"Maybe Woz tried to give Cap'n a hand up a few too many times and got tired of it"
That's not being a friend. If the help you're giving someone isn't working, try something new. There is always help for someone. I don't need to know you OR your friend - who I'm not even talking about - this is not deducing motives, but actions. Someone stopping helping their friend FOR ANY REASON is not being as good a friend as they can. Simple. It doesn't matter if one friend is Hitler and the other Mother Theresa - motives, feelings, pizza preference, whatever - it doesn't come into it:)
If the help you're giving them doesn't seem to be doing the trick, give them different help! If they've got a place to live, a job, and they still don't turn up for work, get them some counselling. Get them the help they need to keep going to the job. Friends don't just shrug their shoulders, go "meh", and walk away. They don't "get tired". They keep helping. What you described is not a friend.
Not at the moment, but for that price you can use your existing equipment. Digital convergance only happens when synergistical technolgies have been tried and tested in the field. Convergance is powered by market demand, not technological sooth-saying or industry masturbation. Most people already have a tuner, a DVD player and a DVR. The bit they're missing is getting their computer in on the action, and that's what these STBs are doing. Once the mix is proved successful, look for it coming to a sub-$500 set-top-box near you:)
I made a custom interface on my phone to give a list of all my movies and TV shows, so I just use that to queue up media. It also has a remote control interface for my media player of choice (zoom player), so that's all I need. Decent bluetooth keyboards are a bitch to find, though - good luck!:)
I've been using them for years!:) I hear what you're saying, and now I think these barriers are rapidly falling away. Everyone I know can download at 130KB/s, and everyone I know has the ability to plug a STB into their network and TV and stream movies directly from wheverthey fancy. The weakness of bricks'n'mortar rental stores are being highlighted more and more each day, and services like this really emphasize the shortcomings we all took for granted.
VideoLan as the source, with Darwin Streaming Server as the actual server (it has better network support - VideoLan, while phenomenal, has some really REALLY peculiar quirks when being talked to over the internet, especially with RTP and RTSP. VideoLan does snappy transcoding on the fly, so I can turn any movies I have in whatever format into, say, mpeg4 audio/video at under 300kb/s, or even flash at 150kb/s, all resized to common dimensions. I wrote a script to generate a VLM config file, writing in all the sources and transcoding instructions, so I can make all my media externally-visible immediately. Obviously if I'm on the same network I can just use a network share - RTSP is only for remote viewing:)
No, mac doesn't. Windows's DirectShow-based media playback is far more simple than the OSX competitor. Just install one system codec, and any application that cares to use DirectShow (hint: all of them) can play the video back. I've fiddled around with codecs on OSX, and it's nowhere near as intuitive or, indeed, fast.
Because there are HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of people who the service already works with. Hypothetically, if it cost them $1m to develop the system for Windows to get them 100,000,000 users, then that's 100 users per dollar of development investment. Now if they have to spend another $500,000 to get it working on the Mac (developers, testing, support, etc.) just to get 1,000,000 users, then they're getting only 2 users per dollar of investment. That's why if something costs a LOT more to port to Macs (*cough* games *cough*), then they rarely make it, and if they do, usually woefully late
Macs are a tiny, tiny fraction of the market. Windows is a massive, massive majority. That means Windows is the primary target and everything else is secondary. That's how markets work.
To stream to your TV, use one of the many STBs out there that do what you want, only they cost a LOT less than a Mac mini. HDTV all the way, digital audio, etc. It's the same as having it plugged in to your high-end AV equipment, only wireless:) nVidia launched one at CES, which costs $349, and does everything. It's OSX and Linux compatible, too:)
As for taking it to a friend's house, unless he doesn't have internet, you just have to show up and you've brought it, and all other NetFlix content, with you. Watch it on the road? Sure - there you might have something. It'd be cool if NetFlix allowed you to store it on your computer for a while.
Many people have already integrated their PCs into their home theatres. Those who want real flexibility with their media have done this already, as it's a lot easier keeping DVDs on hard disks than on individual, can't-be-played-when-in-the-box, discs. I download a lot of HD video, captures of the actual MPEG streams in general, and if my PC wasn't connected to my home theatre, I couldn't watch it. PCs having true 1080p output (and even greater) and 7.1 DTS/THX sound means they're not a compromise when it comes to media playback. Just wait - soon your PC will be in your home theatre, not some beige box stuck to the side only partly living up to its full potential.
If you choose an OS that is not nearly as widely adopted as the market leader, and you have to expect to not get everything released for your platform. Things are improving, but they're certainly not there yet.
Then you're fucked. This service is not for you.
If 1 & 2 were fixed, you'd use an s-video lead, as most graphics cards have s-video outs on them these days. I've not been without one for over 5 years, and I wasn't even trying to keep it.
To watch it instantly, and if the source of the video is HD-DVD or Blu-Ray, and it's encoded using H264, the quality could actually be comparable or better than DVD for those with faster connections. Nothing's stopping people from renting DVDs if they don't want this:)
You don't have to use the smaller window. If you'd watched the video, you'd see that was the plug-in running in a window. It can run full-screen just fine.
How dare they not waste their time spending money on development just to target a subsection of the 10% of the market not using Windows! Bastards! Niche OS = niche support. Them's the breaks, unfortunately.
I hear what you're saying, I really do. I use a notebook, which is easy for me. Before I used my notebook, I used my PC and a long video lead - no problems there. The PC is in another room, so there's even less clutter than a DVD:)
For those who don't have a computer to stream to, there are a host of STBs that allow streaming across your network. If these feeds are RTSP, then they can most likely be brought directly to those boxes.
And as for taking your media with you, I take ALL my media wherever I go, as I have an RTSP streaming server set up at home, which can broadcast or stream selected media across my internet connection, transcoding to whatever video/audio codecs and bitrates required. That's a LOT easier than carrying around 200 DVDs, containing the only copies of my actual movies.
Optical media is sooo last century it's not even funny. The answer is staring us all in the face - networks. Having a movie on a physical disc makes the movie less useful. We get pissed off with DRM, but then there are even more techincal barriers imposed on our fair use by the actual media. The network alleviates those problems in an instant - it does require a wee bit of flexibility on the up-taker's part, but then every single technology did too.
The display issue noted in the video is due to the beta-nature of the service. Most people have megabit+ connections, and that's fine for downloading a video. The fact you can browse, select and play all without getting up makes this worlds apart from movies-over-mail. I guess people said the same thing about email - it's not the same as writing an actual letter with an actual pen, or even CDs/Vinyl/cassettes when mp3s became popular. People want convenience, and that's what this is. As for watching it in a web browser, the plug-in allows for full-screen playback, so there is no difference in experience compared to a DVD player. Want to bring up remote controls? Well, PCs have far more remote-controlability than your DVD player. I can't control my DVD player directly with my phone or a second computer, but I can control my PC in such a fashion. Imagine the whole family not having to fight over the remote control - just reach for your phone, and you have your remote. Or PDA. Or notebook. Or whatever. PCs have HD-outputs now, 7.1 THX-certified sound, so there is no compromise.
I'm not having a pop at you - clearly the whole digital media "revolution" (*barf* - sorry) hasn't clicked with you yet. I had my epiphany back in 2002 when I downloaded some movies on my DSL connection, and watched them on the TV in my bedroom. Since then I've put all my [legally bought] media on my computer, so I can take advantage of the now ethereal movies - no media to scratch, nothing to get lost, and I get to control where and how the media is watched. I like to watch my videos when I'm at work (downtime, lunchtime, no-boss-time, etc.), and I can do that using RTP over RTSP (or even HTTP), transcoding them automatically to suit bandwidth limitations. That is impossible to do with DVDs, and carrying them all around with me is not possible.
Basically, I'm saying that this stuff looks to be inevitable. There are SOOO many bonusses, and the only drawbacks seemingly appeal only to luddite sensibilities, which I don't mean as an insult.
DVDs, HD-DVDs, BluRay, whatever - these are the last gasps of optical media, and in fact, media as we know it. Discs are sooo 1960s. The internet, and networks in general, offer the same benefits, with none of the draw-backs.
S-Video cables are that difficult to use? Every computer I've owned in the past 5 years has had an S-Video TV-out on it. Every TV I've had has either a composite or S-Video in. You don't need Windows Media Centre or Front Row to watch movies on your TV. I just plug my crappy old notebook (with no battery, a broken lid catch, an external WiFi card and a slow hard disk) into either my small TV or projector. I can use the aforementioned S-Video, or even VGA, to do the job. Putting your computer's display through a TV is one of the easiest things you can do with a computer. And, the MPAA doesn't give a shit, as it's an auxilary monitor. It might have Macrovision on it, but you can still watch it perfectly. Just no recordy-recordy, that's all.
But for 90% of the market, whether a codec is proprietary or not is of little consequence. Closed and open work just as well on Windows, and until that changes, that's the way it's going to be. Linux users don't have enough clout to change that, unfortunately.
I knew about this, as being from Britain and being in school in 1995, we were told about Leah Betts, a girl who died from drinking waaay too much water after doing ecstasy. She drank 7L (1.9 gal) of water in 90 minutes, and died as a consequence. Predictably, schools and news shows took the view of "ooh look ecstasy is dangerous!" instead of "lack of education about ecstasy is dangerous". Fascism.
Close, but that only defined keywords in an HTML document. How would that apply to an image, for example? Or an mp3? etc. Having one standard for one file type is not a standard when considered against all other file types.
Wiis are selling out, and are often sold out. PS3s are sitting on shelves, not Wiis. It's not just a case of them never being there - they do arrive, then they get sold very quickly indeed. But nice troll anyways.
I bought my phone from Carphone Warehouse (SE W810i), and they unlocked it for me before sending it out, as a bonus. I lost NO functionality, I just get the option of switching out the SIM and using the phone on another network. That's the only possible reason it's locked - to keep it on Cingular.
It's apple's fanboys! They don't have to use facts, it seems. Arguing something is so seems to be enough when you're not arguing from fact. I appreciate not all mac fans are this ridiculous - heck, I know a lot, and they're nice folks - it's just some of these guys seem to think they owe Apple something, to the point they straight-up lie to defend it. Fanboyism personified. Sorry if this looks like a troll or whatever.
Safari's coders regularly make changes to the javascript engine making some more intensive applications fail, or straight-up not work at all. Safari is a great browser for HTML coders, but not so good for any other web developer.
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"Maybe Woz tried to give Cap'n a hand up a few too many times and got tired of it"
That's not being a friend. If the help you're giving someone isn't working, try something new. There is always help for someone. I don't need to know you OR your friend - who I'm not even talking about - this is not deducing motives, but actions. Someone stopping helping their friend FOR ANY REASON is not being as good a friend as they can. Simple. It doesn't matter if one friend is Hitler and the other Mother Theresa - motives, feelings, pizza preference, whatever - it doesn't come into itJust to play the devil's advocate - nothing personal :)
"why pay for food when you can get it for free *and* keep perfectly good food from spoiling?"
Because maybe someone who can't afford food needs it? Otherwise, by your logic, soup kitchens should be full of rich people.
Back to the topic - I say leave the fella alone. Make sure he's cool, got what he wants, and let him be. Respect him - don't make him into a sideshow.If the help you're giving them doesn't seem to be doing the trick, give them different help! If they've got a place to live, a job, and they still don't turn up for work, get them some counselling. Get them the help they need to keep going to the job. Friends don't just shrug their shoulders, go "meh", and walk away. They don't "get tired". They keep helping. What you described is not a friend.
Not at the moment, but for that price you can use your existing equipment. Digital convergance only happens when synergistical technolgies have been tried and tested in the field. Convergance is powered by market demand, not technological sooth-saying or industry masturbation. Most people already have a tuner, a DVD player and a DVR. The bit they're missing is getting their computer in on the action, and that's what these STBs are doing. Once the mix is proved successful, look for it coming to a sub-$500 set-top-box near you :)
I made a custom interface on my phone to give a list of all my movies and TV shows, so I just use that to queue up media. It also has a remote control interface for my media player of choice (zoom player), so that's all I need. Decent bluetooth keyboards are a bitch to find, though - good luck! :)
I've been using them for years! :) I hear what you're saying, and now I think these barriers are rapidly falling away. Everyone I know can download at 130KB/s, and everyone I know has the ability to plug a STB into their network and TV and stream movies directly from wheverthey fancy. The weakness of bricks'n'mortar rental stores are being highlighted more and more each day, and services like this really emphasize the shortcomings we all took for granted.
VideoLan as the source, with Darwin Streaming Server as the actual server (it has better network support - VideoLan, while phenomenal, has some really REALLY peculiar quirks when being talked to over the internet, especially with RTP and RTSP. VideoLan does snappy transcoding on the fly, so I can turn any movies I have in whatever format into, say, mpeg4 audio/video at under 300kb/s, or even flash at 150kb/s, all resized to common dimensions. I wrote a script to generate a VLM config file, writing in all the sources and transcoding instructions, so I can make all my media externally-visible immediately. Obviously if I'm on the same network I can just use a network share - RTSP is only for remote viewing :)
- No, mac doesn't. Windows's DirectShow-based media playback is far more simple than the OSX competitor. Just install one system codec, and any application that cares to use DirectShow (hint: all of them) can play the video back. I've fiddled around with codecs on OSX, and it's nowhere near as intuitive or, indeed, fast.
- Because there are HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of people who the service already works with. Hypothetically, if it cost them $1m to develop the system for Windows to get them 100,000,000 users, then that's 100 users per dollar of development investment. Now if they have to spend another $500,000 to get it working on the Mac (developers, testing, support, etc.) just to get 1,000,000 users, then they're getting only 2 users per dollar of investment. That's why if something costs a LOT more to port to Macs (*cough* games *cough*), then they rarely make it, and if they do, usually woefully late
Macs are a tiny, tiny fraction of the market. Windows is a massive, massive majority. That means Windows is the primary target and everything else is secondary. That's how markets work.To stream to your TV, use one of the many STBs out there that do what you want, only they cost a LOT less than a Mac mini. HDTV all the way, digital audio, etc. It's the same as having it plugged in to your high-end AV equipment, only wireless :) nVidia launched one at CES, which costs $349, and does everything. It's OSX and Linux compatible, too :)
As for taking it to a friend's house, unless he doesn't have internet, you just have to show up and you've brought it, and all other NetFlix content, with you. Watch it on the road? Sure - there you might have something. It'd be cool if NetFlix allowed you to store it on your computer for a while.
You can stream up to 1080p H264 with 7.1 surround over the internet. That has been possible for a while now. And, fyi, that's better than DVD quality.
Score: 1, Living-in-the-late-90s
Many people have already integrated their PCs into their home theatres. Those who want real flexibility with their media have done this already, as it's a lot easier keeping DVDs on hard disks than on individual, can't-be-played-when-in-the-box, discs. I download a lot of HD video, captures of the actual MPEG streams in general, and if my PC wasn't connected to my home theatre, I couldn't watch it. PCs having true 1080p output (and even greater) and 7.1 DTS/THX sound means they're not a compromise when it comes to media playback. Just wait - soon your PC will be in your home theatre, not some beige box stuck to the side only partly living up to its full potential.
Score: 1, What-do-you-expect?
How dare they not waste their time spending money on development just to target a subsection of the 10% of the market not using Windows! Bastards! Niche OS = niche support. Them's the breaks, unfortunately.
I hear what you're saying, I really do. I use a notebook, which is easy for me. Before I used my notebook, I used my PC and a long video lead - no problems there. The PC is in another room, so there's even less clutter than a DVD :)
For those who don't have a computer to stream to, there are a host of STBs that allow streaming across your network. If these feeds are RTSP, then they can most likely be brought directly to those boxes.
And as for taking your media with you, I take ALL my media wherever I go, as I have an RTSP streaming server set up at home, which can broadcast or stream selected media across my internet connection, transcoding to whatever video/audio codecs and bitrates required. That's a LOT easier than carrying around 200 DVDs, containing the only copies of my actual movies.
Optical media is sooo last century it's not even funny. The answer is staring us all in the face - networks. Having a movie on a physical disc makes the movie less useful. We get pissed off with DRM, but then there are even more techincal barriers imposed on our fair use by the actual media. The network alleviates those problems in an instant - it does require a wee bit of flexibility on the up-taker's part, but then every single technology did too.
The display issue noted in the video is due to the beta-nature of the service. Most people have megabit+ connections, and that's fine for downloading a video. The fact you can browse, select and play all without getting up makes this worlds apart from movies-over-mail. I guess people said the same thing about email - it's not the same as writing an actual letter with an actual pen, or even CDs/Vinyl/cassettes when mp3s became popular. People want convenience, and that's what this is. As for watching it in a web browser, the plug-in allows for full-screen playback, so there is no difference in experience compared to a DVD player. Want to bring up remote controls? Well, PCs have far more remote-controlability than your DVD player. I can't control my DVD player directly with my phone or a second computer, but I can control my PC in such a fashion. Imagine the whole family not having to fight over the remote control - just reach for your phone, and you have your remote. Or PDA. Or notebook. Or whatever. PCs have HD-outputs now, 7.1 THX-certified sound, so there is no compromise.
I'm not having a pop at you - clearly the whole digital media "revolution" (*barf* - sorry) hasn't clicked with you yet. I had my epiphany back in 2002 when I downloaded some movies on my DSL connection, and watched them on the TV in my bedroom. Since then I've put all my [legally bought] media on my computer, so I can take advantage of the now ethereal movies - no media to scratch, nothing to get lost, and I get to control where and how the media is watched. I like to watch my videos when I'm at work (downtime, lunchtime, no-boss-time, etc.), and I can do that using RTP over RTSP (or even HTTP), transcoding them automatically to suit bandwidth limitations. That is impossible to do with DVDs, and carrying them all around with me is not possible.
Basically, I'm saying that this stuff looks to be inevitable. There are SOOO many bonusses, and the only drawbacks seemingly appeal only to luddite sensibilities, which I don't mean as an insult.
DVDs, HD-DVDs, BluRay, whatever - these are the last gasps of optical media, and in fact, media as we know it. Discs are sooo 1960s. The internet, and networks in general, offer the same benefits, with none of the draw-backs.
S-Video cables are that difficult to use? Every computer I've owned in the past 5 years has had an S-Video TV-out on it. Every TV I've had has either a composite or S-Video in. You don't need Windows Media Centre or Front Row to watch movies on your TV. I just plug my crappy old notebook (with no battery, a broken lid catch, an external WiFi card and a slow hard disk) into either my small TV or projector. I can use the aforementioned S-Video, or even VGA, to do the job. Putting your computer's display through a TV is one of the easiest things you can do with a computer. And, the MPAA doesn't give a shit, as it's an auxilary monitor. It might have Macrovision on it, but you can still watch it perfectly. Just no recordy-recordy, that's all.
But for 90% of the market, whether a codec is proprietary or not is of little consequence. Closed and open work just as well on Windows, and until that changes, that's the way it's going to be. Linux users don't have enough clout to change that, unfortunately.
Yes. That's what happens when you are in a niche market. Capitalism is a bitch, huh?
I knew about this, as being from Britain and being in school in 1995, we were told about Leah Betts, a girl who died from drinking waaay too much water after doing ecstasy. She drank 7L (1.9 gal) of water in 90 minutes, and died as a consequence. Predictably, schools and news shows took the view of "ooh look ecstasy is dangerous!" instead of "lack of education about ecstasy is dangerous". Fascism.
The traditional medieval suits of armour protected the joints. Take a peek here.
Close, but that only defined keywords in an HTML document. How would that apply to an image, for example? Or an mp3? etc. Having one standard for one file type is not a standard when considered against all other file types.
Wiis are selling out, and are often sold out. PS3s are sitting on shelves, not Wiis. It's not just a case of them never being there - they do arrive, then they get sold very quickly indeed. But nice troll anyways.
I bought my phone from Carphone Warehouse (SE W810i), and they unlocked it for me before sending it out, as a bonus. I lost NO functionality, I just get the option of switching out the SIM and using the phone on another network. That's the only possible reason it's locked - to keep it on Cingular.
It's apple's fanboys! They don't have to use facts, it seems. Arguing something is so seems to be enough when you're not arguing from fact. I appreciate not all mac fans are this ridiculous - heck, I know a lot, and they're nice folks - it's just some of these guys seem to think they owe Apple something, to the point they straight-up lie to defend it. Fanboyism personified. Sorry if this looks like a troll or whatever.
Safari's coders regularly make changes to the javascript engine making some more intensive applications fail, or straight-up not work at all. Safari is a great browser for HTML coders, but not so good for any other web developer.