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Intel's Rumored TV Plans Would Compete With Apple, Google
Nerval's Lobster writes "Google tried to extend its influence to televisions, an effort that largely crashed and burned. Apple executives call Apple TV a 'hobby,' although it's been long-rumored that their company has a television set in the works. And Microsoft's made a muscular attempt to conquer the living room with the Xbox, which now does a lot more than just video games. If current rumors prove correct, you can soon add Intel to that list of IT giants with an eye on televisions. According to TechCrunch and SlashGear, the chip manufacturer is prepping to unveil a first-generation television system of some sort at next month's Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. TechCrunch suggests that Intel will debut the system on a city-by-city basis, similar to what Google's doing with Google Fiber, in order to maintain 'more flexibility in negotiating licensing with reluctant content providers.' (The publication's information comes from the ever-popular unnamed sources.) In essence, Intel is proposing a set-top box paired with a subscription service, which would provide a mixture of traditional programming alongside streaming content."
Hopefully Intel learned a few lessons with their Ultrabook fiasco. Those things were DOA.
THis isn't the 1950's where the entire entertainment system, TV, HiFi and Phonograph are all integrated into the same box. Some one make a freekin TV monitor without all the tuners and computers in it! I know you can get monitors but could someone make one that cost less than a TV with all that crap in it. Then make the gadgets to attach to the "Monitor". Maybe we could even have 2K and 4K monitors at 50" for less thank $5K?
It all starts at 0
Has any of these fancy tvs ever even done well? Consoles have taken over as the set top box. Better interface, already plugged in to the tv and the internet and everyone already has one. Too little too late.
Wasn't Intel working on making better chips for TVs?
I can see Intel doing exactly that, making better chips for TVs, I can't see Intel becoming a content delivery company. It is just so far removed from what they do it doesn't make sense.
Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
It seems of all the folks who want to do TVIP, only Google seems to be taking any action on the sorry ass state of US broadband. The telecomms sure arent. They are in the game of eating taxpayer subsides while lobbying for metered data and data caps. Cable TV has woefully failed at a la carte, instead is a force-fed smorgasbord of rotten tripe, most of which any individual doesn't want.
I just don't know what will be the tipping point for something to change, will it be when watching tv will become too expensive to do for typical family?
Roku will be dead soon
Its very cheap... As a dedicated amazon instant prime device its hard/impossible to beat. When the latest mythtv version pretty much ruined the music app into something too complicated for endusers, plex on the roku to listen to music works pretty well.
That's the problem with the endless stream of newcomers. "We're going to do exactly what your $50 Roku does off the shelf, except we're vaporware and will cost $100 more! Hurrah for us!"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
What do they think people want to do with their TVs that they can't already? Smart TVs, games consoles and even many set-top boxes have network media players and apps covering all major streaming services (iPlayer, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube etc.).
There are other apps on those platforms but no-one uses them. View web pages, Facebook and weather reports via a fiddly remote? No thanks, I'll just whip out my smart phone or tablet. Samsung TVs can run Angry Birds, but do you really want your kids hogging the TV with it?
Besides which we have reached platform overload with Windows RT/WP8. Unless something earth shattering happens Android is going to win with MS/Apple staying in the game by throwing masses of cash at it and producing proprietary hardware, at least until they turn into the next Sony (remember Betamax/Minidisc/MemoryStick/UMD?)
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Don't care for moderation: just let TV die, the golden age of TV was the 60's and 70's, all the rest sucks. TV must die!
do people even watch tv? i haven't had a tv in years.
Like you, I am too superior for video entertainment. I just meditate and think deep thoughts, unlike TV watchers who wallow in their own filth and poke sharp sticks in their ears.
amazon is losing the content battle to netflix and for everything else Roku doesn't do anything that the other boxes do
i haven't had a tv in years.
My TV is really just a big computer display.
It streams content from iTunes so there is your external storage
And the coolest thing is that if your laptop is on VPN it will still stream to your Apple TV on your local network
1080p is there in the latest model and seems to upscale about as we'll as my ps3
Ah my mistake... I only have and use amazon instant prime because it comes with the "free 2-day shipping" thing. Once I saved enough on "free shipping" to pay for the prime subscription, I started saving my free shipping toward some roku hardware. I didn't take long, due to buying a lot of stuff from amazon. The roku does have apps for netflix, hulu plus, pandora, vudu, hbo to go, and a ton of sports stuff, none of which I subscribe to or have any interest in.
I do have extensive personal experience that on the roku, the tunein radio streamer, the amazon video player, and the plex media player work perfectly. I would guess the netflix and hundreds of other player / streamer apps should work equally well, although I've never used any of them.
I'm not sure if the other boxes do anything that the roku doesn't. The next step after that is, 98% of what the roku can do, I don't care about, so a new box that I 99% don't care about, would not be much of an improvement.
I only use itunes to sync apps with my ipad, not for media. I would guess streaming itunes media is the only thing a apple TV could do that my roku can't. It would cost an extra $50 over the cost of my roku to be able to do something I'm not interested in doing, so...
Also you have to be careful with vaporware. "Maybe an intel thing might someday stream XYZ" is quite a bit different from "I can buy a box off the shelf at Target for $50 that streams XYZ, today, as in this afternoon"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
All three companies are scrambling to find their way in the IT world of today. The momentum has gone from PC's to tablets and smart phones. Guess what - those devices don't need intel chips or Windows. Intel will continue to sell plenty of chips for high end servers and Microsoft will continue to have it's monopoly on office related software so they'll be ok. Dell, in my view, is in the worst spot of all. They are stuck in a commodity PC business and their recent move into the services business via their acquisition of Perot Systems has been by and large a flop.
apple TV will stream from iphones and ipads. you can stream apps.
i stream the disney channel app from my ipad to the apple TV
I have a 2nd gen Apple TV (which is only 720p) but I believe the 3rd gen does support 1080p.
Only reason I bought one is ease of use. Wife and youngest daughter both have iPhones, and we have an iPad 2. Oldest daughter and I are both running Android phones (mine being an S3 and hers being some cheap LG thing that her grandparents bought for her out of the blue without consult). But both my wife and youngest daughter can pick up either of their phones, or the iPad, and quickly and easily do what they need/want to, both being too easily frustrated to really play with anything too complicated (in their mind).
The Apple products do play very well together. The lack of external storage did bother me at first, but having a NAS store the family iTunes library, with an el cheapo laptop running iTunes pointed at the NAS, and everything is accessible from the Apple TV. Entire ripped DVD library, all the music we've bought, and pictures through Photo Stream don't even need iTunes to be running.
I may not be one of Apple's biggest fans, but the ability to work within the ecosystem is quite nice. And the ability to stream an interesting video I may be watching on the iPad to the TV with a couple touches is a very nice feature.
There are drawbacks, such as the remote app on the phones and iPad randomly decide that I no longer have an Apple TV. And the Apple TV itself needs reset more often than I care for, even to get it to connect to Netflix to watch a movie. The slender little Apple remote is also a big piece of junk too, being on my 3rd one and the menu button is already flaky.
All in all, I would just as soon replace it all, but that would be a costly endeavor at this point. And it would need to work as seemlessly. And, no, I do not own any consoles.
Getting into televisions in 2013 seems a lot like getting into the radio business post 2005.
The only future I see for TV is when they gain wireless DLNA or some such (Like Apple TV but standardized). Then there's this big screen in the room that anyone can stream stuff too from their phone/whatever. Portable devices then need to be able to encode video for streaming to the big screen so you can use it as a large monitor (with codec dependent latency of course). That's it. All TVs and computer monitors should get this capability in the future. Wired connections should remain available for higher quality and low latency, but TV as display server is the only thing that makes sense IMHO. They'll need to keep tuners for quite a while too.
Roku will be dead soon
All existing tech will be dead soon. That's the nature of tech.
That said, however, I'm rather fond of my Roku. It's not perfect; seeking more than a couple minutes at a time is labourious, it won't play from a NAS without crappy add-on channels, and it won't let you control the refresh rate of your output. These shortcomings aside, I find my Roku to be an adequate means of bringing Netflix and a tonne of great free programming to my living room without the commercials and other obnoxious intrusions of traditional tv.
So what makes you think Roku is especially doomed?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
Roku runs Plex without the need for jailbreaking.
That puts it head and shoulders above an AppleTV right there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The reality is that the cable companies consider themselves to be the gatekeepers of broadcast television content. And since they control the primary broadband pipe used by most people in this country, its not likely they will allow that to change. If Apple/Intel/Microsoft/Google manage to break the stranglehold that cable holds over the broadband last mile, that would be great for the rest of us wishing to offer services over it.
Have gnu, will travel.
I may not be one of Apple's biggest fans, but the ability to work within the ecosystem is quite nice. And the ability to stream an interesting video I may be watching on the iPad to the TV with a couple touches is a very nice feature.
AirPlay really is the killer feature for AppleTV - it's not surprising Google's trying to come up with an alternative. And if most of your stuff is Apple gear, as you said the ecosystem works very well together. I've got all my DVDs and Blu-Ray discs ripped and living in iTunes so I can stream them to the AppleTV. I haven't bought more than a handful of movies or TV shows from them, though, since NetFlix is available on the box and the DRMed electronic versions of new stuff often costs as much or more than the physical discs (not to mention that, if it weren't for Requiem, I wouldn't buy electronic at all).
My 3rd gen AppleTV doesn't have the stability issues you mentioned elsewhere - not sure why it should be different since its the same software (except mine supports 1080p).
#DeleteChrome
i haven't had a tv in years.
My TV is really just a big computer display.
"Big" is the operative word. I've never seen the draw of watching a movie on a little tablet or computer screen. I'd much rather watch it on my 47" television (and bigger would be better).
#DeleteChrome
Right now you have to buy a huge of channels (and shows) to get the 20 hours you might want to watch each month. Or you have to do delayed broadcasts (not good for sports & news) or pirate to get the individual shows.
I could have a defective unit, which would not surprise me. It works reliably enough I haven't struck it with any blunt objects yet. They really are minor issues mostly.
If all they will do is show Google content. Hardware is now much like beige boxes. If they don't show youtube, they have nothing. So whatever intel comes up with or even Apple, they will simply show youtube content and so will line Google bottom line. They can try and create content outside the Google ecosystem but we know where that went with apple maps.
they will simply show youtube content and so will line Google bottom line. They can try and create content outside the Google ecosystem but we know where that went with apple maps.
I remember TV being about well Movies and Soaps and Scu-fi, Dramas, Reality shows etc etc Internet Video is just part of that...and exists outside Google and youtube [albeit very successful], the reality is Google will simply integrate their services inside whatever platform is dominant...its ecosystem is OS agnostic.
Ironically Apple not only removed Google Maps it removed the link to youtube...nobody made such a big deal about youtube.
All three companies are scrambling to find their way in the IT world of today.
I think you have been asleep. The interesting think about these companies interact with each other has changed. Intel...have their own OS without Microsoft...Tizen[I suspect the OS they would use]; Microsoft produced a tablet without Intel, and as its own preferred OEM!. Dell announced they will do nothing, Nada, Zilch its sitting like a little bitch doing nothing while everyone else old fashioned competes [knives in backs/fronts everywhere]....Now HP on the other hand.
The reality is the desktop actually is unchanged...its damaged a little for its mobile push, but its still the crappy monopoly it always was just a little more touchscreen.
...it became a electronics company. Microsoft is a software company....wanting to become a electronics company.
To be fair right now I think all electronics/hardware companies need to have more Software on their portfolio as that is where a lot of the advantages in this new smart world come from. Steve Jobs as he moved the company into an electronicvs one always stressed they were a software company.
Randon Steve Jobs Quote
"If you look at the reason that the iPod exists, it's because these really great Japanese consumer electronics companies who kind of own the portable music market, invented it and owned it, couldn't do the appropriate software, couldn't conceive of and implement the appropriate software. Because an iPod's really just software. It's software in the iPod itself, it's software on the PC or the Mac, and it's software in the cloud for the store. And it's in a beautiful box, but it's software. If you look at what a Mac is, it's OS X, right? It's in a beautiful box, but it's OS X. And if you look at what an iPhone will hopefully be, it's software." - All Things Digital conference, May 30, 2007
...except there is very little wrong with TV. It does need more time-shifting, and less advertising, but solutions have been constantly improving since the VHS/Betamax wars. Todays set-top boxies/Tivos/Hard Disc Players are already very good, and yes there is room for improvement.
I include this link to a Father Ted its brilliant on its own but it emphasises a fundamental point
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25N-4zrk390 ...small...far away.
I cannot use this product on my android phone; 5 year old router, and Ubuntu box attached to my TV!!! Like say Upnp/DNLA the standard that everyone else uses. Apple propietaruy crap just "doesn't work" well with anything other than other Apple kit.
Has the Plex app on Roku improved recently? The last time I used it the experience had a definite flimsy, underpowered feel. I find the Air Video Server and corresponding iOS app much nicer. I use AirPlay and Apple TV, of course, to view on a big screen TV. A rather peculiar feature is that Apple TV works on my home network, which is not connected to the internet, while Roku simply fails to function if it cannot connect to the internet.