Sorry, I wasn't very clear. myHTP and the ATI software (only two of the many solutions out there today) both implement the Season Pass feature. They just don't call it that. Well, myHTPC has an interface that does call it that. Nevertheless, what I meant was "big whoop" in the sense that for a PC-based PVR, this is a no-brainer.
In fact, the program guide interfaces in both these systems provide much more comprehensive search and selection features compared with TiVo.
>...they would rather just plug in the device and go.
Sure. But computers are pretty much there now. Even if you don't want to buy a Windows Media Center PC (which literally just plugs in and works), you could still get some plug-and-play box and just add an ATI AIW video card. The software basically installs itself. All you have to do is insert the CD and enter location info.
I'm just saying, PC-based PVRs are much more accessible these days. Almost as easy to setup as a TiVo, and come with obvious major feature advantages.
NOTE: This is not intended to be a troll or a TiVo slam! I'm sincerely interested in/. opinion.
There are two clear (and in my opinion superior) alternatives to TiVo currently creeping into TiVo's market share:
1. In the less-features-but-easier-to-use department, cable companies (such as mine) are offering a service they're calling "TV On Demand." With my digital cable remote (and no phone connection, and no extra service charge) I can play many shows from the recent lineup at will. And pause them, rewind them, fast forward, etc. And of course my digital cable comes with a much faster, cleaner program guide user interface. Now the downside is that the guide is somewhat lacking in features, as compared to TiVo's offering. I can't search it and it doesn't have any intelligence for making suggestions or auto-scheduling.
2. Which brings me to the second alternative. I also have an ATI AIW 9600 Pro TV tuner card in a PC. This PC is hooked to my TV. I run myHTPC for the guide/scheduling/recording features, an ATI's new Easylook UI for actual TV viewing. The two work together seemlessly. This gives me *all* the features of TiVo (except season passes, big whoop), plus a whole lot more. And I don't pay a monthly service charge.
Which brings me to my question: isn't TiVo just a niche product that really should only be used by folks with an antenna feed or analog cable feed who don't have the savvy to set up a PC next to their TV? Isn't its current success due largely to clever marketing and a small window of market opportunity that they've now artificially prolonged? That is, I think there was an argument for TiVo back when it was introduced, but isn't that argument substantially weaker today?
> But I won't have a room that is completely dominated by a huge TV.
Dude, what I'm saying is that with a reasonable-sized plasma the room is definitely NOT dominated by the TV. But you also get a pleasant picture.
A decent-sized plasma TV (but not TOO big) doesn't automatically turn a room into a "tv-watching zombie room." That's strictly predicated upon the behavior of the inhabitants.
I've got the AIW 9600 Pro. Works great. No propblems. Great for games too. I'm not a big gamer, but I really like Call of Duty, which is pretty demanding graphically. Runs great on the 9600.
The only caveat is that ATI's software, while it is improving, isn't that great. Most significantly their on-screen guide software (GuidePlus) sucks. Thank goodness for myHTPC. Works great. Cool-ass guide UI. And it transparently integrates with ATI's new EasyLook TV UI.
> I'm not really interested in having a TV that ownz my living room...
That's why you get a smallish (42" or so) flat-panel plasma. The suckers are only about 6 inches deep. If anything, it de-emphasizes the television GREATLY. I've re-claimed several square feet of space in each of my dens and bedrooms and whatnot.
And it greatly expands your TV furniture options. You can switch to cool pedestal-type pieces, e.g. relatively small two-drawer open-top chests and things, as oppposed to giant domineering armoirs or their (in my opinion) ugly "modern" alternatives.
For the tunes you might check out Media Center. I've been using it for a couple of years now (since the days when it was called "Media Jukebox") to store and catalog all of my music. I can't even remember the last time I played an actual CD. It has OK visualizations, but its library management is the best I've found (smokes WMP and that MusicMatch crap). And it's pretty cheap.
Also, regarding your wireless keyboard. I use an RF Logitech one, and it intermittently disconnects too. It's weird. It's got a combo mouse/keyboard receiver unit, and the mouse always works fine. But the keyboard for some reason drops it's connection. Usually even resetting it (pushing the little red button) doesn't fix the situation. I usually have to reboot. Maybe there's a driver update or something. I dunno. Just a heads-up.
I'm a Comcast customer in the metro Richmond, Virginia area. It's what I'm surfing right this moment, actually:-).
We have several alternative broadband providers, and neither me nor any of my fellow terabyte-a-minute consuming buds has heard so much as a peep. I dare them to complain to me. I'd switch so fast their heads would spin like a Russian ice skater.
Plus many of my friends and I also have our phone and digital cable through them. So there might be additional incentive for them to be nice to their "good" customers, but I'd be surprised if their CRM tracking is that granular.
But why would you stream the encoded DVD **FROM** the TV to a computer (for storage)?? Why wouldn't you just put the DVD directly into the DVD player on the computer? It might be a little more useful to stream an encoded TV broadcast to an arbitrary computer, but even that is of limited practical value, since we now have the magic combination of 802.11g and powerful, inexpensive TV tuner cards (and related software).
There's a growing segment of the Joe Electronics Consumer population that's currently leapfrogging right over it. Most plasma TVs these days have an RGB input (standard VGA plug).
My 42" Samsung knockoff can do 1024x768, no problems. Even text looks great from the couch. The PC is tucked incospicuously out of the way. Although I have a regular progressive scan Sony DVD Player hooked directly to the TV, the PC of course has a DVD player, in addition to an 802.11g connection, an ATI AIW TV tuner card, and a giant hard drive.
Granted, the price point is a little higher, but the feature set is a LOT higher.
Does anyone have any info on the development progress of electromagnetic pulse weapons (nuclear or otherwise)? Goldeneye-type stuff? It would seem something like this could turn a battalion of robot soldiers or field of robotic support dogs into a pile of titanium scrap.
Hrmm. A little googling revealed this rather thorough article in the Crypt Newsletter that seems to indicate that any claims these weapons are viable is hogwash.
But I don't understand...how do I right-click? What's the magic manuever to access the context menus?? The magic keystrokes?
Oh I see...it's right here in the manual: You have to hold down G-A-Y while while you click. There we go. Now why do I all of a sudden want to go dig that black turtleneck out of my closet and put on those old Dieter glasses??
Sheesh. Let me put this one to bed before it snowballs into a big cloud of impenetrable Times New Roman.
I'm tempted to shout, but I won't. Don't make me shout!
"Heretrix" is a term most often seen in a geneaology context. It denotes a chick who is designated to inherit (or has already inherited) the estate of someone. Example sentence: "Captain Dork married Jack Dipstick's heretrix Gassy Lucy."
In most cases the word "heretrix" connotes that there was something significant about the inherited estate, e.g. lots of cash.
A note to all you religious fanatics (Windows/Linux, GNOME/KDE, Konqueror/Nautilus, Catholic/Calvinist, whatever...):
1. I've run (and developed for) Windows and Linux in parallel on many machines with all sorts of hardware configurations since the days before you could even install Linux on a hard drive.
2. Trust me, I know GNOME is not the only WM/DE for Linux. But it is (a) the most popular truly free project and (b) the one that seems most clearly positioned to break into the lead (cf. Sun's and HP's endorsements).
[ASIDE: My personal belief is that in this case VHS (GNOME) is going to beat Betamax (KDE) again because of the militant nature of the Open Source Movement, not by virtue of the GNOME project's intrinsic attributes. Don't get me wrong, I have positive things to say about both DEs, but I think KDE's developers and strategies are more mature and tend to produce more stable, more feature-rich results in any given period of time. That is KDE has the better track record and I believe it should be rewarded in kind. But it most likely won't be because of the perceived stigma of QT.]
3. KDE has been designed from the beginning as an unabashed Windows lookalike. If KDE has good UI attributes, it's because Aaron Seigo et al have faithfully copied Windows.
4. Yes, I have wished for true symlinks in Windows for a long time. Directory shortcuts almost do the job, and certainly suffice in this domain for the great majority of users. But true symlinks have been a noticeable oversight.
[ASIDE: You've been able to follow directory shortcuts in the common file dialog from the beginning; any shortcomings in this arena have been application-specific, not a bug in the OS.]
5. The thesis of this reply thread was stated in the last sentence of my post: "[Linux is significantly less viable] as a desktop productivity OS." This doesn't speak to the excellent ways in which Linux fills various other OS roles. I'm just talking about productivity; e.g. word processing, presentation creation, ERP environments, etc.
6. The problem with Stallman, the Open Source Movement, and most Pentacostals is the zealotry. Chill out, would ya? You know, it's the whole Kantian duty thing. You feel compelled to firebomb the homes Nautilus developers because you just think you =SHOULD=. No, be logical. Exploit every opportunity from the perspective of =CAUSALITY=. Dust off your thinking cap and start wearing it again. Think for yourself.
In summary, do what works. I think Windows works better for productivity.
Right. It doesn't matter who stole it first. It's still about two years behind the rest of the world. Sheesh.
I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with M$ too, but at the same time I can't help but note that people getting jazzed about a common file selection dialog box really puts Linux in perspective regarding its viability as a desktop productivty OS.
I think it's very interesting that as we get closer to being able to reproduce the capabilities of human intelligence, we consistently return to the basics of our 7th-grade Life Sciences classes (apologies for the American-centric illustration).
And actually, for all of the Apple community's masturbatory self-petting, I just don't get it. To me, style is more than chrome and colors.
1. I find it decidedly UN-sexy to be chained to a gagillion nerd boxes. Give me my feature-packed calendar, awesome phone-homer, excellent portable gamer, 512 MB SD card-toting, OGG/MP3 playing, keyboard wielding, 70 kbps always-on Internetting, pocket-fitting Treo 600 for most of the hours in most of my days.
2. When I make the ergonomic investment to tote around a decent quantity of tunes, I want a decent device. I might even pay, =GASP=, $300 for it! But the thing should kick ass. Like my speedy Archos Jukebox running the sweet Open Source Rockbox OS.
And groups.google.com is useful not only for us software developers, but also for ALL of us who fall into that category called "interest in all things technical, bordering on dangerous obsession." For chrissake, I figured out how to program my sprinkler system on Usenet.
Reference number 12 in Cringely's recent Predictions column:
"12)...What IS guaranteed is that Apple will introduce a cheaper iPod using flash memory instead of a hard drive. Oh, and for next Christmas expect a video iPod, which is essentially a hard drive with a dedicated DV encoder/decoder and a FireWire interface...The logical follow-on from Apple would be a complete QuickTime video camera, but I don't see that until 2005."
He doesn't even mentioned this Microsoft box, which a lot of people have known about for some time now. Hmmm.
Slashdot Mirror
> ...I got better things to do than wabble wibble with
> the uber-kibble kobble.
I hear that can make you blind anyway. And cause hair to grow on your palms.
Sorry, I wasn't very clear. myHTP and the ATI software (only two of the many solutions out there today) both implement the Season Pass feature. They just don't call it that. Well, myHTPC has an interface that does call it that. Nevertheless, what I meant was "big whoop" in the sense that for a PC-based PVR, this is a no-brainer.
In fact, the program guide interfaces in both these systems provide much more comprehensive search and selection features compared with TiVo.
> ...they would rather just plug in the device and go.
Sure. But computers are pretty much there now. Even if you don't want to buy a Windows Media Center PC (which literally just plugs in and works), you could still get some plug-and-play box and just add an ATI AIW video card. The software basically installs itself. All you have to do is insert the CD and enter location info.
I'm just saying, PC-based PVRs are much more accessible these days. Almost as easy to setup as a TiVo, and come with obvious major feature advantages.
> #1: Cable PVR. Sure. If you have cable, and your...blah...blah
You obviously didn't read my message.
NOTE: This is not intended to be a troll or a TiVo slam! I'm sincerely interested in /. opinion.
There are two clear (and in my opinion superior) alternatives to TiVo currently creeping into TiVo's market share:
1. In the less-features-but-easier-to-use department, cable companies (such as mine) are offering a service they're calling "TV On Demand." With my digital cable remote (and no phone connection, and no extra service charge) I can play many shows from the recent lineup at will. And pause them, rewind them, fast forward, etc. And of course my digital cable comes with a much faster, cleaner program guide user interface. Now the downside is that the guide is somewhat lacking in features, as compared to TiVo's offering. I can't search it and it doesn't have any intelligence for making suggestions or auto-scheduling.
2. Which brings me to the second alternative. I also have an ATI AIW 9600 Pro TV tuner card in a PC. This PC is hooked to my TV. I run myHTPC for the guide/scheduling/recording features, an ATI's new Easylook UI for actual TV viewing. The two work together seemlessly. This gives me *all* the features of TiVo (except season passes, big whoop), plus a whole lot more. And I don't pay a monthly service charge.
Which brings me to my question: isn't TiVo just a niche product that really should only be used by folks with an antenna feed or analog cable feed who don't have the savvy to set up a PC next to their TV? Isn't its current success due largely to clever marketing and a small window of market opportunity that they've now artificially prolonged? That is, I think there was an argument for TiVo back when it was introduced, but isn't that argument substantially weaker today?
> But I won't have a room that is completely dominated by a huge TV.
Dude, what I'm saying is that with a reasonable-sized plasma the room is definitely NOT dominated by the TV. But you also get a pleasant picture.
A decent-sized plasma TV (but not TOO big) doesn't automatically turn a room into a "tv-watching zombie room." That's strictly predicated upon the behavior of the inhabitants.
I've got the AIW 9600 Pro. Works great. No propblems. Great for games too. I'm not a big gamer, but I really like Call of Duty, which is pretty demanding graphically. Runs great on the 9600.
The only caveat is that ATI's software, while it is improving, isn't that great. Most significantly their on-screen guide software (GuidePlus) sucks. Thank goodness for myHTPC. Works great. Cool-ass guide UI. And it transparently integrates with ATI's new EasyLook TV UI.
> I'm not really interested in having a TV that ownz my living room...
That's why you get a smallish (42" or so) flat-panel plasma. The suckers are only about 6 inches deep. If anything, it de-emphasizes the television GREATLY. I've re-claimed several square feet of space in each of my dens and bedrooms and whatnot.
And it greatly expands your TV furniture options. You can switch to cool pedestal-type pieces, e.g. relatively small two-drawer open-top chests and things, as oppposed to giant domineering armoirs or their (in my opinion) ugly "modern" alternatives.
For the tunes you might check out Media Center. I've been using it for a couple of years now (since the days when it was called "Media Jukebox") to store and catalog all of my music. I can't even remember the last time I played an actual CD. It has OK visualizations, but its library management is the best I've found (smokes WMP and that MusicMatch crap). And it's pretty cheap.
Also, regarding your wireless keyboard. I use an RF Logitech one, and it intermittently disconnects too. It's weird. It's got a combo mouse/keyboard receiver unit, and the mouse always works fine. But the keyboard for some reason drops it's connection. Usually even resetting it (pushing the little red button) doesn't fix the situation. I usually have to reboot. Maybe there's a driver update or something. I dunno. Just a heads-up.
I'm a Comcast customer in the metro Richmond, Virginia area. It's what I'm surfing right this moment, actually :-).
We have several alternative broadband providers, and neither me nor any of my fellow terabyte-a-minute consuming buds has heard so much as a peep. I dare them to complain to me. I'd switch so fast their heads would spin like a Russian ice skater.
Plus many of my friends and I also have our phone and digital cable through them. So there might be additional incentive for them to be nice to their "good" customers, but I'd be surprised if their CRM tracking is that granular.
"Please mod this up as funny."
Motion seconded.
But why would you stream the encoded DVD **FROM** the TV to a computer (for storage)?? Why wouldn't you just put the DVD directly into the DVD player on the computer? It might be a little more useful to stream an encoded TV broadcast to an arbitrary computer, but even that is of limited practical value, since we now have the magic combination of 802.11g and powerful, inexpensive TV tuner cards (and related software).
There's a growing segment of the Joe Electronics Consumer population that's currently leapfrogging right over it. Most plasma TVs these days have an RGB input (standard VGA plug).
My 42" Samsung knockoff can do 1024x768, no problems. Even text looks great from the couch. The PC is tucked incospicuously out of the way. Although I have a regular progressive scan Sony DVD Player hooked directly to the TV, the PC of course has a DVD player, in addition to an 802.11g connection, an ATI AIW TV tuner card, and a giant hard drive.
Granted, the price point is a little higher, but the feature set is a LOT higher.
Luddite alert!
Does anyone have any info on the development progress of electromagnetic pulse weapons (nuclear or otherwise)? Goldeneye-type stuff? It would seem something like this could turn a battalion of robot soldiers or field of robotic support dogs into a pile of titanium scrap.
Hrmm. A little googling revealed this rather thorough article in the Crypt Newsletter that seems to indicate that any claims these weapons are viable is hogwash.
So bring on the robots! Woo-hoo!
But I don't understand...how do I right-click? What's the magic manuever to access the context menus?? The magic keystrokes?
Oh I see...it's right here in the manual: You have to hold down G-A-Y while while you click. There we go. Now why do I all of a sudden want to go dig that black turtleneck out of my closet and put on those old Dieter glasses??
Touch my monkey!
Sheesh. Let me put this one to bed before it snowballs into a big cloud of impenetrable Times New Roman.
:-)
I'm tempted to shout, but I won't. Don't make me shout!
"Heretrix" is a term most often seen in a geneaology context. It denotes a chick who is designated to inherit (or has already inherited) the estate of someone. Example sentence: "Captain Dork married Jack Dipstick's heretrix Gassy Lucy."
In most cases the word "heretrix" connotes that there was something significant about the inherited estate, e.g. lots of cash.
Now shut up already!
I was wondering the same thing. Last night I posted a cool article about weird slime on Mars, and it hasn't even been rejected yet.
A note to all you religious fanatics (Windows/Linux, GNOME/KDE, Konqueror/Nautilus, Catholic/Calvinist, whatever...):
1. I've run (and developed for) Windows and Linux in parallel on many machines with all sorts of hardware configurations since the days before you could even install Linux on a hard drive.
2. Trust me, I know GNOME is not the only WM/DE for Linux. But it is (a) the most popular truly free project and (b) the one that seems most clearly positioned to break into the lead (cf. Sun's and HP's endorsements).
[ASIDE: My personal belief is that in this case VHS (GNOME) is going to beat Betamax (KDE) again because of the militant nature of the Open Source Movement, not by virtue of the GNOME project's intrinsic attributes. Don't get me wrong, I have positive things to say about both DEs, but I think KDE's developers and strategies are more mature and tend to produce more stable, more feature-rich results in any given period of time. That is KDE has the better track record and I believe it should be rewarded in kind. But it most likely won't be because of the perceived stigma of QT.]
3. KDE has been designed from the beginning as an unabashed Windows lookalike. If KDE has good UI attributes, it's because Aaron Seigo et al have faithfully copied Windows.
4. Yes, I have wished for true symlinks in Windows for a long time. Directory shortcuts almost do the job, and certainly suffice in this domain for the great majority of users. But true symlinks have been a noticeable oversight.
[ASIDE: You've been able to follow directory shortcuts in the common file dialog from the beginning; any shortcomings in this arena have been application-specific, not a bug in the OS.]
5. The thesis of this reply thread was stated in the last sentence of my post: "[Linux is significantly less viable] as a desktop productivity OS." This doesn't speak to the excellent ways in which Linux fills various other OS roles. I'm just talking about productivity; e.g. word processing, presentation creation, ERP environments, etc.
6. The problem with Stallman, the Open Source Movement, and most Pentacostals is the zealotry. Chill out, would ya? You know, it's the whole Kantian duty thing. You feel compelled to firebomb the homes Nautilus developers because you just think you =SHOULD=. No, be logical. Exploit every opportunity from the perspective of =CAUSALITY=. Dust off your thinking cap and start wearing it again. Think for yourself.
In summary, do what works. I think Windows works better for productivity.
Right. It doesn't matter who stole it first. It's still about two years behind the rest of the world. Sheesh.
I have a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with M$ too, but at the same time I can't help but note that people getting jazzed about a common file selection dialog box really puts Linux in perspective regarding its viability as a desktop productivty OS.
No wait--it's Mother Teresa!
I think it's very interesting that as we get closer to being able to reproduce the capabilities of human intelligence, we consistently return to the basics of our 7th-grade Life Sciences classes (apologies for the American-centric illustration).
Carbon, carbon, carbon....
For (another) example, eyes are made of carbon.
...Treos and Archos Jukeboxes for substance.
And actually, for all of the Apple community's masturbatory self-petting, I just don't get it. To me, style is more than chrome and colors.
1. I find it decidedly UN-sexy to be chained to a gagillion nerd boxes. Give me my feature-packed calendar, awesome phone-homer, excellent portable gamer, 512 MB SD card-toting, OGG/MP3 playing, keyboard wielding, 70 kbps always-on Internetting, pocket-fitting Treo 600 for most of the hours in most of my days.
2. When I make the ergonomic investment to tote around a decent quantity of tunes, I want a decent device. I might even pay, =GASP=, $300 for it! But the thing should kick ass. Like my speedy Archos Jukebox running the sweet Open Source Rockbox OS.
Expensive, proprietary, no-feature iPod?! Hahahahahaha....
Archos and Rockbox, slashdotted before, by the way.
And groups.google.com is useful not only for us software developers, but also for ALL of us who fall into that category called "interest in all things technical, bordering on dangerous obsession." For chrissake, I figured out how to program my sprinkler system on Usenet.
And speaking of Christ: I don't pray. I google.
And please, everyone who hasn't already, have fun in the labs.
To wit: define dense
Reference number 12 in Cringely's recent Predictions column:
...What IS guaranteed is that Apple will introduce a cheaper iPod using flash memory instead of a hard drive. Oh, and for next Christmas expect a video iPod, which is essentially a hard drive with a dedicated DV encoder/decoder and a FireWire interface...The logical follow-on from Apple would be a complete QuickTime video camera, but I don't see that until 2005."
"12)
He doesn't even mentioned this Microsoft box, which a lot of people have known about for some time now. Hmmm.