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Are Streaming Media Players a Passing Fad
DeviceGuru writes "In-Stat is questioning whether dedicated streaming media players like the Roku player, Boxee Box, and Google TV boxes will be around for long. The reason, says In-Stat, is that IP-streamed video is becoming a standard feature of TVs and Blu-ray players. Passing fad? Not according to this blog post at DeviceGuru, which argues that we're talking about a disruptive market, not a mature one, and that TVs and Blu-ray players can't possibly provide the flexibility to serve as the platform for delivering rapidly evolving technologies to the early adopters who represent the testbed for all this innovation."
Apparently ending questions with a question mark is also a passing fad.
If ISPs keep capping the amount you can pull per [time unit], yeah, they will become a passing fad.
Your new TV set contains a computer that performs the functions provided by the external box. The firmware for that computer can be reprogrammed. The external box is there only for TVs that can't do that. Soon, all TVs being sold will be able to do that. The boxes will exist only for people who want the function without buying a new TV. Has that business ever been a growth market for any industry where it happens? No.
Ergo, the external box that provides functions that any new TV can provide is not a growth market and is likely a doomed market.
Next question, please.
I have a Roku and an Apple TV. I will not be surprised if these things become a commodity at some point; but we are not there yet by any means. These boxes have quite different portfolios of available content, and very different styles of operation. I like them both. I like having both. I find them far superior to the on-demand services offered by my cable provider (Comcast). I never, ever watch broadcast cable anymore: I obtain all of my content via these external boxes, and always commercial free.
I'd say dedicated devices for video (i.e. T.V. and blueray players). Set top boxes are also somewhat silly and limited. What we really need are small computer systems for entertainment that use gestures and a Minority Report-like UI. All of this needs to be open source, so we don't have to suck on idiotic interfaces and features sets that cow tow to the entertainment industry's idea of a great set of features (i.e. no time shifting, no space shifting, and pay through the nose).
One problem I've long had with the idea that this functionality will migrate into TVs is that traditionally TV firmware has been next to impossible to update.
IPTV protocols are numerous and evolving fast -- there is not now, nor do we really expect there to be any time soon, a hard-and-fast standard for it. If you don't have the ability to easily update the software then it will stop working within a few years.
Now, my TVs have mostly been paragons of reliability, but one thing I cannot say about the TV manufacturers is that they are any good at all at complex software. Or even the very simplest software for that matter; even with the very limited software functionality in a modern TV the configuration and display of information is almost universally lousy.
And it's not just TVs. Most of these consumer electronics guys also make phones, and look what their software looks like when they do it themselves. It just sucks.
Worse, their dedication to ongoing support of hardware that has already sold is damn near zero (there is, after all, no incentive whatsoever once the warrantee periods expire). Ever see an Android phone that cannot be upgraded to the most recent Android, even if the hardware is capable? That is not only common, it is *typical*. And that is pretty much the rule across most consumer electronics. For instance: My first Blu-Ray player had one firmware update a year or so after the model was introduced, and nothing since. The player no longer works on BR discs that use certain new copy protection schemes and there will never be a fix for that, so it became a boat anchor in just two years.
These things are only a mild annoyance for a product that costs perhaps $200. For a nice TV at $2000ish it's a huge problem. Maybe some years hence when there is a real IPTV standard it will stop mattering so much, but that is not going to happen any time soon. Until it does it will be much more cost effective to buy cheap little boxes to attach to the TV.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
I know for myself, that between an OTA antenna, Netflix Instant, and Hulu, I have everything I need. My Netflix sub is the closest I have ever come to paying for TV.
As more and more ISPs implement caps, I think the next step is going to be a home caching server. I.e. for Netflix, you could set your monthly cap and tell it what % to use, then it would download shows from your Instant Queue to the cache server during off-peak hours. Then, streaming devices would get the data over your LAN rather than across the Internet. The only traffic generated during viewing would be the DRM exchanges to ensure you are authorized.
However, if ISPs were honest (ha!) they would exempt content that is delivered via CDN (i.e. Akamai) because the only bandwidth used is "last mile" bandwidth--the bandwidth between the CDN server and the Internet is already paid for by the CDN provider!
Every try to pass someone without wheels?
Using that logic, we should all be buying souped-up computer monitors that have computers built into them, as opposed to buying the monitor as an accessory to your computer.
My story: bought a Samsung TV at exactly the wrong time (early 2010). It had DLNA capability built in (which is buggy) and a framework for Yahoo gadgets. As soon as Samsung's new 2010 models came out, they stopped supporting the 2009 models (no fixes for buggy DLNA). They changed their app framework, so the Yahoo gadget ecosystem is now dead. I learned from the experience that it's really dumb to buy a TV for it's media-player functionality. You're better off buying a dumb TV and using a STB like a Playstation that has broader support.
You are correct, but only because these streaming features are now expected from Blu-Ray players and modern game consoles. Streaming was new when this generation of game consoles came out in 2006, before Hulu existed and Netflix began offering streaming, I have a feeling next generation consoles will do a much better job of streaming.
Consumers will not spend $100-$300 on a streaming media player when their next gen game console already streams everything they could want and offers mature hardware and software that is updated often by major manufactures like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.
I expect sales of streaming media players to remain strong for the next few years until new game systems are released and sales will eventually taper off and cease when the game systems become cheaper than the media players.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I expect sales of streaming media players to remain strong for the next few years until new game systems are released and sales will eventually taper off and cease when the game systems become cheaper than the media players.
Assuming someone actually wants a new gaming console.
I don't have a personal need for a game console. When I want to get my game on, I prefer to use my PC.
I'm happy with a standalone streaming player. Or at least I will be when the WD-TV live and Netflix.ca get it together and start co-operating.
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"I can't complain, but sometimes still do..." Joe Walsh
I looked at stand alone players late last year, but went with a Blu-Ray player because it did pretty much the same things, and also up-scaled my lower res videos to 1080p, and played Blu-Ray discs and up-scaled DVDs. And at pretty much the same cost as all but the worst stand alone units.
What I got was a compromise. It will play many format files, but will not play ISO files. It will stream from a few paces on the web, but far from all that I would wish, and it will not access other computers on the local network to play their files (using sneaker-net to get around that).
The thing is, I have not found any TV, Blu-ray player or stand alone box that will do everything that I want. Even the over priced and over hyped Google TV will not access as much as I would want, it can't even play back basic non-subscription Hulu for example! So I came to understand that to get the normal full web on my new HDTV I would have to actually build a computer based appliance of my own. And will want to find a player that will upscale well to 1080p when given lower quality input. But with the absurd mindset of the content holders claiming that Hulu can stream to a PC and then to my TV, but for some insane reason it would be evil if it streamed to a Blu-ray player, a stand alone media player, or Google TV and then to my same television set, I see no good solution for what I want than to build up my own system, which looks like it will cost about the same or less than the Logitech Google TV gelded offering..
So my advice to /. readers is don't get caught up in the stand-alone appliance or built in to a TV or Blu-ray argument, that is the wrong thing to consider. Consider building your own, which will be able to access Hulu and other things currently locked out of ALL the retail offerings.
One thing worth mentioning here is that I have realized that while my Blu-Ray player can stream from a very very limited set of sites, one of those it can stream from is YouTube. And it has the ability to select from a couple of dozen of different national YouTube countries, as well as a global choice. I eventually realized that if I intercepted the DNS query for one of the less desirable national YouTube sites, I could return the URL of a local machine. And If I were to write a YouTube emulator to run on that machine then it could pretend to be YouTube to the Blu-Ray player and let me stream from a local computer. This is all still theory, but I'm wondering if any Slashdot users have taken it any farther. The DNS look-up should not be too tricky. Just a DNS "server" on a local system that looks up all requests except the YouTube target and passes the result back. then point the router to use that local machine as the DNS server. The YouTube emulation seems to be a bit more work, I'm wondering if anyone has done anything like this or knows of any existing package that would do it. Thanks.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Consumers will not spend $100-$300 on a streaming media player when their next gen game console already streams everything they could want and offers mature hardware and software that is updated often by major manufactures like Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony.
They will if they don't game. Or if the game consoles can't stream the specific site that people want to watch. Does Hulu Plus work on Wii yet? Does MSNBC? Does C-SPAN? Does ESPN3?
Well, certain manufacturers believe it's their right to remove/prohibit 'extra functionality' following release (even when devices are purchased on the premise of said 'extra functionality'). There is that.
In an ideal world...
What do you do when you happen to have friends over at your place and you all want to get your game on?
We head to the nightclub.
Do you Gentoo!?
I got my Roku for $80. Was checking out a game console to stream Netflix, and the Wii became an option when it got the app, but it was still too expensive to justify it. I don't watch Blu-Ray discs (why bother when you can stream it in HD, Amazon Video OnDemand offers all the new stuff, so I don't want to hear about having to wait...that's BS), I absolutely friggin hate playing good games on a console, because they're better on a PC in my opinion (I've never understood how a whole keyboard worth of buttons PLUS the free flow movement of a mouse could be looked at as inferior to an 8 button controller with a damn joystick....), and well, to be honest, I don't trust Microsoft or Sony.
So, I was able to save a couple hundred dollars, got everything I want and then some (because Roku's business is offering TV entertainment on their box, they have a lot more channels than are available on any blu-ray player or gaming console) and I can take the box anywhere with me and hook it up to just about any TV. I fail to see a downside to it at all.
Also, you say that the game consoles will get cheaper, but that's never really happened before, why would it start now?? Next gen consoles come out at outrageously high prices, so that makes it look like the older ones are a steal, but the older ones aren't getting anything new on them, so what's the point of buying it then??
Tivo had a brilliant idea, first to release first to implement and revolutionize the concept of DVR, and despite being better then the setups that the cable networks bundled in almost every category, got completely crushed by falsely claimed free offerings offered by the cable and satellite companies.
That depends - did they just remove the functionality that only a tiny portion of their user base even cares about, and probably didn't even use for more than a week? Geeks are not the primary market for PS3s. They're not even the primary market for smart phones. In minority Linux distros your opinion may have a chance of being noticed, but elsewhere.. not so much.
Not intending this to be a flame/troll/whatever - just a reality check.
which is totally what she said
What are you talking about