to ensure that the gateway to the TV set becomes open to all.' Neuros draws a connection between open source and free media, and attempts to articulate why an open box can extend the freedom of the internet to the TV set."
I've been debating for a while now whether i want to get an XBox 1 to stream videos etc off the lan at home. At it stands, neither cd changers, dvd changers or "media pcs" have really made me happier or content easier to access. We have far too many controls at home, far too many user interfaces, and stupidly crippled hardware (we've got a sony dvd/harddisc-based recorder that doesn't interface with any kind of tv catalogue - useless!)...
.isos, decompress rars and zip files. Amazing stuff. No software players I've seen yet can do this.
I've seen a modded xbox happily navigate windows' shares, ftps, even RSS feeds, and even download videos from the net on the fly. I've seen them transparently mount
Here's the crux tho: the Neuros OSD is ~ $200... I can get an xbox for £50 (~notalot) with games and a controller, then softmod it to my specs in a few hours. I know what the xbox does, ive seen it do it.
If the neuros had a 1gig ethernet port (im not sure it does?), i'd almost certainly invest simply to use it as a NAS (there's a mod for this on the OSD website) as I have 3 x 300Gb USB2 hdds lying around needing a gige link to justify disconnecting them from the PC.
I've seen other gige NASes around too, but they cost far too much. The xbox 1, of course, doesnt sport gige (does it?!). I suppose I could hard mod the xbox usb and plug in a usb gige adaptor, but does the xbox support usb2??
Nonetheless,
I personally think its fantastic seeing a product that wants to utilise OSS this way! I've long wondered why the proprietary vendors try to cut out modding if they're pricing their product to make money through sales (think wifi boxen etc - not xboxes, their business model needs you to buy games). Its weird when their product lines and life expectations usually fall far short of incorporating any "user inspired" features. I've yet to see "successive" versions of products actually take features from the unsupported mod market and sell in a new product. Clearly they're just trying to thawt innovation at home, because there's a very thin line between breading up a small SoC and selling it!
Matt
The AppleTV -is- a PC, it's got a 1.0GHz Pentium M-based based x86 processor, a GeForce Go 7300 GPU, a 40GB HDD, 256MB of RAM, USB, 100B-T Ethernet and 802.11b/g/n WiFi, with HDMI and component outputs...
Why should anyone interested in developing open solutions for set top boxes limit themselves to the OSD's closed embedded-style hardware, when Apple has provided a full PC that you can run whatever you want on (Mac OSX, linux, MythTV, etc...) in a nice neat package for almost the same price ($229 vs $299)? Especially when the AppleTV is sufficiently powerful to do HDTV divx/xvid decoding in software, whereas the Neuros OSD needs to use it's closed DSP core to handle even SDTV.
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Neuros also doesn't have/support..
AVC because of it's underpowered CPU/GPU
HDTV output, hell the thing can't even do s-video out
Storage of media locally
Interaction with iTunes
and so much more
I really have a distrust of OSS projects in general, especially high profile ones. They always seem to turn out like Netscape, which throws the source out there and may as well say "our programmers suck, please fix our buggy product for us". And when someone is throwing out an open letter to "the community"... that's essentially what is written in any kind of open letter.
FOSS has it's place, but when zealots view it as some kind of realistic alternative to real products, it ends up being quite laughable. For example, Linux hasn't ever been ready for the desktop, and it probably never will. They are still chasing Windows 95's tail lights, and here MS went and released six operating systems since then.
Don't get me wrong, it's admirable that people are continuting to improve a free operating system, and some people have done impressive things. It's just that some people (most of whom are unable to program, and thus unable to contribute to improving Linux) turn into rabid anti-MS zealots, and delude themselves into thinking somehow this class project is going to turn into something world changing which will bring about some kind of utopian future, like Bill & Ted's music.
Not gonna happen. Get with the program, live in the real world: MS has thousands of advantages when it comes to making a business case for them, and tit for tat you can make comparisons to applications fulfilling a specialized need, MS has gone and put all of that in a single product, and made sure it all works. Free software isn't free, especially when you have hundreds or thousands of computers to support. Every piece of software you add brings with it a potential problem, so the secret of intelligent network management is to install as few pieces of software as possible... and Windows truly does let you do more with less.