Since PC tablets have typically been "premium" items targeted mainly at business, it's hard to say really.
Apple was the first company to "go ghetto" with the tablet hardware and use something more along the lines of an iPod and thus achieve something resembling cheap.
I put "PC tablets suck" rants into the same category as "Photoshop rules" rants and for the same reason. The person in question probably never touched either.
> I guess what I don't get is, why does somebody else's appreciation for something bother you so much in the first place?
Why? Because it's obnoxious and often times includes LIES that even Apple Corp would not associate themselves with. Such nonsense, if taken seriously by other similarly clueless consumer types could lead to real consequences. First there would be real consequences for anyone that fell for the fraud and potential nice network and other side effects for those of us that have better taste....but mostly because of the obnoxious bits.
....well, they will. It will just cost you a pretty penny.
That's one big problem wit this whole "cloud" thing. It quickly becomes too expensive to be useful.
It might work with small quantities but there's a small overlap between "too big for the device" and "small enough to be cheap enough to put in the cloud".
We have reached the point where a significant amount of supplemental storage in the cloud is cheap enough and big enough that you might want to use it in order to make up for the rather limited storage available on mobile devices (especially Apple mobile devices).
My music collection can't fit on my phone. Being able to stream it to my phone is useful when compared to trying to pick and choose what subset of my music collection will go on the device itself.
No. You don't need HDCP in order to feed 1080p through an HDMI cable. HDCP is only relevant if you are trying to decrypt a BluRay on the machine. This is a requirement imposed by the relevant cartel.
I would be really surprised if the UI of the WD box is any where near as "nice" as any PC HTPC software.
That's one negative aspect of Roku, Netflix AND AppleTV.
...actually you do need the dual core processor to watch Hulu.
Hulu is the perfect example of why Flash sucks for video streaming. Your $20 Radeon card probably won't have the acceleration features that Hulu ignores.
Then again, who wants to watch commercials anyways?
If you don't live alone, you may find that someone in your household might want to watch something that's just not available on AppleTV, or Hulu, or Netflix.
Also, the viewing habits for an entire house full of people might not be as cheap as you might think. Some shows are cheap streamed (or on DVDs) whereas others aren't. It all depends on what everyone in the family likes and watches.
Besides, the stuff that's on the web tends to have annoying randomly placed unskippable commercials.
At least old school commercials are placed in natural breaks in the action put there by writers expecting those breaks to be there.
For the most part, "Streaming" basically means either Pay-Per-View or 80s style commercials. There are a few flat rate services out there but they all have very little to offer. If there is something in particular you want to see, you're probably still better off with the medium that has the lion's share of stuff (namely cable).
A good PVR helps make cable a lot more bearable. If you don't have a good PVR, I could certainly see where you might get the false impression that current streaming TV options are better than they really are.
> I don't want any of that shit, especially if I have to > pay extra for it. I just want to watch a movie.
You know, some people like to complain about how certain interfaces lack any sort of consistency. Well, that's true for DVDs and BDs in spaces. Every movie is it's own special unique snowflake with it's own customized graphical UI elements.
There is something to be said for stripping all of that crap off and just getting straight to the movie, or 20 of them.
Tivo has been relatively stagnant in a market driven by ambitious early adopters on one side and completely apathetic consumers on the other.
Instead of moving their own technology forward, they chose to try to enforce a bogus monopoly based on patents they never should have been granted.
Meanwhile, most consumers really couldn't care less about paying extra money to buy a Tivo and are more than willing to use the device provided by the cable company or even sit through commercials and "channel surf". Plus you've got stuff like iTunes and Netflix that completely bypasses all of the effort required to "capture broadcasts" for future use in something approximating Video on Demand.
People either "can't be bothered" or "simply want more"....although old Tivos at a garage sale could simply be analog units made obsolete by that whole digital TV switch thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Since PC tablets have typically been "premium" items targeted mainly at business, it's hard to say really.
Apple was the first company to "go ghetto" with the tablet hardware and use something more along the lines of an iPod and thus achieve something resembling cheap.
I put "PC tablets suck" rants into the same category as "Photoshop rules" rants and for the same reason. The person in question probably never touched either.
> No, Apple rubs it in slashdot's face that it's not the engineers and technical innovation that sells stuff.
Perhaps you missed the 80s and 90s.
Microsoft already established that principle.
The soundly spanked Apple too and further demonstrated that principle.
> I guess what I don't get is, why does somebody else's appreciation for something bother you so much in the first place?
Why? Because it's obnoxious and often times includes LIES that even Apple Corp would not associate themselves with. Such nonsense, if taken seriously by other similarly clueless consumer types could lead to real consequences. First there would be real consequences for anyone that fell for the fraud and potential nice network and other side effects for those of us that have better taste. ...but mostly because of the obnoxious bits.
....well, they will. It will just cost you a pretty penny.
That's one big problem wit this whole "cloud" thing. It quickly becomes too expensive to be useful.
It might work with small quantities but there's a small overlap between "too big for the device" and "small enough to be cheap enough to put in the cloud".
Many devices have rather limited storage.
We have reached the point where a significant amount of supplemental storage in the cloud is cheap enough and big enough that you might want to use it in order to make up for the rather limited storage available on mobile devices (especially Apple mobile devices).
My music collection can't fit on my phone. Being able to stream it to my phone is useful when compared to trying to pick and choose what subset of my music collection will go on the device itself.
No. An online file locker is a bit different than a sync service.
Either way, both are pretty ancient ideas that are hardly revolutionary being implemented by anyone during this century.
No. You don't need HDCP in order to feed 1080p through an HDMI cable. HDCP is only relevant if you are trying to decrypt a BluRay on the machine. This is a requirement imposed by the relevant cartel.
I would be really surprised if the UI of the WD box is any where near as "nice" as any PC HTPC software.
That's one negative aspect of Roku, Netflix AND AppleTV.
...actually you do need the dual core processor to watch Hulu.
Hulu is the perfect example of why Flash sucks for video streaming. Your $20 Radeon card probably won't have the acceleration features that Hulu ignores.
Then again, who wants to watch commercials anyways?
That's the "beauty" of this system.
You can be declared owner and monopolist of something that any number of other people in the field can recreate in total isolation.
You basically get to be declared owner of the state of the art.
The problem with "streaming" setups is selection.
If you don't live alone, you may find that someone in your household might want to watch something that's just not available on AppleTV, or Hulu, or Netflix.
Also, the viewing habits for an entire house full of people might not be as cheap as you might think. Some shows are cheap streamed (or on DVDs) whereas others aren't. It all depends on what everyone in the family likes and watches.
> I did something like this last year. Wasn't really willing to pay $1000 for a "Media PC"
A "media PC" costs $300, not $1000.
Besides, the stuff that's on the web tends to have annoying randomly placed unskippable commercials.
At least old school commercials are placed in natural breaks in the action put there by writers expecting those breaks to be there.
For the most part, "Streaming" basically means either Pay-Per-View or 80s style commercials. There are a few flat rate services out there but they all have very little to offer. If there is something in particular you want to see, you're probably still better off with the medium that has the lion's share of stuff (namely cable).
A good PVR helps make cable a lot more bearable. If you don't have a good PVR, I could certainly see where you might get the false impression that current streaming TV options are better than they really are.
> To that end, I do not care which thing has which feature.
> I just care that I can seamlessly access the Internet no matter where I am.
Good luck with that.
Truth is that you will have better luck at some 3rd world tourist trap than outer suburbia.
> I don't want any of that shit, especially if I have to
> pay extra for it. I just want to watch a movie.
You know, some people like to complain about how certain interfaces lack any sort of consistency. Well, that's true for DVDs and BDs in spaces. Every movie is it's own special unique snowflake with it's own customized graphical UI elements.
There is something to be said for stripping all of that crap off and just getting straight to the movie, or 20 of them.
Poll your non-geek acquaintances.
What the Engadget and Slashdot crowd thinks is mainstream probably isn't.
Actually, you probably have to be pretty nerdy to be able to rip a BluRay disk.
For a DVD, it's pretty trivial and probably on par with ripping a CD. There are a number of automated solutions.
Now of course I realize that a certain class of people think that ripping our own CD's is "too geeky".
There is a large span of time and a lot of material from TV that either will never benefit from being released in BluRay or publishers won't bother.
There are also BluRay cinematic releases that don't benefit too much from BluRay.
A number of things have to align (including how you set up your viewing space) before BluRay delivers an improvement.
If you are using software RAID, then lack of TLER won't matter.
If you are using a proper RAID controller, than being cheap about your drives is a bit of a contradiction.
Nothing beats vigilance.
Run checks on the disks on a frequent and ongoing basis and dump them when they look like they are about to die.
You will flee from some brand to another and one day be bit in the arse when that next brand has it's next "moment in the limelight".
I recently took apart the 2.5 drive out of my nv9400 mac mini.
That was a metal platter.
Never knew they were so... shiny.
See. They're even shiny on the inside!
They also tend to fly in all sorts of interesting and unwanted directions.
Bullets are not nearly orderly enough for this task.
...which still doesn't alter the fact that you have to EAT IT before it's added to that BIG FAT GUT of yours.
The nature of your metabolism only addresses how hard or easy it will be for you to handle a particular sort of binge.
Ultimately, it's still about nothing more than the math and your own strength of will.
Tivo has been relatively stagnant in a market driven by ambitious early adopters on one side and completely apathetic consumers on the other.
Instead of moving their own technology forward, they chose to try to enforce a bogus monopoly based on patents they never should have been granted.
Meanwhile, most consumers really couldn't care less about paying extra money to buy a Tivo and are more than willing to use the device provided by the cable company or even sit through commercials and "channel surf". Plus you've got stuff like iTunes and Netflix that completely bypasses all of the effort required to "capture broadcasts" for future use in something approximating Video on Demand.
People either "can't be bothered" or "simply want more". ...although old Tivos at a garage sale could simply be analog units made obsolete by that whole digital TV switch thing.
I'm sorry we are violating your liberty by preventing you from committing rape and murder.
Fortunately, we do not use the Marquis de Sade's notion of what liberty means.
The VMS file versioning he is referring to is hardly terribly burdensome.