The gap between the person you like to think you are and the person you really are is one of those life issues you're going to have to address one of these days. It has nothing to do with Netflix.
I agree. I just find it interesting that it comes up here, and not in blockbuster. Perhaps it's because in the video store, you have to make more immediate decisions, or that there is a group participating in the decision. Or, as TFA states, maybe it's a paradox of choice issue, or a high-brow, low brow issue.
But it's not as simple as you state, especially with things that aren't especially weighty decisions, such as what movie to watch. You do put Hotel Rwanda or House of Wax in your queue because you want to watch it, then it sits there because you don't, but you don't send it back because you want to watch it. Both cases are true.
To me (and thousands of marketers) the real question is: how does technology affect the decisions we make? Why do you want to watch the movie, or why do you think it will be a steaming pile of crap? (House of Wax may not be the best example in this case, since there's lots of hard evidence that it is a steaming pile of crap). What puts things in the grey area in the middle?
There isn't a culture nazi standing over anyone, but to assume that marketing and technology have no effect on purchasing decisions is naive.
at least with blockbuster there was plausible deniability. "I had to return it, otherwise they'd kill me with late fees." With netflix, the only thing making you send it back unwatched is the reality that you don't really want to watch it.
The friends may have a good system there. "He made me send it back, and it was his turn to get a movie."
That's the point of the article. It's not about whether you're lazy or stupid or just not disciplined enough to watch rented movies. However, when you're given an abundant amount of choices, it's often harder to make a good decision. Add netflix's delay into the mix (what do I think I'd like to watch at some point in the future?) and it gets even harder.
Of course we want to see Hotel Rwanda, or the new almodovar film, because we are advanced, modern intellectuals. In reality, after a 12 hour day of re-factoring someone else's messy code, would you rather open a beer and collapse in front of Hotel Rwanda or Super Troopers?
The problem is netflix (and tivo) makes you confront this issue - You have to send it back and quit on it. You have to admit that you don't want to watch Hotel Rwanda. You'd rather fast forward to the "good parts" of The Girl Next Door rather than think about genocide. You are not the advanced, modern intellectual you thought you were. Who wants an existential crisis when they thought they were just renting movies? Is this horrible? probably. So is alcoholism, but i bet you didn't cringe when I opened a beer in the above paragraph.
This topic has brought out a lot of elitist viewpoints... I'm surprised. You may use Netflix perfectly. Congratulations. That's not what we were talking about. The intersting thing about this is how a fairly subtle shift in delivery method created a whole mess of problems (as well as solutions) for the end user, and ended up changing the experience for the user substantially.
Now, to really make it interesting, lets talk about the Netflix friends feature, where your friends can see what you rent and what's in your queue, as well as what you thought of it. Are you really willing to give Ultimate Fighting Championship 5 stars if that girl you've got your eye on is going to find out?
You have a good point - putting media onto the Tivo (ie DVDs) is something you're going to have a problem with. My point is that the tivo does quite a lot, quite well, with almost 0 config.
As for cablecard, the 1.0 implementation was pitiful. 2.0 will be slightly better, and OCAP shows promise. It's definitely not going away. And the good news for all of us is that cablecard tuner cards (as well as satellite cards for DirecTV) should ship some time this year. It's still a good move by sharp - Cable card in an expensive display is a dumb idea. You want sharp providing your PVR/PPV/guide software? There's gonna be a box plugged into it somewhere - put the cablecard in that.
You can get a tivo with a DVD burner built it (or attach one) or transfer the videos to your (windows-only) laptop, and do many of the other net things you're describing (weather, photos, music, netflix, etc). The only real differences are SIP videophone, visualizations, and full web browser. Are those different enough to be worth the extra money and time?
Plus, the series 3 is shipping this fall with dual HD cablecard tuners...
OMG this game is so fun. The songs are short enough where alternating is realistic, and even dumbed down, I love playing with friends - i just concentrate more on my showmanship than my playing:) I hope that w/ guitar hero 2 you'll be able to play 2 player at different skill levels...
Donkey Konga is ridiculously fun two (or four) player as well... regardless of skill level
This is an excellent point. I like to do work in the office. I like to watch movies in the living room. Most likely, I'll need 2 boxes, and will buy boxes that suit my needs.
That said, the idea of a tivo/cable box/media center thin client that runs firefox/writely/zimbra seems like it would work for a lot of people. That gmail thing seems to be catching on, too.
Most likely, everyone here will have a destkop (or 2 or 3 or 4) for the forseeable future.
No component out? It does have DVI (and you can get a DVI->HDMI cable), so I don't see that as a big loss. How about the ability for the average person to hook it up to a plasma, buy shows (movies) from the itunes store and stream them to the mini over wireless? with minimal setup? (If you know what MythTV is, you aren't their target market) That seems pretty damn amazing to me. And this box looks more than capable of 1080i, so that seems to future proof it at least a bit. (though that drive is damn small)
As for your TV/Text complaint - if you hooked it up to a SD set for anything other than front row, (which has giant type) you'd be right. But if you hooked it up to a HD set 1280x720 should work for most apps.
This seems like a great computer for small apts where TV/computer share a screen, or a computer to get and use normally, and then move into the living room after you upgrade in a couple years.
so... what is interesting about the media center idea again? Why is it worth the extra $549 over a tivo? ($599 over a DirecTivo R10)? (yeah, yeah, monthly fee...) or for this crowd, why not an XBMC, or a 360?
dorm rooms/small spaces? how bout a dell widescreen with tv input? i can pay to download lost? that's better than my season pass how?. I can watch stuff i got off bittorrent? i guess, but burning dvds (or putting it on the new ipod) isn't that hard. I can see pictures? bleh. ipod dock? i really want to manage my ipod on my tv? Stereo integration. I guess, but barely use my airport express (except as a wireless extender).
convergence has been the future since '92. it still bites. until the content providers (really) open up their libraries, it's not that interesting. or, if someone comes up with a really good living room app. haven't seen that yet either (besides tivo, that's amazing).
The video airport express that runs front row on my existing g5 in the other room - that seems worth 100 bucks. maybe. but that's still rumor.
we now return to your regularly scheduled reality distortion field.
The curl up under a tree, leave it on the bus arguments are spot on - for novels.
The ctrl-f comment is spot on - for tech books.
While people flog away at the first problem, why not enjoy a great solution to the second? Oreilly's Safari.
Sure, DRM, rent-not-buy, etc etc, but online errata, search, and 15 bucks a month for 10 books on the shelf is pretty fantastic. Am I really going to treasure that copy of "Javascript: The definitive guide - 4th edition"? Also, it's great for books you may not want. Am I going to use this technology on this project? Lets look at these 3 books on it. No? Oh well, let's drop them and get some others.
BBC did multiple audio streams for their soccer games years ago - you could choose between the vanilla TV commentators, or get the BBC radio feeds from either stream. They could do this, because they owned them all. Have fun working out deals with all the stations that have local NFL/NBA radio rights. Or finding good commentators. (If i want drunken hooligans, i'll invite my friends over.)
As for the multiple angles, i'm sure this will take off in a huge way just like it did for DVD. Have you ever seen a control room for a live event? Have you seen how haggard the producer looks, scrambling trying to cut to the best shot? Is that how you want to watch sports? Do you really think that you, half drunk and half paying attention, are going to do better than well trained, highly paid professionals?
OpenTV is a middleware provider, pushing what the tech can do. The question is, do people want it? and is it worth the money to TV producers and cable or sat providers to support it?
If Google is working on a new way of doing RSS advertising, wouldn't it be fiscally irresponsible to NOT try to patent it? What if they unveil a masterful system they've been working on for a year, only to find out Yahoo patented one of the methods 3 months ago, and were forced to shelve it as the legal battle ensued?
Advertising is most (if not all) of their revenue. They'd be silly not to try to protect it. How would you feel if your google stock dropped 20% because they were trying to be nice and got screwed by a competitor?
Guns are bad, but you still shouldn't bring a knife to a gun fight.
Make the analogy. A monitor is similar to a TV. What can happen to one can happen to the other. I know it a stupid and bad analogy, but Joe User won't know the difference. If Joe's TV is threatened, maybe he'll finally act about the monitor.
You mean if their TV rights are threatened like this?
As an aside, I would like to see someone who can't differentiate between a HD and SD picture. I can understand being confused between EDTV marketing hoo ha, but you think joe SP can't tell the difference in a side by side comparison of 1080i and 480i on well calibrated monitors? The problem is getting that in your local Best Buy is tough...
works for The Office. They even have enough to spring for aerons and bose noise cancelling headphones. and i don't have to be guilted/forced into buying a muffin every 20 minutes.
for extra geek cred, joss whedon wrote 'serenity' there.
This is a great hack for all 17 people who have a DVHS recorder, have the time to do the hack, the willingness to modify their expensive gear, the money to replace it once it breaks, AND are too cheap to buy the recommended tape stock.
sure, it can. I don't think that's the point. (That's not my point anyway). I could ride my bike to argentina, but i'd rather take a plane, because speed and comfort are important to me.
I bet blender can animate really nicely. Nicer than AE? or Toon boom? or Motion? or Combustion? or even FCP?
I'm sure cinelerra has nice editing tools. Does it have slip? trim? insert/overwrite/fit-to-fill? can it do batch digitizing? quick masking? support for AE filters? programmable shortcuts?
to me, these are all things that anyone who's editing for more than a week is going to want. FCP is extremely powerful and stable and is (relatively) cheap. That's why i would recommend it...
there is a lot of heavyweight film (and video) software that runs on linux (shake comes to mind), a bunch of internal projects for specific projects (massive, for example). There's also some bad ass software for irix (inferno, flame, smoke) by discreet. but all of this is in the 50K - 1M dollar range.
not what we're talking about here. for professional editing it's an avid world, with FCP making slight inroads. everything else pales in comparison (and most of it, unusable, IMHO). And given that you can get a DV version of FCP for 299 (or 99 if you buy it w/ a machine), why would anyone use anything else?
As for post production, motion and combustion are nice, but not really industry standard. Most internal or lower end stuff is done in After Effects (often mixed with lightwave/maya/c4d/etc) while high end stuff goes to a flame/inferno suite (flame doesn't run on mac btw), or a Avid|DS or some such.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like this?
I agree. I just find it interesting that it comes up here, and not in blockbuster. Perhaps it's because in the video store, you have to make more immediate decisions, or that there is a group participating in the decision. Or, as TFA states, maybe it's a paradox of choice issue, or a high-brow, low brow issue.
But it's not as simple as you state, especially with things that aren't especially weighty decisions, such as what movie to watch. You do put Hotel Rwanda or House of Wax in your queue because you want to watch it, then it sits there because you don't, but you don't send it back because you want to watch it. Both cases are true.
To me (and thousands of marketers) the real question is: how does technology affect the decisions we make? Why do you want to watch the movie, or why do you think it will be a steaming pile of crap? (House of Wax may not be the best example in this case, since there's lots of hard evidence that it is a steaming pile of crap). What puts things in the grey area in the middle?
There isn't a culture nazi standing over anyone, but to assume that marketing and technology have no effect on purchasing decisions is naive.
easier said than done, as I said in my other post.
at least with blockbuster there was plausible deniability. "I had to return it, otherwise they'd kill me with late fees." With netflix, the only thing making you send it back unwatched is the reality that you don't really want to watch it.
The friends may have a good system there. "He made me send it back, and it was his turn to get a movie."
That's the point of the article. It's not about whether you're lazy or stupid or just not disciplined enough to watch rented movies. However, when you're given an abundant amount of choices, it's often harder to make a good decision. Add netflix's delay into the mix (what do I think I'd like to watch at some point in the future?) and it gets even harder.
Of course we want to see Hotel Rwanda, or the new almodovar film, because we are advanced, modern intellectuals. In reality, after a 12 hour day of re-factoring someone else's messy code, would you rather open a beer and collapse in front of Hotel Rwanda or Super Troopers?
The problem is netflix (and tivo) makes you confront this issue - You have to send it back and quit on it. You have to admit that you don't want to watch Hotel Rwanda. You'd rather fast forward to the "good parts" of The Girl Next Door rather than think about genocide. You are not the advanced, modern intellectual you thought you were. Who wants an existential crisis when they thought they were just renting movies? Is this horrible? probably. So is alcoholism, but i bet you didn't cringe when I opened a beer in the above paragraph.
This topic has brought out a lot of elitist viewpoints... I'm surprised. You may use Netflix perfectly. Congratulations. That's not what we were talking about. The intersting thing about this is how a fairly subtle shift in delivery method created a whole mess of problems (as well as solutions) for the end user, and ended up changing the experience for the user substantially.
Now, to really make it interesting, lets talk about the Netflix friends feature, where your friends can see what you rent and what's in your queue, as well as what you thought of it. Are you really willing to give Ultimate Fighting Championship 5 stars if that girl you've got your eye on is going to find out?
Flickr is profitable. So are you saying they won't be microsoft? That's probably true. Are you saying craigslist will? That's probably not.
8 52866
o fitable
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=179294&cid=14
http://www.flickr.com/forums/help/9191/?search=pr
You have a good point - putting media onto the Tivo (ie DVDs) is something you're going to have a problem with. My point is that the tivo does quite a lot, quite well, with almost 0 config.
c oming-in-2006/
As for cablecard, the 1.0 implementation was pitiful. 2.0 will be slightly better, and OCAP shows promise. It's definitely not going away. And the good news for all of us is that cablecard tuner cards (as well as satellite cards for DirecTV) should ship some time this year. It's still a good move by sharp - Cable card in an expensive display is a dumb idea. You want sharp providing your PVR/PPV/guide software? There's gonna be a box plugged into it somewhere - put the cablecard in that.
http://www.opencable.com/ocap/
http://www.hdbeat.com/2005/10/19/cable-cards-2-0-
You can get a tivo with a DVD burner built it (or attach one) or transfer the videos to your (windows-only) laptop, and do many of the other net things you're describing (weather, photos, music, netflix, etc). The only real differences are SIP videophone, visualizations, and full web browser. Are those different enough to be worth the extra money and time?
Plus, the series 3 is shipping this fall with dual HD cablecard tuners...
tivo apps: http://www.tivo.com/4.9.11.asp
Did you miss the announcement of the dual core mac mini with the GMA 950 chip? and the recent update of EyeTV that supports 1080i on the mini?
i cles/viewarticle.jsp?id=38271
http://hometheater.consumerelectronicsnet.com/art
http://www.intel.com/products/chipsets/gma950/
mmm.... FUD.
Saw a segment on this DJ School on Current. Looks like a great way to get started without dropping tons on turntables. They also have a training DVD.
http://www.scratch.com/
http://www.current.tv/studio/media/1468855
OMG this game is so fun. The songs are short enough where alternating is realistic, and even dumbed down, I love playing with friends - i just concentrate more on my showmanship than my playing :) I hope that w/ guitar hero 2 you'll be able to play 2 player at different skill levels...
Donkey Konga is ridiculously fun two (or four) player as well... regardless of skill level
This is an excellent point. I like to do work in the office. I like to watch movies in the living room. Most likely, I'll need 2 boxes, and will buy boxes that suit my needs.
That said, the idea of a tivo/cable box/media center thin client that runs firefox/writely/zimbra seems like it would work for a lot of people. That gmail thing seems to be catching on, too.
Most likely, everyone here will have a destkop (or 2 or 3 or 4) for the forseeable future.
If you're a PHP/MySQL person, check out Eventum... a nice balance of ease of use and power.
http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/other/eventum/
No component out? It does have DVI (and you can get a DVI->HDMI cable), so I don't see that as a big loss. How about the ability for the average person to hook it up to a plasma, buy shows (movies) from the itunes store and stream them to the mini over wireless? with minimal setup? (If you know what MythTV is, you aren't their target market) That seems pretty damn amazing to me. And this box looks more than capable of 1080i, so that seems to future proof it at least a bit. (though that drive is damn small)
As for your TV/Text complaint - if you hooked it up to a SD set for anything other than front row, (which has giant type) you'd be right. But if you hooked it up to a HD set 1280x720 should work for most apps.
This seems like a great computer for small apts where TV/computer share a screen, or a computer to get and use normally, and then move into the living room after you upgrade in a couple years.
so... what is interesting about the media center idea again? Why is it worth the extra $549 over a tivo? ($599 over a DirecTivo R10)? (yeah, yeah, monthly fee...) or for this crowd, why not an XBMC, or a 360?
dorm rooms/small spaces? how bout a dell widescreen with tv input? i can pay to download lost? that's better than my season pass how?. I can watch stuff i got off bittorrent? i guess, but burning dvds (or putting it on the new ipod) isn't that hard. I can see pictures? bleh. ipod dock? i really want to manage my ipod on my tv? Stereo integration. I guess, but barely use my airport express (except as a wireless extender).
convergence has been the future since '92. it still bites. until the content providers (really) open up their libraries, it's not that interesting. or, if someone comes up with a really good living room app. haven't seen that yet either (besides tivo, that's amazing).
The video airport express that runs front row on my existing g5 in the other room - that seems worth 100 bucks. maybe. but that's still rumor.
we now return to your regularly scheduled reality distortion field.
The curl up under a tree, leave it on the bus arguments are spot on - for novels.
The ctrl-f comment is spot on - for tech books.
While people flog away at the first problem, why not enjoy a great solution to the second? Oreilly's Safari.
Sure, DRM, rent-not-buy, etc etc, but online errata, search, and 15 bucks a month for 10 books on the shelf is pretty fantastic. Am I really going to treasure that copy of "Javascript: The definitive guide - 4th edition"? Also, it's great for books you may not want. Am I going to use this technology on this project? Lets look at these 3 books on it. No? Oh well, let's drop them and get some others.
http://safari.oreilly.com/
... it's licensing, production, and demand.
BBC did multiple audio streams for their soccer games years ago - you could choose between the vanilla TV commentators, or get the BBC radio feeds from either stream. They could do this, because they owned them all. Have fun working out deals with all the stations that have local NFL/NBA radio rights. Or finding good commentators. (If i want drunken hooligans, i'll invite my friends over.)
As for the multiple angles, i'm sure this will take off in a huge way just like it did for DVD. Have you ever seen a control room for a live event? Have you seen how haggard the producer looks, scrambling trying to cut to the best shot? Is that how you want to watch sports? Do you really think that you, half drunk and half paying attention, are going to do better than well trained, highly paid professionals?
OpenTV is a middleware provider, pushing what the tech can do. The question is, do people want it? and is it worth the money to TV producers and cable or sat providers to support it?
If Google is working on a new way of doing RSS advertising, wouldn't it be fiscally irresponsible to NOT try to patent it? What if they unveil a masterful system they've been working on for a year, only to find out Yahoo patented one of the methods 3 months ago, and were forced to shelve it as the legal battle ensued?
Advertising is most (if not all) of their revenue. They'd be silly not to try to protect it. How would you feel if your google stock dropped 20% because they were trying to be nice and got screwed by a competitor?
Guns are bad, but you still shouldn't bring a knife to a gun fight.
Make the analogy. A monitor is similar to a TV. What can happen to one can happen to the other. I know it a stupid and bad analogy, but Joe User won't know the difference. If Joe's TV is threatened, maybe he'll finally act about the monitor.
You mean if their TV rights are threatened like this?
As an aside, I would like to see someone who can't differentiate between a HD and SD picture. I can understand being confused between EDTV marketing hoo ha, but you think joe SP can't tell the difference in a side by side comparison of 1080i and 480i on well calibrated monitors? The problem is getting that in your local Best Buy is tough...
works for The Office. They even have enough to spring for aerons and bose noise cancelling headphones. and i don't have to be guilted/forced into buying a muffin every 20 minutes.
for extra geek cred, joss whedon wrote 'serenity' there.
ummm... are you talking about DVD player? iDVD is for burning your own DVDs - not sure why you would want to fast forward with a remote.
And to fast forward with the remote UI, just hold down the button. Command-Shift-Arrow works nice too.
This is a great hack for all 17 people who have a DVHS recorder, have the time to do the hack, the willingness to modify their expensive gear, the money to replace it once it breaks, AND are too cheap to buy the recommended tape stock.
Frankly I was kind of hoping they would try and implement it. The outcry would have been huge, and good for the larger cause.
Yeah, I'm so glad everyone stopped watching American Idol because of the Broadcast Flag...
sure, it can. I don't think that's the point. (That's not my point anyway). I could ride my bike to argentina, but i'd rather take a plane, because speed and comfort are important to me.
I bet blender can animate really nicely. Nicer than AE? or Toon boom? or Motion? or Combustion? or even FCP?
I'm sure cinelerra has nice editing tools. Does it have slip? trim? insert/overwrite/fit-to-fill? can it do batch digitizing? quick masking? support for AE filters? programmable shortcuts?
to me, these are all things that anyone who's editing for more than a week is going to want. FCP is extremely powerful and stable and is (relatively) cheap. That's why i would recommend it...
there is a lot of heavyweight film (and video) software that runs on linux (shake comes to mind), a bunch of internal projects for specific projects (massive, for example). There's also some bad ass software for irix (inferno, flame, smoke) by discreet. but all of this is in the 50K - 1M dollar range.
not what we're talking about here. for professional editing it's an avid world, with FCP making slight inroads. everything else pales in comparison (and most of it, unusable, IMHO). And given that you can get a DV version of FCP for 299 (or 99 if you buy it w/ a machine), why would anyone use anything else?
As for post production, motion and combustion are nice, but not really industry standard. Most internal or lower end stuff is done in After Effects (often mixed with lightwave/maya/c4d/etc) while high end stuff goes to a flame/inferno suite (flame doesn't run on mac btw), or a Avid|DS or some such.
-a