The game selection is far inferior in quantity to PS2 (if you dig quantity) or quality to the Gamecube. It's an oversized mess with lousy games and decent graphics. BTW: I have an Xbox, it was a gift. The gaming experience is SO inferior to by Gamecube (4 Wavebirds vs. a couple of clunkers). The games are inferior. And everything is built to appeal to sex-starved teenagers.
Compare Beach Spikers (GCN), a really fun volleyball game with some over-the-top scenes, to DOA X Extreme Beach Volleyball, a collection of gratuitous scenes with casino, "hopping game," and volleyball miniggames.
You get the Xbox as a gift, or the "wow, it's got a powerful video card" factor. Nobody gets the Xbox for the software, unless they already have a PS2 and GCN and wanted to play a particular game (Buffy is pretty cool).
Well, I'm the original moron, but when I get my new TV, it will be widescreen. For the opposite reasons that my old TV was 4:3. In my old entertainment unit, I was width limited, and therefore wanted more TV. When I get a big screen, I'll be resolution limited.
When watching SDTV content (currently the bulk, HD Tivo, come here NOW), I would like a slightly bigger set. A 36" 4:3 TV would be perfect for SDTV content. When watching SDTV, I don't want bigger, or it will look awful.
However, with really wide screen movies (2.35:1), I sometimes switch to pan-and-scan (ooh, the devil) because it is too small on my 32" television. Additionally, with the extra resolution of HDTV, I would be happier to have a bigger image. i.e. a 43" HDTV signal will look awesome, a 53" SDTV signal is unwatchable. Therefore, Widescreen lets me get away with what I now want, which is slightly more 4:3 space, and a LOT more 16x9 space.
However, there is no question that a 32" 4:3 HDTV ready is a better buy than a 30" 16x9 television. However, at the bigger sizes, you reach the point where you want the "extra" widescreen space without getting more vertical space.
However, the asshole that called us morons because our television watching is different is unacceptable.
Pre 1996, cable companies simply rebroadcasted the local channels, since they put it out for free. The networks/affiliates were floored that cable was taking over the market and getting paid for THEIR content and then using shopping channels and premium channels to make money. Telecom Act passes (I think that it was the 1996 one, the BIG one) that let stations designate as must carry (you have to carry them if you are carrying other ones... spanish language, pax, and local-only stations use that), or require compensation (the networks do that).
After a bit of playing chicken (different cable companies squaring off with networks, using the customers as pawns) resulted in the current situation, the networks allow their signal to be carried, but the cable companies have to carry several different random network owned stations, so ABC requires that they pay for ESPN ($2/customer, and it has to be in basic cable), Disney, etc., etc.
But they all haggle, and the network has the power, not the broadcasters. So ABC gets their other stuff on, but the affiliated stations don't get compensation.
So, with DTV, the broadcasters would get even better. Told to come up with a standard for HDTV, they came up with a brilliant solution with 3 HDTV settings (720p, 1080i, 1080p - the last only 24 or 30 frames, no 60 frame mode), an enhanced setting (480p) and then they snuck in 480i for backwards compatibility. The catch is that they got what they wanted, and in the same bandwidth of one analog station, get 6 480i channels, AND they can be made must-carry. All of a sudden, anyone that had a license to broadcast one channel now had 6!
Well, the FCC and cable companies hated this. The cable companies didn't want to give up free bandwidth, and the FCC didn't like looking stupid for giving them the bandwidth for HDTV and instead getting current NTSC quality, with compression artifacts, and 5 channels of infomercials.
So the cable companies whined and the FCC ruled that must-carry only applied to the analog signal. So with their plan squashed, the networks began preparing for HDTV. Remember, only 10% of american households use an antenna for their television (20% is satellite, 70% is cable), so getting the ability to send 6 channels to 10% of the market is pointless. Without must-carry, there is no point to squeezing 6 SDTV signals in. The only exception to this will be PBS stations, where there are normally 2 in a market, may send one HDTV signal, two SDTV signals (the current PBS programming), and use the extra bandwidth for school programming by day or stuff like that).
So HDTV is happening, because there is no advantage to the 6-for-1 deal.
As a satellite customer, I'm happy to add an antenna to get 8 DTV channels locally, but if I was a cable customer, I'm not sure what I'd want (other than to move so I could become a satellite customer). If the networks were sending 36 channels over the air, plus whatever PBS sent, who knows what that does to cable. Realize that analog cable systems are normally only 60-86 channels, and I bet you that 30 channels could cover 75% of American viewing. It would kill basic cable as a way of getting basic television. The original reason for cable was because antennas suck. With digital broadcasts, antennas don't have to suck. And $50/mo (basic cable in Boston) goes a long way towards paying an antenna installer...
I think that HDTV is happening and happening fast. Whatever HD-DVD format comes out is very likely to be sent at 1080p24, which will look awesome on either 720p or 1080i sets, especially with the extra bandwidth available to avoid compression problems. This season, LOTS of HDTV happened. Next season, just about every primetime event and lots of sports will be HDTV. End of this year, HD Tivo and Dish HD-PVR ship. HDTV over cable is coming to some markets this year. HDTV cable-ready systems will roll out soon. And the DVI-HDCP vs. Component vs. Firewire/5C issue was resolved... everything will be supported. DVI-HDCP protects you from needing to go analog for non-MPEG2 systems, Firewire is just (IMO) the superior system.
It's all happening, get on board when you have some spare cash.
My old place, I was capped at a certain width, and limited to cable (no ability for a decent antenna). So with no HDTV to watch, I went for the best TV I could in the space, which was this TV. Now, 20% of my TV watching, at most, is HDTV. The rest is recorded on the ReplayTV (in NTSC), so I use the full screen. Additionally, look at the costs, at least 1.5 years ago, a 43" 16:9 set cost about $200 more than a 53" 4:3 set. So you could have saved $200, and got extra screen for regular viewing.
I'm not a moron, I just have different viewing habbits. When HDTivo ships, I will probably be watching 80% of my television in HDTV. At that time, I will buy a nice big HDTV, currently looking at the Sony GWII (50"), but I might save some money and get the Sony 46" CRT Rear Projector that is pretty small. This 32" 4:3 set will be perfect in the bedroom. In the bedroom, I watch the news, but the 19" TV is too small (but is TERRIFIC for flipping through Sunday ticket during football season).
No offense, but calling me a moron because my viewing habbits are different from you is quite rude. I mean, you're watching cable (NTSC) or digital cable (NTSC + MPEG2 artifacts) on a wide screen HDTV set with barn doors because it looks right with DVDs? Give me a break. DVD watching is a minority of my viewing, having some entertainment when I get home at night is the majority.
I'm not forced into letterboxing everything when 16:9 programming is the majority, I'll simply get a new television.
I don't know if you watch any HDTV, but its all framed for 4:3 televisions. So while it is wide screen, most of the sides are just extra space. Sure for movies its nice, but right now the widescreen is kinda silly.
My reason for going widescreen next time isn't aspects, it's the way HDTV letterboxes. My television looks better if I give it the 1080i signal for HD signals, and let it convert it. It accepts 1080i, but only has 480 lines (newsflash, most "HDTV" sets on the market NOW are 550-800 lines, 1080i is a transmission spec, not a television spec), but this results in it being letterboxed. Now, for widescreen content, this is fine, but for 4:3 content (a LOT of the stuff on DTV channels right now), I get letterbox AND bard doors. This is no good, and will be dealt with on the new TV.
I love my HDTV set, and it's only a 32" 480-line 4:3 TV. Watching Sopranos in HDTV, or any movies on HBO/Showtime, and even network television if I'm home for prime time.
However, it's had it's hassles and difficulties, and you are paying to be on the cutting edge. It's fun, and the sound/video is incredible. However, be ready to pay the early adopter premium and pain.
The most impressive thing, that I foudn, was the LDAP capability. Workgroup Manager is a joke to use, and you can set up share points for NFS, AFP, SMB, and FTP. I bought Impasse for $10 to make managing the firewall easier, and the whole thing is really nice.
We fired up a Redhat workstation, told it to authenticate against the LDAP server, and it just worked. We then NFS mount the home directory share point and we're good to go.
We're migrating over to OS X + Linux workstations, and we're moving our OpenBSD servers to Linux (it's gotten much more secure over the past two years, where our boxes got rooted all the time).
Compared to the issues of getting Samba to play nicely under Linux, this is a dream to adminster. The Xserve is our file+print server, and we use Linux for the production servers. They authenticate against the Xserve, pretty slick.
The only thing that was annoying is that Apple's Netinfo based LDAP bindings weren't standard, so mod_auth_ldap for Apache didn't pick up the groups, but we were able to modify it pretty quickly. As soon as we get ready to package it up, we'll maintain our variant and make it available (email me with questions).
The mail server is a bit week, but AFP548.com's instructions for adding Exim solved that. We now have our virtual hosts working, albeit not as elegantly as I'd like (editting text files). Hopefully OS X Server 10.3 will fix that.
AFP548.com's stunnel help was also great. Now we have everything going over SSL, so we can play inside or outside of the firewall.
The stuff that works works really nicely. It's a GREAT solution for file+print serving, LDAP serving, and mail if you don't need virtual hosts (if you do, pick up Exim from AFP548). The only thing that's annoying is that adding SSL to their IMAP server is really odd, but we stunnel it and we're all set. We even got watchdog (a great program) handling the stunnel server, so on the occaisions that it crashes, it's right back up.
I was doing tech support at a local startup (this was in '96-'97), and started studying on my own for the MCSE. The first few tests I studied for were reading the NT 4 Server Resource kit. After graduation, I landed a summer internship at Citrix, and finished my MCSE (the last test was on break during freshman year).
I used that to leverage interviews and offers that made my friends at school jealous, and this was at MIT, they weren't slouches. One interviewer freshman year asked if I was graduating in the spring, and was quite disappointed when I explained that I was a freshman looking for an internship (then she saw the education line on my resume).
I pimped the MCSE and Citrix CCA (easy to pick up after working in Citrix's tech support department for 3 months) to get great jobs through the dot-com era. It was nice that when my friends were scrounging for money to buy shitty beer, the girls were impressed with my fully stocked liquor cabinet of premium stuff.:)
I turn 24 in a few weeks, run my own business, getting married this summer, and generally have my life together. The last of the credit card debts from starting a business are getting repaid, and things are going well. Take away the MCSE, and instead of getting good jobs as internships, I'm UROPing (undergrad research, most of which is just bitch work for $8/hr), and just getting my act together in the corporate world.
I dealt with clients, managed a team, and generally acquired a lot of experience while in school. Didn't cost me my "youth" either, I managed to be social chair of my fraternity among other experiences. Getting job skills in school is critical.
Hell, if I had stayed with Citrix like my HS drop-out friend that got me the job did, I'd also have a house and car from cashing in my stock options.:)
Skills are good, learn them. They don't replace a liberal arts education for personal growth and knowledge, but they can get you an opportunity to get rewarding summer jobs, instead of menial ones. Being a broke college student sucks, I was happier making $35/hr part time as a Citrix/MS geek than $8/hr cleaning test tubes in a lab.
Yes, the Islamist holy army has launched more attacks against our military, but our "homeland" has been secure. After 9/11, I expected more hits every few months. I mean, why plan such a massive attack without follow-ons.
However, we have done a good job of showing that it won't work. We haven't stopped projecting power in the middle east, we've increased it. We haven't abbandoned israel. We've done a good job of keeping the pressure on them as well as take away any benefits from their attack.
While there are plenty of angry teens in Muslim countries, they can't point to 9/11 as a "success" by any measurable results, and that is critical.
Originally, fascism was the unification of the government and business. While the Communists nationalized industry, the fascists left it in private hands but supported it with the government.
The RIAA, and other business groups looking for help really want our government to slowly become a bit more fascist.
Such a shame that few people understand and respect liberty, and are willing to eliminate personal liberty to do what they think is right. The GOP tends to slip towards fascism when they run out of ideas, the Democrats slip towards socialism... the Libertarians speak out for liberty, but they keep letting cooks talk...
Clearly, when I think of the choices between forced abotion via a one child policy, and a DMCA, I just think of China as a bastion of freedom and human rights. Hell, when I realize that the US system had trouble breaking a tie in 2000, I often think that China's system of government seams appealing...
Sorry, the DMCA has some good provisions, and some horrid provisions. However, all-in-all, the US human rights record is pretty solid, despite what some anti-American lefties seem to think.
Sorry buddy, that's not IT, that's the fast track. Making $50-$75k/year right out of school, you're on the fast track. Guess what, median income for a family of four is under $40k/year. Every fast track career is short (the pre-MBA consulting jobs, etc., are 2-3 year jobs, then you get an MBA and start track two, or you wash out). Traders have the same lifestyle.
You get out of school, and run like hell. Most people fall off (not everyone can be a senior partner at a law firm or Big-5 company), that's how it works. With the IT path, you find something else, or you sit and rot. You can sit in a big company's IT staff for years, but the hot-shot jobs are all going to be churn and burn. You want the comparitively big bucks, get ready to run like hell.
Ya know all those cushy management consulting jobs that your business major friends wanted? Talk to them after 6 months, 12 months, 24 months. Some make it and go to B-school, others wash out and go find something else to do. If they couldn't take 80 hours a week of crunching excel spreadsheets that get ignored, they wash out.
Stock traders, they can't sit there staring at a screen forever. Same with brokers. The ones that sit in a phone room either make it or wash out.
Lawyers can go and start a 1 person law firm, but the big firms will suck you dry. You can't bill 80 hours, you can't make the next rung. That's life. There is only room for one CEO, and he can only have 7-10 people reporting to him, and so on, and so on. That means that for every person that advances, 6-9 wash out.
Such is life. You can find engineering jobs that last, but the hot-shot code wringing dot-com lifestyle? Yeah you only got 3-5 years of it, same for everyone else.
BBEdit, with CVS integration, is an amazing experience. Combine that with a built in copy of Apache, a double click install of mod_rendezvous, and I'm all set. I can work on my files and view them REALLY easily with rendezvous + Safari.
Then, check into CVS, check it out on the Linux or OpenBSD server, and I'm in business.
Double click installation for PostgreSQL and for PHP, and I have a mobile development system. On an airplane? No problem, I'm fully productive.
Sure I could get more horsepower on a PC, but I'm more productive on my Mac. The only thing missing is Quickbooks... the Mac version isn't feature complete w/ the PC version. I also need to share the files w/ PC users. Hopefully next year I can stop using an old machine as a Quickbooks machine, but no biggie, all in good time.
OS X has done tremendous things for my productivity, so I don't complain about the costs. The Xserve was a questionable purchase, but not if you don't think of it as a Unix machine. We've used it for what its been designed for, and we're happy. LDAP is great... we can now get a Linux workstation (or a Mac OS X one) in no time, and give authorization.
BTW: if you want a mod_auth_ldap that authenticates against Apple's Netinfo-style LDAP bindings, drop me an email. We haven't packaged it up for release yet, but WebDav + HTTPS + mod_auth_ldap is a pretty slick remote file access solution.
Sometimes we are passing around emails that contain trade secrets to employees and/or partners. Every once in a while, someone fowards one out (usually to someone trustworthy), and we have to go talk to them to protect it. If I could send an email marked "may not foward," that could be enforced, that problem would go away.
Trusted computing as an idea predated the digital media issues. The government uses it. In "primitive" Unix permission, a file has an owner and group with permissions, plus default permissions. ACLs allow you to go a step further and assign different rights to different groups, something that the Unix style doesn't allow. Government certified systems are different.
With a basic trusted system, you start with layers (normal, secret, top secret, for example), and based upon your clearance, you can or cannot access it. But it goes beyond files. If I am reading a secret file, I shouldn't be able to write to a normal file, otherwise I could copy and paste the information out.
The system can enforce these sorts of requirements, but only in a trusted environment. The problem with Microsoft's solution isn't the introduction of trusted environments, its the business policy of forbidding non-trusted environments.
For example, my non-forwarding email. If I sent it trusted do not forward, non trusted environments shouldn't be able to access it at all. If you move all data to trusted, then non-trusted individuals can't access the data.
This may or may not be a bad idea. If I want a home user to be able to VPN in and check email, I have a problem. If they don't have (and don't want) a trusted client at home, i need to provide them with one. That means that they have two machines, trusted and non-trusted. And none of the trusted data should be able to enter the non-trusted machine.
The problem is that corporate users in certain environments would like trusted machines. The government would like trusted machines (for employees, not all citizens). The media empires saw trusted machines as a solution to their problem. They saw that their watermarking and other absurdity was doomed to fail, although they spent years looking for an impossible solution. Trusting computing research has a solution, but it was never intended for the consumer market (who had no demand).
The content companies concluded that if they moved their content into a trusted environment and only let people play in a trusted environment, they might be able to save their business models. Trusted computing was NOT developed to prevent MP3 swapping.
DOA: Beach Spikers looks awful. The most bizarre thing was comparing Xbox IGN reviews to Gamecube IGN reviews. When you read the Cube ones, they talk about play control and fun. While Beach Spikers commented on the girls, it mostly focused on the game. The Xbox reviews almost ALWAYS focus on the gratuitous graphics, play control and fun are barely mentioned.
Although, I need my Gamecube games to be more fun. With 4 wavebirds, I can have people over and drinking for a while. The Xbox, with two controlers, no wireless, I mostly play solo (or with one person), and I can't play more than an hour or my wrists hurt. So a 10 hour game is easily 2-3 months of game play.:)
Beach Spikers is a great game when you have friends over that don't play games. Pour a couple of drinks, hand out the Wavebirds, and you got a game that's easy to play. Just because it has bouncing breasts doesn't mean that it isn't a good game!
My Xbox is in a drawer, haven't gotten around to finishing Buffy, the one game that I got the system for. OTOH, I got a stack of Gamecube games... Animal Crossing is easily the best and most played, but there are a bunch.
I refer to #5, Zoo Tycoon. It's an absolutely awful game. However, The Sims was pretty lame before the first expansion, so perhaps it got better with them. My fiancee was a Roller Coaster Tycoon adict and has been trying to avoind installing RCT2 until she finishes a consulting job she scored.
We had some engineers working on a project that was going to involve migrating 2000 users. They were all trained MCSEs, and they going to migrate 2000 users by hand. When I showed them all the command line tools that came with the NT4 resource kit, they were floored. We put together some batch scripts and saved the clients some money.
Point-and-click Admin GUIs are really convenient. If you are doing one user, or something similar, it is easier than remembering command line arguements. There is nothing inherently superior about a text based approach to graphical. You need to understand what you're doing, arguements vs. icons is irrelevant.
However, when you have a LOT to do, and you want to do it based upon a list of names, CLI is the way to go.
The group with the slickest solution is Apple w/ Applescript. Instead of separate GUI and CLI versions (NT), or CLI with GUI wrappers (Linux), it's all integrated. The applications can accept arguments while running or while not running. There is no reinvention of the wheel or duplication of effort.
The notion of streaming VOD is retarded, which is why we've been promised it for 7 or 8 years... Tivo gets close. Right now, PPV movies tend to cycle so each movie is on four channels, starting every 30 minutes. If your STB recorded the first 30 minutes of each PPV movie (sent on a separate, hidden channel, so you would have it before the movies started showing), then you could VOD them for free. Think about it, at any point I am no more than 30 minutes away from the beginning.
And, to make it proper VOD, it should grab from all 4 channels (feasible even on DBS, as long as they are on the right transponders so that it can all come off one LNB), so 4 minutes fill in each minute. You have the first 30 minutes queued up (so you can rewind fast foward, etc), and within 30 minutes, the entire 2 hours block is recorded.
I would expect an HD Tivo (DirecTivo model, maybe an HD Tivo cable version when the open cable really happen) in about 6 months, gauging us early adopters. Once that happens, we start moving into Tivos w/ really big hard drives. The HD channels may always be limited, but the 480p spec allows streaming DVD quality films, which is probably "good enough" for PPV, etc.
Give it 2 years, and DirecTV and Dish release a killer VOD system on top of their time-shifting PVR boxes.
TV tech is finally getting good.:)
But yeah, DRM is necessary. However, the studios need to realize that the stuff will get out, but they can keep it out of mainstream. Downloading TV/Movies won't occur unless convergence happened, and its a dying fad. People don't want interactive television, most people don't want PVRs. People watch TV to vege, and that's the reality that all us gadget freaks miss when we wonder why something isn't there yet.
However, at least w/ the tech, hopefully they will make new and exciting toys for those of us willing to pay a premium. VHS took off, S-VHS and Laserdisc never hit mainstream, but DVD got HUGE fast. PVRs didn't take off, VOD isn't taking off, maybe whatever comes next will.
Personally, I think that DTV + PVR could do it. I have the Sunday Ticket demo package (4 months w/ everything free), and I was planning to keep all the channels. Currently, I barely take advantage of them, because the ReplayTV doesn't have enough space to store movies. Give me an 80 hour PVR that will find movies for me, and I'm willing to pay for all the movie channels.
If you could find movies for me and I could have 30 movies (plus all my weekly shows), constantly rotating, of which 5 could interest me... Good bye Blockbuster, and I'm happy to send ~$100 to DirecTV each month.
I'm a long time NT guy (NT 4.0 MCSE, Citrix Metaframe 1.8 CCA), and while I had played with Linux 5 years ago, next saw any appeal on a desktop. My first experiment with Linux was in 1997. About 40 hours later, I had it all configured to my tastes, everything worked, and I wondered what I was going to do. All it was was a slightly inferior to the NT 4.0 desktop that I was using at the time. Forget games, I was an NT guy, we had no games either.
At my business, we deploy on PHP 4 + PostgreSQL, so we have Linux database servers and OpenBSD webservers. Our first Linux web server in 18 months just came online, we got sick of security issues.
I currently use a Powerbook w/ OS X for my desktop, I'm extremely happy. When we were playing with Redhat 8 to install the test box, we did one install as a workstation for fun.
It was distinctly less ugly than I remembered Linux desktops, and was pretty equivalent to a Windows desktop (though it can't touch Aqua). However, when I tried to install Phoenix, I ran into dependancy problems because I hadn't installed Mozilla first (I was going to run Phoenix). When I created a "launcher" I couldn't get it to show up on the desktop until relogging in, etc., etc.
If I was a grunt office user, I could be trained to work in there instead of Windows. Someone else would create all my icons, etc. For Sysadmining, I have no problem playing in Linux, its easily to configure, etc. However, as a "power user" I was frustrated, and wanted nothing to do with the box.
I find OS X + Powerbook makes me EXTREMELY productive. Redhat + GNOME + KDE + Blue Curve was too frustrating. It's "looking" better, but it isn't better.
Look, there are plenty of times that I get confused in the Mac GUI because it isn't Windows. I can usually figure it out, and the result tends to make more sense than Microsoft's version.
With my Powerbook, I plug a second monitor in and the dock/menu bar slide over. When I disconnect the monitor, I'm back to one monitor. BBEdit has configuration options for working with two monitors, very nice. With my Windows laptop, I had to shut down to undock b/c of the PCI video card to get the second monitor. How would Linux handle that?
As a result, Apple go the check. Switching was only a few thousand, and I'm more productive. Knock off one extra project and its paid for itself. Give me another two weeks. Linux... sorry, its not there yet.
$85 for DirecTV gets you everything. That includes locals, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, and the Sports pack. If you want playboy its an extra $15/month. You can pick your hardware, so you can find one with a pretty quick menuing system. If you want Tivo, DirecTivo (dual-tuners) can be found for $200 (though the series 2 DTivos went up in price to $300 due to demand, I believe you get a $50 new sign-up rebate). If you have the $85 movie package, your Tivo service is free. Otherwise the Tivo service is $5/month.
If you just get HBO + Starz + Tivo (which gets you HBO Programming that rocks plus a million movies from Starz), you're looking at ~$65/month, plus time shifting. With a DTivo + Starz, you'll never lack movies waiting for you.
Don't work for them, just a VERY satisfied customer... HD-Tivo, where are you? Alex
Okay, lots of Slashdot whining, but if you haven't been following events, you're sounding like an idiot.
Okay, currently, DTV (digital television) has 18 transmission settings, some of which are HDTV, some are SDTV (standard NTSC quality but digital), and some are EDTV (480p like an Xbox, Gamecube, or Progressive Scan DVD player). For a few decades, television manufacturers have had to include VHF and UHF decoders. However, most Americans get signals from cable and/or satellite (something like 10%-14% of homes are OTA only). As a result, televisions became "cable-ready" which means that your TV can tune cable channels in. Those hold enough to remember pre-'cable-ready' televisions remember having a cable box that would output on channel 3 or 4, and you'd get your channels that way. Cable-ready benefits everyone. The cable company didn't need to provide boxes, and consumers were happier.
Now, DTV is available OTA. A small handful of regions have HDTV over cable, where your digital cable STB outputs an HDTV signal via DVI, Component Video, or RGB (VGA). Many consumers with HDTV use Satellite, where their HDTV Dish/DirecTV box includes an ATSC (OTA HDTV) decoder. In fact, most OTA decoders are DirecTV boxes as well. This is a matter of economics.
DTV is an MPEG-2 stream, so OTA STBes need to decode MPEG-2 to decode OTA. DirecTV and Dish send in MPEG-2 as well. As a result, adding DirecTV or Dish to an OTA STB is pretty cheap. Dish, however, makes all their own equipment, so many OTA STBes can also get DirecTV. In fact, normally the D* boxes are cheaper, because DirecTV subsidizes DirecTV hardware. Including an OTA-only decoder is a bit silly, so some televisions that are HDTV have a DirecTV decoder built.
While this is great for DirecTV, the 70% of the contry that uses cable is left out in the cold. The FCC mandate for including a decoder was coming, so the television manufacturers were in trouble. They could include an OTA decoder that consumers had no interest in (they get signals from cable, remember), so they couldn't really pass the costs on to consumers. (Manufacturing costs affect supply, not demand, so the price goes up and the quantity sold goes down, w/ manufacturers making less per box, that's no good).
So, while every television could include an integrated DirecTV receiver, that's less beneficial to the manufacturers than a Cable tuner. To make matters worse, the cable companies aren't terribly interested in buying equipment from Motorola to rent to consumers. While they may make some money on the boxes, remember that they have to put the money up to buy it (the debt levels you hear about in telecom), and the box rentals piss off consumers so some of them stay analog.
They are rolling out Digital and have no interest in keeping analog as well, they can get 4-6 SDTV (depending on compression) signals in the space of a single analog station, or ~1 HDTV signal (if the cable companies can compress it a bit more, maybe 1.5 HDTV signals).
Everyone hates eating the costs of two systems. While the television companies have "free" bandwidth, they can't use it. Right now they are maintaining a DTV AND analog transmitter (more money) for no additional viewers (so no extra money), plus they had to buy DTV broadcasting gear.
Everyone wants the DTV changeover to end, so they need to push us to DTV. Once we are all on DTV, they can eliminate the HDTV channels that were the carrot to move us over, and put 4 SDTV signals in the place plus "value added" service like purchasing shit, etc.
So, the cable companies agree to pass along whatever the broadcasters put in that spectrum (or most, or whatever), the broadcasters shut down analog and either offer more channels, services, or HDTV, or something, and the manufacturers get to sell us all new televisions. Consumers get more/better service, either more channels or better quality. Hopefully the satellite companies offer something impressive to compensate for cable matching their previous advantages, and everybody wins.
I got Napster pretty late... I more or less stopped listening to music when I left for school 6 years ago. I had listened to manufactured pop on my commute to high school, and left it at that.
A few friends tossed me MP3s that were interesting, and I downloaded Napster and grabbed other MP3s of those bands and/or similar bands. Someone would mention someone that I would like, and I'd grab a few MP3s.
I'd then go to Amazon.com (at 3 AM) and order a bunch of CDs from those artists that interested me to have in the car.
Now I have a home stereo w/ a CD Jukebox, and I just got an iPod for my Tibook, and got XM Radio for my car 6 months ago. When I hear a band I like on Internet radio or XM Radio, I order the CD. Unfortunately, I hear a lot less new music because easy access to MP3s is gone.
Oh well, saves me a few bucks.
Extra fun, copying all my old CDs to CD-R to add CD-Text so the on screen display works nicely.:)
Sure I've copied a few CDs from friends that have interested me, but that's a request to expose me to new music. A friend is a BIG fan of Saliva, tossed me a CD. Now I have a copy and MP3s of it. Will I buy that CD? No... will I buy everything that they put out in the future? Yes... Had he not given me the CD to copy, I'd have never listened them at all... it's all relative.
One of the telecom acts (not the one in 1996, something more recent) required that the cable companies allow access from third party boxes. However, this requires that there be a technical solution. Sony has now announced that one exists, and the cable companies agreed to a standard a few months ago.
This means that he reality of competition should take hold in the next two years. This is great news for consumers.
I switched from AT&T Broadband to DirecTV. The choice in receivers (particularly in HDTV STBes) was part of my reasoning. With an Open Cable solution, cable users will eventually get things like dual-tuner Tivo devices, but not until the cable companies send everything in digital.
In Boston, I could my first 60 channels or so in the much higher quality analog feeds than the over-compressed digital cable feeds.
This will be good for consumers, it will just take time.
Expect a Sony-branded Tivo enabled cable device within 18 months.
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The game selection is far inferior in quantity to PS2 (if you dig quantity) or quality to the Gamecube. It's an oversized mess with lousy games and decent graphics. BTW: I have an Xbox, it was a gift. The gaming experience is SO inferior to by Gamecube (4 Wavebirds vs. a couple of clunkers). The games are inferior. And everything is built to appeal to sex-starved teenagers.
Compare Beach Spikers (GCN), a really fun volleyball game with some over-the-top scenes, to DOA X Extreme Beach Volleyball, a collection of gratuitous scenes with casino, "hopping game," and volleyball miniggames.
You get the Xbox as a gift, or the "wow, it's got a powerful video card" factor. Nobody gets the Xbox for the software, unless they already have a PS2 and GCN and wanted to play a particular game (Buffy is pretty cool).
Alex
Well, I'm the original moron, but when I get my new TV, it will be widescreen. For the opposite reasons that my old TV was 4:3. In my old entertainment unit, I was width limited, and therefore wanted more TV. When I get a big screen, I'll be resolution limited.
When watching SDTV content (currently the bulk, HD Tivo, come here NOW), I would like a slightly bigger set. A 36" 4:3 TV would be perfect for SDTV content. When watching SDTV, I don't want bigger, or it will look awful.
However, with really wide screen movies (2.35:1), I sometimes switch to pan-and-scan (ooh, the devil) because it is too small on my 32" television. Additionally, with the extra resolution of HDTV, I would be happier to have a bigger image. i.e. a 43" HDTV signal will look awesome, a 53" SDTV signal is unwatchable. Therefore, Widescreen lets me get away with what I now want, which is slightly more 4:3 space, and a LOT more 16x9 space.
However, there is no question that a 32" 4:3 HDTV ready is a better buy than a 30" 16x9 television. However, at the bigger sizes, you reach the point where you want the "extra" widescreen space without getting more vertical space.
However, the asshole that called us morons because our television watching is different is unacceptable.
Alex
Pre 1996, cable companies simply rebroadcasted the local channels, since they put it out for free. The networks/affiliates were floored that cable was taking over the market and getting paid for THEIR content and then using shopping channels and premium channels to make money. Telecom Act passes (I think that it was the 1996 one, the BIG one) that let stations designate as must carry (you have to carry them if you are carrying other ones... spanish language, pax, and local-only stations use that), or require compensation (the networks do that).
After a bit of playing chicken (different cable companies squaring off with networks, using the customers as pawns) resulted in the current situation, the networks allow their signal to be carried, but the cable companies have to carry several different random network owned stations, so ABC requires that they pay for ESPN ($2/customer, and it has to be in basic cable), Disney, etc., etc.
But they all haggle, and the network has the power, not the broadcasters. So ABC gets their other stuff on, but the affiliated stations don't get compensation.
So, with DTV, the broadcasters would get even better. Told to come up with a standard for HDTV, they came up with a brilliant solution with 3 HDTV settings (720p, 1080i, 1080p - the last only 24 or 30 frames, no 60 frame mode), an enhanced setting (480p) and then they snuck in 480i for backwards compatibility. The catch is that they got what they wanted, and in the same bandwidth of one analog station, get 6 480i channels, AND they can be made must-carry. All of a sudden, anyone that had a license to broadcast one channel now had 6!
Well, the FCC and cable companies hated this. The cable companies didn't want to give up free bandwidth, and the FCC didn't like looking stupid for giving them the bandwidth for HDTV and instead getting current NTSC quality, with compression artifacts, and 5 channels of infomercials.
So the cable companies whined and the FCC ruled that must-carry only applied to the analog signal. So with their plan squashed, the networks began preparing for HDTV. Remember, only 10% of american households use an antenna for their television (20% is satellite, 70% is cable), so getting the ability to send 6 channels to 10% of the market is pointless. Without must-carry, there is no point to squeezing 6 SDTV signals in. The only exception to this will be PBS stations, where there are normally 2 in a market, may send one HDTV signal, two SDTV signals (the current PBS programming), and use the extra bandwidth for school programming by day or stuff like that).
So HDTV is happening, because there is no advantage to the 6-for-1 deal.
As a satellite customer, I'm happy to add an antenna to get 8 DTV channels locally, but if I was a cable customer, I'm not sure what I'd want (other than to move so I could become a satellite customer). If the networks were sending 36 channels over the air, plus whatever PBS sent, who knows what that does to cable. Realize that analog cable systems are normally only 60-86 channels, and I bet you that 30 channels could cover 75% of American viewing. It would kill basic cable as a way of getting basic television. The original reason for cable was because antennas suck. With digital broadcasts, antennas don't have to suck. And $50/mo (basic cable in Boston) goes a long way towards paying an antenna installer...
I think that HDTV is happening and happening fast. Whatever HD-DVD format comes out is very likely to be sent at 1080p24, which will look awesome on either 720p or 1080i sets, especially with the extra bandwidth available to avoid compression problems. This season, LOTS of HDTV happened. Next season, just about every primetime event and lots of sports will be HDTV. End of this year, HD Tivo and Dish HD-PVR ship. HDTV over cable is coming to some markets this year. HDTV cable-ready systems will roll out soon. And the DVI-HDCP vs. Component vs. Firewire/5C issue was resolved... everything will be supported. DVI-HDCP protects you from needing to go analog for non-MPEG2 systems, Firewire is just (IMO) the superior system.
It's all happening, get on board when you have some spare cash.
Alex
My old place, I was capped at a certain width, and limited to cable (no ability for a decent antenna). So with no HDTV to watch, I went for the best TV I could in the space, which was this TV. Now, 20% of my TV watching, at most, is HDTV. The rest is recorded on the ReplayTV (in NTSC), so I use the full screen. Additionally, look at the costs, at least 1.5 years ago, a 43" 16:9 set cost about $200 more than a 53" 4:3 set. So you could have saved $200, and got extra screen for regular viewing.
:)
I'm not a moron, I just have different viewing habbits. When HDTivo ships, I will probably be watching 80% of my television in HDTV. At that time, I will buy a nice big HDTV, currently looking at the Sony GWII (50"), but I might save some money and get the Sony 46" CRT Rear Projector that is pretty small. This 32" 4:3 set will be perfect in the bedroom. In the bedroom, I watch the news, but the 19" TV is too small (but is TERRIFIC for flipping through Sunday ticket during football season).
No offense, but calling me a moron because my viewing habbits are different from you is quite rude. I mean, you're watching cable (NTSC) or digital cable (NTSC + MPEG2 artifacts) on a wide screen HDTV set with barn doors because it looks right with DVDs? Give me a break. DVD watching is a minority of my viewing, having some entertainment when I get home at night is the majority.
I'm not forced into letterboxing everything when 16:9 programming is the majority, I'll simply get a new television.
I don't know if you watch any HDTV, but its all framed for 4:3 televisions. So while it is wide screen, most of the sides are just extra space. Sure for movies its nice, but right now the widescreen is kinda silly.
My reason for going widescreen next time isn't aspects, it's the way HDTV letterboxes. My television looks better if I give it the 1080i signal for HD signals, and let it convert it. It accepts 1080i, but only has 480 lines (newsflash, most "HDTV" sets on the market NOW are 550-800 lines, 1080i is a transmission spec, not a television spec), but this results in it being letterboxed. Now, for widescreen content, this is fine, but for 4:3 content (a LOT of the stuff on DTV channels right now), I get letterbox AND bard doors. This is no good, and will be dealt with on the new TV.
Meanwhile, I have HDTV, and you don't.
Alex
I love my HDTV set, and it's only a 32" 480-line 4:3 TV. Watching Sopranos in HDTV, or any movies on HBO/Showtime, and even network television if I'm home for prime time.
However, it's had it's hassles and difficulties, and you are paying to be on the cutting edge. It's fun, and the sound/video is incredible. However, be ready to pay the early adopter premium and pain.
Alex
Get an Xserve, fire up OS X Server. Go through the configuration. Compare it to a Linux install. Our jaws kept hitting the floor.
Setup LDAP based authentication and a Directory: 5 minutes.
Graphical tool to add users and groups, complete with email, home directories, etc.
Graphical tool for setting up file shares, with the ability to automatically share them via AFP, SMB, NFS, and FTP.
Ability to configure shitloads of Unix services from a GUI, including Apache (w/ SSL), IMAP, POP3, DNS, FTP, etc., etc.
It has a LOT going for it as a Unix server. And Redhat can authenticate against it at will.
Alex
The most impressive thing, that I foudn, was the LDAP capability. Workgroup Manager is a joke to use, and you can set up share points for NFS, AFP, SMB, and FTP. I bought Impasse for $10 to make managing the firewall easier, and the whole thing is really nice.
We fired up a Redhat workstation, told it to authenticate against the LDAP server, and it just worked. We then NFS mount the home directory share point and we're good to go.
We're migrating over to OS X + Linux workstations, and we're moving our OpenBSD servers to Linux (it's gotten much more secure over the past two years, where our boxes got rooted all the time).
Compared to the issues of getting Samba to play nicely under Linux, this is a dream to adminster. The Xserve is our file+print server, and we use Linux for the production servers. They authenticate against the Xserve, pretty slick.
The only thing that was annoying is that Apple's Netinfo based LDAP bindings weren't standard, so mod_auth_ldap for Apache didn't pick up the groups, but we were able to modify it pretty quickly. As soon as we get ready to package it up, we'll maintain our variant and make it available (email me with questions).
The mail server is a bit week, but AFP548.com's instructions for adding Exim solved that. We now have our virtual hosts working, albeit not as elegantly as I'd like (editting text files). Hopefully OS X Server 10.3 will fix that.
AFP548.com's stunnel help was also great. Now we have everything going over SSL, so we can play inside or outside of the firewall.
The stuff that works works really nicely. It's a GREAT solution for file+print serving, LDAP serving, and mail if you don't need virtual hosts (if you do, pick up Exim from AFP548). The only thing that's annoying is that adding SSL to their IMAP server is really odd, but we stunnel it and we're all set. We even got watchdog (a great program) handling the stunnel server, so on the occaisions that it crashes, it's right back up.
Alex
I expect a bill banning Thawte from selling anything to British citizens until this is resolved... Some higher up at Thawte will think twice... :)
Alex
I was doing tech support at a local startup (this was in '96-'97), and started studying on my own for the MCSE. The first few tests I studied for were reading the NT 4 Server Resource kit. After graduation, I landed a summer internship at Citrix, and finished my MCSE (the last test was on break during freshman year).
:)
:)
I used that to leverage interviews and offers that made my friends at school jealous, and this was at MIT, they weren't slouches. One interviewer freshman year asked if I was graduating in the spring, and was quite disappointed when I explained that I was a freshman looking for an internship (then she saw the education line on my resume).
I pimped the MCSE and Citrix CCA (easy to pick up after working in Citrix's tech support department for 3 months) to get great jobs through the dot-com era. It was nice that when my friends were scrounging for money to buy shitty beer, the girls were impressed with my fully stocked liquor cabinet of premium stuff.
I turn 24 in a few weeks, run my own business, getting married this summer, and generally have my life together. The last of the credit card debts from starting a business are getting repaid, and things are going well. Take away the MCSE, and instead of getting good jobs as internships, I'm UROPing (undergrad research, most of which is just bitch work for $8/hr), and just getting my act together in the corporate world.
I dealt with clients, managed a team, and generally acquired a lot of experience while in school. Didn't cost me my "youth" either, I managed to be social chair of my fraternity among other experiences. Getting job skills in school is critical.
Hell, if I had stayed with Citrix like my HS drop-out friend that got me the job did, I'd also have a house and car from cashing in my stock options.
Skills are good, learn them. They don't replace a liberal arts education for personal growth and knowledge, but they can get you an opportunity to get rewarding summer jobs, instead of menial ones. Being a broke college student sucks, I was happier making $35/hr part time as a Citrix/MS geek than $8/hr cleaning test tubes in a lab.
Alex
Yes, the Islamist holy army has launched more attacks against our military, but our "homeland" has been secure. After 9/11, I expected more hits every few months. I mean, why plan such a massive attack without follow-ons.
However, we have done a good job of showing that it won't work. We haven't stopped projecting power in the middle east, we've increased it. We haven't abbandoned israel. We've done a good job of keeping the pressure on them as well as take away any benefits from their attack.
While there are plenty of angry teens in Muslim countries, they can't point to 9/11 as a "success" by any measurable results, and that is critical.
Alex
Originally, fascism was the unification of the government and business. While the Communists nationalized industry, the fascists left it in private hands but supported it with the government.
The RIAA, and other business groups looking for help really want our government to slowly become a bit more fascist.
Such a shame that few people understand and respect liberty, and are willing to eliminate personal liberty to do what they think is right. The GOP tends to slip towards fascism when they run out of ideas, the Democrats slip towards socialism... the Libertarians speak out for liberty, but they keep letting cooks talk...
Alex
Clearly, when I think of the choices between forced abotion via a one child policy, and a DMCA, I just think of China as a bastion of freedom and human rights. Hell, when I realize that the US system had trouble breaking a tie in 2000, I often think that China's system of government seams appealing...
Sorry, the DMCA has some good provisions, and some horrid provisions. However, all-in-all, the US human rights record is pretty solid, despite what some anti-American lefties seem to think.
Alex
Sorry buddy, that's not IT, that's the fast track. Making $50-$75k/year right out of school, you're on the fast track. Guess what, median income for a family of four is under $40k/year. Every fast track career is short (the pre-MBA consulting jobs, etc., are 2-3 year jobs, then you get an MBA and start track two, or you wash out). Traders have the same lifestyle.
You get out of school, and run like hell. Most people fall off (not everyone can be a senior partner at a law firm or Big-5 company), that's how it works. With the IT path, you find something else, or you sit and rot. You can sit in a big company's IT staff for years, but the hot-shot jobs are all going to be churn and burn. You want the comparitively big bucks, get ready to run like hell.
Ya know all those cushy management consulting jobs that your business major friends wanted? Talk to them after 6 months, 12 months, 24 months. Some make it and go to B-school, others wash out and go find something else to do. If they couldn't take 80 hours a week of crunching excel spreadsheets that get ignored, they wash out.
Stock traders, they can't sit there staring at a screen forever. Same with brokers. The ones that sit in a phone room either make it or wash out.
Lawyers can go and start a 1 person law firm, but the big firms will suck you dry. You can't bill 80 hours, you can't make the next rung. That's life. There is only room for one CEO, and he can only have 7-10 people reporting to him, and so on, and so on. That means that for every person that advances, 6-9 wash out.
Such is life. You can find engineering jobs that last, but the hot-shot code wringing dot-com lifestyle? Yeah you only got 3-5 years of it, same for everyone else.
Alex
BBEdit, with CVS integration, is an amazing experience. Combine that with a built in copy of Apache, a double click install of mod_rendezvous, and I'm all set. I can work on my files and view them REALLY easily with rendezvous + Safari.
Then, check into CVS, check it out on the Linux or OpenBSD server, and I'm in business.
Double click installation for PostgreSQL and for PHP, and I have a mobile development system. On an airplane? No problem, I'm fully productive.
Sure I could get more horsepower on a PC, but I'm more productive on my Mac. The only thing missing is Quickbooks... the Mac version isn't feature complete w/ the PC version. I also need to share the files w/ PC users. Hopefully next year I can stop using an old machine as a Quickbooks machine, but no biggie, all in good time.
OS X has done tremendous things for my productivity, so I don't complain about the costs. The Xserve was a questionable purchase, but not if you don't think of it as a Unix machine. We've used it for what its been designed for, and we're happy. LDAP is great... we can now get a Linux workstation (or a Mac OS X one) in no time, and give authorization.
BTW: if you want a mod_auth_ldap that authenticates against Apple's Netinfo-style LDAP bindings, drop me an email. We haven't packaged it up for release yet, but WebDav + HTTPS + mod_auth_ldap is a pretty slick remote file access solution.
Alex
Alex
Sometimes we are passing around emails that contain trade secrets to employees and/or partners. Every once in a while, someone fowards one out (usually to someone trustworthy), and we have to go talk to them to protect it. If I could send an email marked "may not foward," that could be enforced, that problem would go away.
Trusted computing as an idea predated the digital media issues. The government uses it. In "primitive" Unix permission, a file has an owner and group with permissions, plus default permissions. ACLs allow you to go a step further and assign different rights to different groups, something that the Unix style doesn't allow. Government certified systems are different.
With a basic trusted system, you start with layers (normal, secret, top secret, for example), and based upon your clearance, you can or cannot access it. But it goes beyond files. If I am reading a secret file, I shouldn't be able to write to a normal file, otherwise I could copy and paste the information out.
The system can enforce these sorts of requirements, but only in a trusted environment. The problem with Microsoft's solution isn't the introduction of trusted environments, its the business policy of forbidding non-trusted environments.
For example, my non-forwarding email. If I sent it trusted do not forward, non trusted environments shouldn't be able to access it at all. If you move all data to trusted, then non-trusted individuals can't access the data.
This may or may not be a bad idea. If I want a home user to be able to VPN in and check email, I have a problem. If they don't have (and don't want) a trusted client at home, i need to provide them with one. That means that they have two machines, trusted and non-trusted. And none of the trusted data should be able to enter the non-trusted machine.
The problem is that corporate users in certain environments would like trusted machines. The government would like trusted machines (for employees, not all citizens). The media empires saw trusted machines as a solution to their problem. They saw that their watermarking and other absurdity was doomed to fail, although they spent years looking for an impossible solution. Trusting computing research has a solution, but it was never intended for the consumer market (who had no demand).
The content companies concluded that if they moved their content into a trusted environment and only let people play in a trusted environment, they might be able to save their business models. Trusted computing was NOT developed to prevent MP3 swapping.
Alex
DOA: Beach Spikers looks awful. The most bizarre thing was comparing Xbox IGN reviews to Gamecube IGN reviews. When you read the Cube ones, they talk about play control and fun. While Beach Spikers commented on the girls, it mostly focused on the game. The Xbox reviews almost ALWAYS focus on the gratuitous graphics, play control and fun are barely mentioned.
:)
Although, I need my Gamecube games to be more fun. With 4 wavebirds, I can have people over and drinking for a while. The Xbox, with two controlers, no wireless, I mostly play solo (or with one person), and I can't play more than an hour or my wrists hurt. So a 10 hour game is easily 2-3 months of game play.
Alex
Beach Spikers is a great game when you have friends over that don't play games. Pour a couple of drinks, hand out the Wavebirds, and you got a game that's easy to play. Just because it has bouncing breasts doesn't mean that it isn't a good game!
My Xbox is in a drawer, haven't gotten around to finishing Buffy, the one game that I got the system for. OTOH, I got a stack of Gamecube games... Animal Crossing is easily the best and most played, but there are a bunch.
Alex
I refer to #5, Zoo Tycoon. It's an absolutely awful game. However, The Sims was pretty lame before the first expansion, so perhaps it got better with them. My fiancee was a Roller Coaster Tycoon adict and has been trying to avoind installing RCT2 until she finishes a consulting job she scored.
:)
Sims Unleashed is pretty cool, however.
Alex
We had some engineers working on a project that was going to involve migrating 2000 users. They were all trained MCSEs, and they going to migrate 2000 users by hand. When I showed them all the command line tools that came with the NT4 resource kit, they were floored. We put together some batch scripts and saved the clients some money.
Point-and-click Admin GUIs are really convenient. If you are doing one user, or something similar, it is easier than remembering command line arguements. There is nothing inherently superior about a text based approach to graphical. You need to understand what you're doing, arguements vs. icons is irrelevant.
However, when you have a LOT to do, and you want to do it based upon a list of names, CLI is the way to go.
The group with the slickest solution is Apple w/ Applescript. Instead of separate GUI and CLI versions (NT), or CLI with GUI wrappers (Linux), it's all integrated. The applications can accept arguments while running or while not running. There is no reinvention of the wheel or duplication of effort.
Alex
The notion of streaming VOD is retarded, which is why we've been promised it for 7 or 8 years... Tivo gets close. Right now, PPV movies tend to cycle so each movie is on four channels, starting every 30 minutes. If your STB recorded the first 30 minutes of each PPV movie (sent on a separate, hidden channel, so you would have it before the movies started showing), then you could VOD them for free. Think about it, at any point I am no more than 30 minutes away from the beginning.
:)
And, to make it proper VOD, it should grab from all 4 channels (feasible even on DBS, as long as they are on the right transponders so that it can all come off one LNB), so 4 minutes fill in each minute. You have the first 30 minutes queued up (so you can rewind fast foward, etc), and within 30 minutes, the entire 2 hours block is recorded.
I would expect an HD Tivo (DirecTivo model, maybe an HD Tivo cable version when the open cable really happen) in about 6 months, gauging us early adopters. Once that happens, we start moving into Tivos w/ really big hard drives. The HD channels may always be limited, but the 480p spec allows streaming DVD quality films, which is probably "good enough" for PPV, etc.
Give it 2 years, and DirecTV and Dish release a killer VOD system on top of their time-shifting PVR boxes.
TV tech is finally getting good.
But yeah, DRM is necessary. However, the studios need to realize that the stuff will get out, but they can keep it out of mainstream. Downloading TV/Movies won't occur unless convergence happened, and its a dying fad. People don't want interactive television, most people don't want PVRs. People watch TV to vege, and that's the reality that all us gadget freaks miss when we wonder why something isn't there yet.
However, at least w/ the tech, hopefully they will make new and exciting toys for those of us willing to pay a premium. VHS took off, S-VHS and Laserdisc never hit mainstream, but DVD got HUGE fast. PVRs didn't take off, VOD isn't taking off, maybe whatever comes next will.
Personally, I think that DTV + PVR could do it. I have the Sunday Ticket demo package (4 months w/ everything free), and I was planning to keep all the channels. Currently, I barely take advantage of them, because the ReplayTV doesn't have enough space to store movies. Give me an 80 hour PVR that will find movies for me, and I'm willing to pay for all the movie channels.
If you could find movies for me and I could have 30 movies (plus all my weekly shows), constantly rotating, of which 5 could interest me... Good bye Blockbuster, and I'm happy to send ~$100 to DirecTV each month.
Alex
I'm a long time NT guy (NT 4.0 MCSE, Citrix Metaframe 1.8 CCA), and while I had played with Linux 5 years ago, next saw any appeal on a desktop. My first experiment with Linux was in 1997. About 40 hours later, I had it all configured to my tastes, everything worked, and I wondered what I was going to do. All it was was a slightly inferior to the NT 4.0 desktop that I was using at the time. Forget games, I was an NT guy, we had no games either.
At my business, we deploy on PHP 4 + PostgreSQL, so we have Linux database servers and OpenBSD webservers. Our first Linux web server in 18 months just came online, we got sick of security issues.
I currently use a Powerbook w/ OS X for my desktop, I'm extremely happy. When we were playing with Redhat 8 to install the test box, we did one install as a workstation for fun.
It was distinctly less ugly than I remembered Linux desktops, and was pretty equivalent to a Windows desktop (though it can't touch Aqua). However, when I tried to install Phoenix, I ran into dependancy problems because I hadn't installed Mozilla first (I was going to run Phoenix). When I created a "launcher" I couldn't get it to show up on the desktop until relogging in, etc., etc.
If I was a grunt office user, I could be trained to work in there instead of Windows. Someone else would create all my icons, etc. For Sysadmining, I have no problem playing in Linux, its easily to configure, etc. However, as a "power user" I was frustrated, and wanted nothing to do with the box.
I find OS X + Powerbook makes me EXTREMELY productive. Redhat + GNOME + KDE + Blue Curve was too frustrating. It's "looking" better, but it isn't better.
Look, there are plenty of times that I get confused in the Mac GUI because it isn't Windows. I can usually figure it out, and the result tends to make more sense than Microsoft's version.
With my Powerbook, I plug a second monitor in and the dock/menu bar slide over. When I disconnect the monitor, I'm back to one monitor. BBEdit has configuration options for working with two monitors, very nice. With my Windows laptop, I had to shut down to undock b/c of the PCI video card to get the second monitor. How would Linux handle that?
As a result, Apple go the check. Switching was only a few thousand, and I'm more productive. Knock off one extra project and its paid for itself. Give me another two weeks. Linux... sorry, its not there yet.
Alex
$85 for DirecTV gets you everything. That includes locals, HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, Starz, and the Sports pack. If you want playboy its an extra $15/month. You can pick your hardware, so you can find one with a pretty quick menuing system. If you want Tivo, DirecTivo (dual-tuners) can be found for $200 (though the series 2 DTivos went up in price to $300 due to demand, I believe you get a $50 new sign-up rebate). If you have the $85 movie package, your Tivo service is free. Otherwise the Tivo service is $5/month.
If you just get HBO + Starz + Tivo (which gets you HBO Programming that rocks plus a million movies from Starz), you're looking at ~$65/month, plus time shifting. With a DTivo + Starz, you'll never lack movies waiting for you.
Don't work for them, just a VERY satisfied customer... HD-Tivo, where are you?
Alex
Okay, lots of Slashdot whining, but if you haven't been following events, you're sounding like an idiot.
Okay, currently, DTV (digital television) has 18 transmission settings, some of which are HDTV, some are SDTV (standard NTSC quality but digital), and some are EDTV (480p like an Xbox, Gamecube, or Progressive Scan DVD player). For a few decades, television manufacturers have had to include VHF and UHF decoders. However, most Americans get signals from cable and/or satellite (something like 10%-14% of homes are OTA only). As a result, televisions became "cable-ready" which means that your TV can tune cable channels in. Those hold enough to remember pre-'cable-ready' televisions remember having a cable box that would output on channel 3 or 4, and you'd get your channels that way. Cable-ready benefits everyone. The cable company didn't need to provide boxes, and consumers were happier.
Now, DTV is available OTA. A small handful of regions have HDTV over cable, where your digital cable STB outputs an HDTV signal via DVI, Component Video, or RGB (VGA). Many consumers with HDTV use Satellite, where their HDTV Dish/DirecTV box includes an ATSC (OTA HDTV) decoder. In fact, most OTA decoders are DirecTV boxes as well. This is a matter of economics.
DTV is an MPEG-2 stream, so OTA STBes need to decode MPEG-2 to decode OTA. DirecTV and Dish send in MPEG-2 as well. As a result, adding DirecTV or Dish to an OTA STB is pretty cheap. Dish, however, makes all their own equipment, so many OTA STBes can also get DirecTV. In fact, normally the D* boxes are cheaper, because DirecTV subsidizes DirecTV hardware. Including an OTA-only decoder is a bit silly, so some televisions that are HDTV have a DirecTV decoder built.
While this is great for DirecTV, the 70% of the contry that uses cable is left out in the cold. The FCC mandate for including a decoder was coming, so the television manufacturers were in trouble. They could include an OTA decoder that consumers had no interest in (they get signals from cable, remember), so they couldn't really pass the costs on to consumers. (Manufacturing costs affect supply, not demand, so the price goes up and the quantity sold goes down, w/ manufacturers making less per box, that's no good).
So, while every television could include an integrated DirecTV receiver, that's less beneficial to the manufacturers than a Cable tuner. To make matters worse, the cable companies aren't terribly interested in buying equipment from Motorola to rent to consumers. While they may make some money on the boxes, remember that they have to put the money up to buy it (the debt levels you hear about in telecom), and the box rentals piss off consumers so some of them stay analog.
They are rolling out Digital and have no interest in keeping analog as well, they can get 4-6 SDTV (depending on compression) signals in the space of a single analog station, or ~1 HDTV signal (if the cable companies can compress it a bit more, maybe 1.5 HDTV signals).
Everyone hates eating the costs of two systems. While the television companies have "free" bandwidth, they can't use it. Right now they are maintaining a DTV AND analog transmitter (more money) for no additional viewers (so no extra money), plus they had to buy DTV broadcasting gear.
Everyone wants the DTV changeover to end, so they need to push us to DTV. Once we are all on DTV, they can eliminate the HDTV channels that were the carrot to move us over, and put 4 SDTV signals in the place plus "value added" service like purchasing shit, etc.
So, the cable companies agree to pass along whatever the broadcasters put in that spectrum (or most, or whatever), the broadcasters shut down analog and either offer more channels, services, or HDTV, or something, and the manufacturers get to sell us all new televisions. Consumers get more/better service, either more channels or better quality. Hopefully the satellite companies offer something impressive to compensate for cable matching their previous advantages, and everybody wins.
Of course, rates go up, but c'est la vie.
Alex
I got Napster pretty late... I more or less stopped listening to music when I left for school 6 years ago. I had listened to manufactured pop on my commute to high school, and left it at that.
:)
A few friends tossed me MP3s that were interesting, and I downloaded Napster and grabbed other MP3s of those bands and/or similar bands. Someone would mention someone that I would like, and I'd grab a few MP3s.
I'd then go to Amazon.com (at 3 AM) and order a bunch of CDs from those artists that interested me to have in the car.
Now I have a home stereo w/ a CD Jukebox, and I just got an iPod for my Tibook, and got XM Radio for my car 6 months ago. When I hear a band I like on Internet radio or XM Radio, I order the CD. Unfortunately, I hear a lot less new music because easy access to MP3s is gone.
Oh well, saves me a few bucks.
Extra fun, copying all my old CDs to CD-R to add CD-Text so the on screen display works nicely.
Sure I've copied a few CDs from friends that have interested me, but that's a request to expose me to new music. A friend is a BIG fan of Saliva, tossed me a CD. Now I have a copy and MP3s of it. Will I buy that CD? No... will I buy everything that they put out in the future? Yes... Had he not given me the CD to copy, I'd have never listened them at all... it's all relative.
Alex
One of the telecom acts (not the one in 1996, something more recent) required that the cable companies allow access from third party boxes. However, this requires that there be a technical solution. Sony has now announced that one exists, and the cable companies agreed to a standard a few months ago.
This means that he reality of competition should take hold in the next two years. This is great news for consumers.
I switched from AT&T Broadband to DirecTV. The choice in receivers (particularly in HDTV STBes) was part of my reasoning. With an Open Cable solution, cable users will eventually get things like dual-tuner Tivo devices, but not until the cable companies send everything in digital.
In Boston, I could my first 60 channels or so in the much higher quality analog feeds than the over-compressed digital cable feeds.
This will be good for consumers, it will just take time.
Expect a Sony-branded Tivo enabled cable device within 18 months.
Alex