My ideal PVR is as follows. As far as I know, no one sells it right now.
It's a box with video in/out that sits between my cable/satellite box and my TV. It can record 20 or so hours of video.
It is available at a reaonsable cost (say $200) with no monthly fee. Since it does not download TV listings, there should not be a recurring or one-time "lifetime" fee.
When I want to record something I press a red button on my remote. It begins recording and prompts me for a unique name to identify the segment, or I can just accept the default. (A timestamp, perhaps).
It should always be running, so I can pause what I'm watching if needed.
Finally, there should be a 'program' button. The program button allow me to record a specific channel, for a specific duration, at a certain time.
There should be some rudimentary onscreen interface to navigate the things I've already recorded or delete them.
Additionally, the onscreen interface should let me choose what I want to record from (VHS, DVD, satellite, cable, video camera) based on the multiple video inputs on the back of the device.
It does not need to be intelligent, downloading listings and automatically recording shit on my behalf. Nor should it need to be hooked up to a phone line, since there is no reason the mfr. ever needs to hear from me again, since I OWN the box. I don't have a phone line anyway, I have cellular.
As far as I know, no one sells a box like this. I believe many people would buy it, though.
I'm sure I'm not the only one who has major concerns about buying a device that can be deactivated if Replay goes under.
As a consumer, I'm simply not interested in any device that can be 'sued' out of existence. My VCR is ten years old, and will continue to work until the day it croaks. Even if VCRs are declared illegal tomorrow, it will sit in my house and function as long as I want.
Personally, I would not buy a device (like the Replay) that becomes a paperweight if Replay ends up on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
And let me make something clear - I have no problem with them charging a monthly fee in exchange for service - it's then my choice to decide whether their service is worth the fee.
The concern is whether they'll be around to provide that service at all. By making the device worthless without the service, they have crippled the product.
Getting recent driver support on Laptops is problematic even on Windows.
Not really. Suspend seems to work fine on all the Macs and PCs I've tried, with both ATI and Nvidia cards. It's only Linux that seems to have problems making suspend work properly.
That's not to say there aren't reasons for that, but it does seem to be the current situation.
Thanks for the info - a PIII 600 is plenty fast for my needs, so this model looks pretty attractive. If they come out with 512 MB chips that fit in the 2040, I'll be all set.
OT, I know, but would you be willing to comment on what functionality is available to you on the Tivo unit without paying for a subscription?
I'm interested in getting one, and I only care about two things:
1. Ability to pause live show for a few minutes (phone rings, bathroom break, etc.) and then resume.
2. Ability to tell Tivo to record at a certain day/time. (ideally it would sit between my DirecTV box and the TV, and just record whatever is on the pipe at that time.)
If I get the box, can I do those without subscribing?
I've still never forgiven ATI for not bothering to write drivers for Windows 2000 that supported dual display for their Rage Pro/Mobility series of cards, thus stranding thousands of folks with laptops with ATI video built in.
ATI says it's Microsoft's fault (yet somehow Nvidia figured it out).
This is a great feature, especially for laptops, since you can run PowerPoint on one screen and your notes on the other.
ATI seems to have a nice history of never/rarely providing driver updates once they release a new chipset. This is incredibly dumb - the Rage Mobility M1 is still used in brand new, shipping systems, yet the drivers for Windows 2000 are like 18 months old, feature-wise!
Thus, they make my "never buy again" doody-list. Next laptop will have Nvidia.
My question didn't make the original cut, so I'll ask it again here.
Why does Ximian feel the need to overwrite the existing Gnome menus when I install their software package? As a newbie, this was VERY frustrating. I was just getting used to the system and learning what was included.
When you install Ximian, they wipe out your existing Gnome menus - if you don't know the command line name of the programs, those programs are effectively 'gone'. Very frustrating.
Is there any reason you guys couldn't just put everything in a submenu called "Ximian"? Or maybe move the old stuff to "Old Menus"?
Frankly this smacks of Microsoft - "you didn't need those other programs anyway..."
I recently bought a notebook that uses an 800 mhz Crusoe processor, and realistically speaking it's slower than the equivalent intel p-whatever. It also only holds up to 256 megs of RAM, and doesn't have 3D graphics hardware.
Would that be a Fujitsu P2040? Would you care to compare the processor to an Intel? I know it's going to be a bit slower, clock for clock... but does it feel like a PIII 600? 400?
if you're putting 640mb in that thing, you should really have bought a powerbook. there's only so much that RAM can do when you still have a G3.
Translation: Apple's budget offering is ridiculously underpowered. If you want a computer that runs at a speed comparable to a low end Wintel, you need to buy Apple's "Pro" laptop at a cost of over $2,000.
It seems pretty clear to me, why are Mac users so afraid to admit it? Even a low end Wintel laptop (at least 900mhz PIII these days for $1200 or so) will run web browsers very, very fast. A comparably priced Macintosh system will not. In fact, to achieve similar performance, you need a top end Mac.
I bet you haven't tried surfing under Linux before, haven't you?
On the contrary, I have tried surfing on Linux, on both the x86 and PPC architectures, using the Mozilla browser for consistant comparisons.
On an iBook2 with Mandrake Linux PPC, browsing is far faster than it is on the same hardware with OS X.
This, in my experience, is not what happens on Wintel - On Windows 2000 (Pentium III 600) browsing is just ever so slightly faster than with RedHat 7.2 on the same hardware. For all intents and purposes, the same speed.
In summary, on x86, Windows and Linux offer about the same web browsing speed. On PPC, however, Linux offers a dramatically faster browsing speed than OS X.
Wrong on all counts. It was 500mhz (iceBook) model. I was running 10.1.3, the most recent update available.
WRT to mail.app, you don't know what you're talking about. IMAP is not the same as POP. With POP, all the headers and message bodies reside on the local machine. And yes, mail.app is very slow switching between them compared to Outlook on Windows.
I can summarize everything you need to know about this in just a few sentences.
I bought an iBook (500mhz, 640 MB RAM) with OS X, 10.1 and updated it to the current stuff using the software update control panel.
The new iBook is signifcantly slower (switching between applications, moving windows, resizing windows, scrolling) than a PowerMac 7100/66 that we keep around for testing. (It must be 6 or 7 years old.)
Now I don't know (and frankly, I don't care) about cocoa vs. carbon, display postscript, window managers, OpenGL, UNIX, C++, java, or any of that. But I do know something is wrong with the speed of OS X.
It just sucks and it's not acceptable. I no longer own the iBook.
I suggest you try it again, only this time, try using X.1. Yes OS X was dog slow. X.1 however made very very very noticable improvements to the point where the system was actualy usable.
Of course I'm talking about 10.1, and so is the Wired article. Doesn't everyone have that by now? The system in question was current all the way up to 10.1.3 using the software update control panel.
10.1 is certainly faster than 10. But it's still very slow.
For what's it's worth, I also played with Linux on my iBook. It ran comparably to a Wintel. That tells me the speed problems are with OS X, not with the hardware.
My mom wants one of those new iMacs, and I don't think she'll consider OS X web browsers to be slow. Because right now she's using a 6100 with AOL 4.0. Now that's slow.
I think you're onto something here. I see people posting that "my iBook 266mhz runs OS X fine. Very snappy."
Perhaps these are die-hard Mac people that haven't touched a Wintel in the last 5 years. They think their Mac is 'fast' but only because they've never used anything faster. If you showed them the speed of browsing on Wintel, they might reconsider their definition of 'snappy'.
Who uses IE in Mac OS X anyway? Both Opera and Mozilla are truly great browsers which run fast and smoothly in Mac OS X.
Not on a G3, they don't. Keep in mind Apple is still selling computers with the G3 as we speak. They lag right out of the box, BEFORE you load them up with all your apps.
And I'm not just making things up - in the last 3 months I have bought (and then sold) an iBook for this exact reason.
Sadly, it's everything. The iBook I bought and then sold a few weeks later lagged doing just about anything.
It takes around 40% of the CPU to play MP3s using iTunes. Something is very wrong.
Yes, I'm aware of mpg123 which works great and takes about 2% of CPU. However, I don't think many mac users are going to choose a command line client over iTunes. Shoot, even if they did, it takes 7 or 8 seconds just to launch a shell. Really!
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If you just stay current with something like Red Carpet or Up2Date, do you basically end up with 7.3 eventually? Or do you need the cds to 'upgrade'?
Thanks, but I believe all current ReplayTV units don't work in the way described without paying a monthly fee.
It's a box with video in/out that sits between my cable/satellite box and my TV. It can record 20 or so hours of video.
It is available at a reaonsable cost (say $200) with no monthly fee. Since it does not download TV listings, there should not be a recurring or one-time "lifetime" fee.
When I want to record something I press a red button on my remote. It begins recording and prompts me for a unique name to identify the segment, or I can just accept the default. (A timestamp, perhaps).
It should always be running, so I can pause what I'm watching if needed.
Finally, there should be a 'program' button. The program button allow me to record a specific channel, for a specific duration, at a certain time.
There should be some rudimentary onscreen interface to navigate the things I've already recorded or delete them.
Additionally, the onscreen interface should let me choose what I want to record from (VHS, DVD, satellite, cable, video camera) based on the multiple video inputs on the back of the device.
It does not need to be intelligent, downloading listings and automatically recording shit on my behalf. Nor should it need to be hooked up to a phone line, since there is no reason the mfr. ever needs to hear from me again, since I OWN the box. I don't have a phone line anyway, I have cellular.
As far as I know, no one sells a box like this. I believe many people would buy it, though.
Great! But don't I have to subscribe to service to acquire one?
As a consumer, I'm simply not interested in any device that can be 'sued' out of existence. My VCR is ten years old, and will continue to work until the day it croaks. Even if VCRs are declared illegal tomorrow, it will sit in my house and function as long as I want.
Personally, I would not buy a device (like the Replay) that becomes a paperweight if Replay ends up on the wrong end of a lawsuit.
And let me make something clear - I have no problem with them charging a monthly fee in exchange for service - it's then my choice to decide whether their service is worth the fee.
The concern is whether they'll be around to provide that service at all. By making the device worthless without the service, they have crippled the product.
50% of the time, when I walk by, it's blue-screened :)
Not really. Suspend seems to work fine on all the Macs and PCs I've tried, with both ATI and Nvidia cards. It's only Linux that seems to have problems making suspend work properly.
That's not to say there aren't reasons for that, but it does seem to be the current situation.
Thanks for the info - a PIII 600 is plenty fast for my needs, so this model looks pretty attractive. If they come out with 512 MB chips that fit in the 2040, I'll be all set.
If ATI's past history holds: 12-18 months, if they decide to sell one at all.
I'm interested in getting one, and I only care about two things:
1. Ability to pause live show for a few minutes (phone rings, bathroom break, etc.) and then resume.
2. Ability to tell Tivo to record at a certain day/time. (ideally it would sit between my DirecTV box and the TV, and just record whatever is on the pipe at that time.)
If I get the box, can I do those without subscribing?
ATI says it's Microsoft's fault (yet somehow Nvidia figured it out).
This is a great feature, especially for laptops, since you can run PowerPoint on one screen and your notes on the other.
ATI seems to have a nice history of never/rarely providing driver updates once they release a new chipset. This is incredibly dumb - the Rage Mobility M1 is still used in brand new, shipping systems, yet the drivers for Windows 2000 are like 18 months old, feature-wise!
Thus, they make my "never buy again" doody-list. Next laptop will have Nvidia.
Fair enough, now I know they just hide, rather than overwrite them. It's still the wrong behavior.
Why does Ximian feel the need to overwrite the existing Gnome menus when I install their software package? As a newbie, this was VERY frustrating. I was just getting used to the system and learning what was included.
When you install Ximian, they wipe out your existing Gnome menus - if you don't know the command line name of the programs, those programs are effectively 'gone'. Very frustrating.
Is there any reason you guys couldn't just put everything in a submenu called "Ximian"? Or maybe move the old stuff to "Old Menus"?
Frankly this smacks of Microsoft - "you didn't need those other programs anyway..."
Would that be a Fujitsu P2040? Would you care to compare the processor to an Intel? I know it's going to be a bit slower, clock for clock... but does it feel like a PIII 600? 400?
Didn't one of the guys in DC Talk get his girlfriend pregnant? I thought that was kind of funny...
Not in the United States. If that alarm goes off and you already paid, just keep walking. What are you afraid of?
Actually, I did experiment with both Yellow Dog and Mandrake. Both are far faster than OS X, but Linux isn't for me.
Translation: Apple's budget offering is ridiculously underpowered. If you want a computer that runs at a speed comparable to a low end Wintel, you need to buy Apple's "Pro" laptop at a cost of over $2,000.
It seems pretty clear to me, why are Mac users so afraid to admit it? Even a low end Wintel laptop (at least 900mhz PIII these days for $1200 or so) will run web browsers very, very fast. A comparably priced Macintosh system will not. In fact, to achieve similar performance, you need a top end Mac.
On the contrary, I have tried surfing on Linux, on both the x86 and PPC architectures, using the Mozilla browser for consistant comparisons.
On an iBook2 with Mandrake Linux PPC, browsing is far faster than it is on the same hardware with OS X.
This, in my experience, is not what happens on Wintel - On Windows 2000 (Pentium III 600) browsing is just ever so slightly faster than with RedHat 7.2 on the same hardware. For all intents and purposes, the same speed.
In summary, on x86, Windows and Linux offer about the same web browsing speed. On PPC, however, Linux offers a dramatically faster browsing speed than OS X.
Comparitive Mozilla speeds on various platforms:
Dual PIII 900, W2k (fastest)
Dual PIII 900, RedHat
PIII 600, W2k
PIII 600, RedHat
PII 450, W2k
PII 450, RedHat
iBook2 500, Linux
Celeron 333, W2k
iBook2 500, OS X (slowest)
This seems to indicate that the problem is with OS X and not with the hardware.
WRT to mail.app, you don't know what you're talking about. IMAP is not the same as POP. With POP, all the headers and message bodies reside on the local machine. And yes, mail.app is very slow switching between them compared to Outlook on Windows.
I bought an iBook (500mhz, 640 MB RAM) with OS X, 10.1 and updated it to the current stuff using the software update control panel.
The new iBook is signifcantly slower (switching between applications, moving windows, resizing windows, scrolling) than a PowerMac 7100/66 that we keep around for testing. (It must be 6 or 7 years old.)
Now I don't know (and frankly, I don't care) about cocoa vs. carbon, display postscript, window managers, OpenGL, UNIX, C++, java, or any of that. But I do know something is wrong with the speed of OS X.
It just sucks and it's not acceptable. I no longer own the iBook.
Of course I'm talking about 10.1, and so is the Wired article. Doesn't everyone have that by now? The system in question was current all the way up to 10.1.3 using the software update control panel.
10.1 is certainly faster than 10. But it's still very slow.
For what's it's worth, I also played with Linux on my iBook. It ran comparably to a Wintel. That tells me the speed problems are with OS X, not with the hardware.
I think you're onto something here. I see people posting that "my iBook 266mhz runs OS X fine. Very snappy."
Perhaps these are die-hard Mac people that haven't touched a Wintel in the last 5 years. They think their Mac is 'fast' but only because they've never used anything faster. If you showed them the speed of browsing on Wintel, they might reconsider their definition of 'snappy'.
Not on a G3, they don't. Keep in mind Apple is still selling computers with the G3 as we speak. They lag right out of the box, BEFORE you load them up with all your apps.
And I'm not just making things up - in the last 3 months I have bought (and then sold) an iBook for this exact reason.
Sadly, it's everything. The iBook I bought and then sold a few weeks later lagged doing just about anything.
It takes around 40% of the CPU to play MP3s using iTunes. Something is very wrong.
Yes, I'm aware of mpg123 which works great and takes about 2% of CPU. However, I don't think many mac users are going to choose a command line client over iTunes. Shoot, even if they did, it takes 7 or 8 seconds just to launch a shell. Really!