My educated guess is, No, there won't be Linux support..
ATI was the leader in MPEG2 acceleration, enabling iDCT+MC offload to their video processor almost 10 years ago. How'd that go in terms of Linux support, you ask? Well, we're still waiting for that to be enabled in Linux.
Nvidia and S3/VIA/Unichrome have drivers that support XvMC, but ATI is notably absent from the game they created. So, I won't hold my breath on Linux support for this very cool feature.
Okay, I think the premise is off base.. But, I could see some very useful services being offered by Google.
They have copious amounts of bandwidth and storage, and the clout to create business relationships with content producers. Google could offer a competing video download/purchase service - similar to what iTunes is doing, but creating a more open service (Google could be less of a threat than Apple).
Integrate that video purchase service with open source PVRs (MythTV, Freevo) and create APIs to allow others to integrate.
He bases his conjecture on some domains he believes were registered by google, such as googlehdtv.com. I think Google could come up with a better name than "googlehdtv" if they really wanted to get into this game.
Anyway, apparently he doesn't know about 'whois', because he could have easily seen that this was registered by a domain speculator, not by Google.
( That Slashdot "lameness filter" sucks. It wouldn't let me post the basic whois output, saying there were too many "junk characters". I have to keep adding crap to get around it.)
This sounds like more wild conjecture.. people taking little bits of information and drawing some extreme conclusions. But..
As we've seen in other articles here, Google also likes to contribute to existing open source projects. I think this is one of those cases. MythTV is a large project, with a lot of features. It's quite usable now, but like most projects I'm sure it could benefit from getting some more good developers.
The UI could use some work, XvMC acceleration improvements (or integration of other acceleration devices) would be great, and integrating into some Google WWW services would be very good. MythTV has a WWW scheduling interface, but you need remote access to your machine to use it. Integrating the scheduler into your Google account services would be a big improvement.
Commercial real estate is not too bad here, with over-capacity after the internet bubble burst. But, it's not exactly cheap compared to the rest of the country.
Housing prices are insane (2 bedroom condo for $500K, small houses for $1M).
Salaries are higher than other areas (though, not high enough to pay for housing).
Silicon Valley is the land of the high roller startup, getting 10s of millions from VC firms. Obviously, this is not the standard operating procedure for open source projects.
Oregon is in fairly close proximity to Silicon Valley and Seattle, but has lower costs associated with it.
Okay, so where are the Oregon jobs listed? I would gladly get the hell out of Silicon Valley and move to Portland where I can buy a house.
The majority of/. readers obviously lean more to the left, judging by the comments here leading up to the election.
But, honestly I do find it hard to understand what the basis was for thinking he would make a good president. Anyone care to give some examples? The only group I can see being happy with Bush is the religious extremists, which want to see religion within our government.
The traditional small government / fiscally conservative republicans have got to be outraged.
So, I'm no fan of Bush. But, I am really curious.. what about this man and his performance made you believe he would be a good president? Seeing his continued performance, do you still support him?
When thinking about what WiMax will offer us, I am not sure what all the advantages will be. Obviously, the current Wireless network ISPs will be able to support a much larger area, making them a lot more useful.
Beyond that, you have all the same limitations as current ISPs (i.e. I don't see this giving me a low cost 30Mbps connection.. hopefully DSL or Cable will eventually do this).
But, in relatively dense areas, I see some cool possibilities in community networks. In these, we don't worry about a big pipe to the Internet, which would be expensive. We just join a local network and share resources at high speeds.
As it is now, if i leave my upload speed reasonable on P2P apps, it quickly swamps my outbound bandwidth and all my Internet access goes to crap. P2P networks, file servers, could be a lot more useful at high LAN speeds -- and most people would be more willing to serve at high speeds when it doesn't effect their Internet connection.
Even sharing huge files, like HDTV programs, could be feasible on the local networks.
Link a few of these WiMax networks together, and you can get some huge alternate networks, where people provide useful services for their communities. Without bandwidth costs, it becomes very cheap.. I can easily set up a Linux box to dedicate to this network for a couple hundred bucks.
MPEG2 is tough on a CPU, but within the capabilities of current processors.
AVC / H.264 / MPEG4.10 is much harder. Doing 1080p AVC is beyond the capabilities of most current processors, and is certainly not do-able with other stuff going on (e.g. a MythTV PVR, recording a couple HD streams simultaneously, transcoding another, while viewing one.
AVC, or future codecs, will require either much faster CPUs, hardware acceleration, or both.
Google and NASA are both very close to each other, in Mountain View, CA (which is where I live, less than 2 miles from both of them). Google is currently in the offices built by Silicon Graphics, which is a pretty nice place by Silicon Valley standards. Most companies around here are in nondescript office parks. The Google/SGI building is large, uniquely designed, and colorful.
Google is North of Shoreline Blvd, South of Shoreline Blvd is Moffet Field. It used to be a Navy facility, and its most prominent feature is the huge blimp hangar that you've probably seen if you've ever flown into the Bay Area during the day. (Microsoft's facility is actually between the two, just across the Stevens Creek trail from Moffet. This used to be their WebTV facility).
Moffett has been scaling down operations for quite a while. They already have a lot of space that is leased out to private companies. Also, they just shut down the nation's (world's?) largest wind tunnel a year or two ago.. There has been a lot of talk in the local papers about re-using that land for something more productive (that, and about cleaning up the toxic chemicals on the site and lead paint on the huge blimp hangar).
Although there is a ton of open commercial real estate in silicon valley, most of it consists of those small non-descript office parks I mentioned before. So, apparently Google has been looking for a huge space to expand the business. Since there is practically no large space available (and thus the ridiculously high housing prices), the Moffett facility was one of few options.
So, I think this is a whole lot more about precious real estate than it is about any technology cooperation, as the articles claimed.
> Doesn't that mean they won't save scrambled channels?
Yes, the HD PCI Cards cannot decode scrambled cable channels. Cable systems will scramble the "premium" channels, like HBO-HD and Showtime-HD, possibly others like ESPN-HD. This limitation is also true of the current commercial standalone DVRs.
You can get some TV's that support "CableCard", which is a PCMCIA-like card that you get from your cable provider, plug it into the TV, and it can decode scrambled channels. But, you cannot do this with a PC solution. Presumably the closed commercial DVRs could offer CableCard support (Tivo has plans to do this) but, none support it today.
I am not sure about the firewire options. If you are using firewire from your cable box, the box is descrambling, so it could theoretically pass the unscrambled transport stream to your PC. But, it could also refuse to do this.. I am not sure what the current state is there because I don't use this.
But, as it is now, it is still useful to do HD DVR functions with unscrambled channels, either over the air or cable (most cable providers have all the broadcast network HD channels in the clear). So, you can still get all the big ballgames, and network shows (Lost, The West Wing, E.R., etc.) in HD.
Also, some cable providers, including mine, leaves other HD channels in the clear. I get ESPN-HD, InHD1, InHD2, and Fox Sports Bay Aread HD. HBO and Showtime HD are scrambled on mine.
No cards take uncompressed HD in (Component, DVI, RGB, VGA, HDMI) that is way too much bandwidth and compressing that in real time is well beyond the capability of current products.
All of the various cards or devices described above take the HDTV video in its transmitted format, which is pre-compressed MPEG2. So, recording HDTV is relatively easy because you just spool the ~20Mbps data stream to disk.
All of the HD receiver devices take the MPEG2 stream from a few sources:
- Over The Air broadcast, received via antenna. - QAM256 stream via Cable TV system. - MPEG2 Transport Stream via cable box + firewire
- Get it from your cable company, for $5 to $10 more per month. The simplest solution.
- MythTV works great with HDTV. I have two HD receiver cards plugged into my cable TV system, so I can record two shows while watching a third that was recorded previously. It's not the easiest thing to set up, and it takes some decent horsepower to do HDTV display. But, once it's set up it's great.
- MythTV can connect to the firewire port on your cable box and record shows that way. I've not done this, but others are using it. The advantage is, it offloads display work to your cable box.
- Commercial DVRs. DirecTV has an HD Tivo, LG sells a standalone HD DVR, I think there are a few more that Google would turn up.
- Windows Solutions. Microsoft XP Media Center Edition supports HD, SageTV and a few other PVR apps have some HD support, PCI cards are available with standalone software apps for HD viewing (e.g. MyHD MDP-130).
Well, Europe is a bit behind in HDTV deployment, but widescreen TV (at DVD resolutions) is more popular there. When you got a new TV, did you get widescreen? That's probably a more relevant comparison to US HDTV.
Also, I am sure that a lot of your countrymen would spend a lot on a TV that would let them see World Cup Football/Soccer in HD resolutions. In the US, almost all of the NFL Football games are in HD, and that drives a lot of purchases.
This would be reasonable if everyone used desktop computers, which were always connected to a network with good bandwidth. But, the reality is that laptop computers have overtaken desktops, and the trend is increasing. When you have portable computers, you will not be able to assume ubiquitous bandwidth at a reasonable level. So, there will still be a need for the PC, OS, local apps, etc.
Microsoft got The Wall Street Journal to publish that free advertisement? That's incredible.
Look at MS's big challenge now.. They are a monopoly, they are not going to increase their market share any more, because they already own the market. Their challenge is getting people to stick with their stuff, despite the demonstrated long standing problems in security.
So, they throw in some tidbits critical to MS's past practices, because everyone is painfully aware of the problems they have had with security, viruses, etc. And they introduce our savior, Jim Allchin, who in a miraculously short amount of time, fixed all the development issues and got the company on track producing bug-free software.
Now, IT managers can breathe easy, assured that the next release of Windows will solve all that pains them, and will be well worth the high price MS demands.
This article is a great demonstration of why MS is on top. They have the clout to place a piece of propaganda in a national publication that will be read by a good percentage of corporate execs. That's innovation, MS style.
Based on his comments in the article, he just seems pissy because GMail works differently than the mail client he is used to, and he isn't given an option of working the way he wants.
One clear indication of this is: he complains about having labels rather than folders. Labels are essentially the same thing as folders, except labels allow you to put the message in several labels/folders. The only difference is how they are stored in the filesystem, which is irrelevant in a webmail environment. If they put folder icons on his labels, I bet he would love it.
He also complains about the "Conversation" view of e-mails (threaded view). I like the conversation view. But, I can see his point that it should be an option (even though I still think threaded/conversation view is a better way to use e-mail, because it allows for better context).
He complains about the ads in GMail, which cannot be turned off. Okay.. I guess that's a point. If it used large distracting banner ads, like Yahoo! Mail, I would want to turn them off too. But, the small text ads in GMail blend in and don't distract at all.
There is certainly room for improvement in GMail. But, Mr. Mossberg is a bit harsh when ranting about Google's arrogance for deciding they have a better way to do e-mail..
I don't have access to the new Yahoo! Mail interface. I used the old one for several years, and was never very impressed with it. I am very fond of the Gmail interface. I wonder if Yahoo is just closer to a Windows app that Mr. Mossberg is used to, or if it's truly better than Gmail.
Some of the things I like about GMail, that I have not seen in any other web mail application:
- POP Access. I consolidate several mail accounts into a single e-mail application. This is great for offline access. I can look up things in GMail e-mails on my laptop, without needing to be online.
- Labels. I find this to be very good for organizing mails. A message can have multiple labels, which improves on simple folders.
- Keyboard shortcuts. GMail has good keyboard inputs, j/k up & down in menus (like vi), u to go up a level, gi - go to inbox, etc.
Does the new Yahoo! Mail match or improve on these features? Does it add others that GMail doesn't have?
I don't know how you got ahold of a Nano board.. I think it's been almost two years since VIA announced them, and continually pushed back the release date. I long ago gave up on any plans I had for the Nano.
But, you're right, the MPEG2 decoder in the CN400 would make a great MythTV frontend. If the Nano ever sees the light of day, and the mythtv compatibility seems good, I might pick one up.
It's a damn shame Apple doesn't open APIs to their MPEG2 acceleration in the Radeon display chip in the Mac Mini. It would also make an excellent HD MythTV frontend. But, lacking that iDCT offload, the Mini is not fast enough for HDTV.
Another really interesting option is the MythTV frontend port to the Roku Photobridge HD. It's a cheap HD media player, with a hardware MPEG2 decoder. http://mythroku.blogspot.com/
The original response was comparing to the VIA Mini-ITX boards. The G4 processor in the Mac Mini is much faster than the VIA C3. Depending on the instruction mix, the VIA C3 comes in somewhere between 50 and 75% of a comparably clocked P3. The fastest ITX boards are somewhere in the 1.2 - 1.3GHz range.
Whether it's powerful enough is really a question about what you want to use the system for. I really have not had any problems with the performance. But, I'm not a gamer, which seems to drive CPU requirements for many.
The only time the CPU has really come into play is when doing really heavy lifting, like making a DVD. But, that's gonna take hours with any CPU, so fast is a relative term..
The Mini *does* support video out. You just need an adapter. From the Mac Mini prodct page on apple.com: "Televise Your Visions - You can use any TV with Mac mini as a display. Some newer HDTV models already sport a DVI connection, but you'll need the optional S-Video/ Composite Video adapter to use Mac mini with regular TVs.
Or, get an HDTV, many/most have DVI and/or VGA inputs. Mine has both, and the Mini looks great in 720P HDTV.
But, you're right about the audio. It only does analog stereo output. You need a USB audio adapter to get Dolby Digital surround output.
Also, it would have a great HTPC, if Apple opened APIs for the MPEG2 acceleration hardware onboard. With that, it would be capable of HDTV video playback. Without that acceleration, it's not fast enough to keep up with 1080i video.
> industrial automation places may be willing to sell single units at a reasonable price.
I looked into a lot of these back when I was building Mini-ITX boxes. There were several more powerful options (e.g. mini-itx form factor, socketed for Pentium M), but, any time I would find a reseller willing to talk to me they would want $500+ for just the motherboard in small quantities. Small volumes are apparently not worth the effort for those guys.
go to www.apple.com click on Mac Mini click "Buy".
I have messed around with the Mini-ITX's for a couple years. The Mini-ITX and the VIA C3 processors they use were way ahead of their time in low power/heat small sized computers. But, the Mac Mini did a big leap frog over the Mini-ITX boxes. It's smaller, cheaper, and faster than any of VIA's offerings - not to mention all the included software, and it looks better than any of the ITX options. If you must have x86, Mini-ITX is a good option. If not, save some headaches & pick up a Mac Mini.
VIA announced the Nano-ITX a LONG time ago, but have thus far failed to deliver anything.. The Nano-ITX might offer some interesting possibilities. But, at this point I think there is little chance of them actually shipping it.
$12/month is at the extreme low end of the pricing spectrum. As you mentioned, it's a line for an alarm system.. not exactly typical usage.
Most people are paying upwards of $30/month for basic voice service.
But, in either case, their phone infrastructure is a sunk cost, paid for a LONG time ago. The revenue they continue to milk out of all those people is highly profitable. Even at $12/month, they're not hurting. At $30++ per month, they're very happy, and will fight tooth and nail to maintain that captive market.
> Sure an input jack is a much better option but it too suffers from these sound quality problems.
I don't know why you think this would be true. FM transmitters have poor sound quality with all kinds of interference. There is no major problem with analog line-out.. This is the same thing your home CD player uses to connect to your stereo amplifier.
Do you get crackles and distortion when listening to your iPod with headphones? ( if you do, return it for a replacement, because yours is bad ).
Of course, you can get unamplified Line-Out via the dock connector. The Belkin car adapter I use hooks into the dock connector, getting line-out, and also charging the iPod. I hook that into the Line-In adapter on my car stereo (I use an adapter that plugs into the CD changer input), and it sounds great. I don't have any issues like the interference you mention.
The article refers to the lowest voltage chips.. This, of course, is one factor that contributes to the real issue: low wattage. The system needs to consume less power and generate less heat.
They also claim that Freescale (former Motorola chip division) cannot achieve these low power levels. I'm not sure where they get this impression from. The PowerPC has always been a low power processor. They are most commonly used in embedded devices, like routers and switches. They keep ratcheting up performance, while trying to keep it under 10Watts.
While the PowerPC's from Freescale won't be at GHz par with the Intel P4's. They aren't far behind the more comparable Pentium M's in clock speed.
IBM, on the other hand, makes CPUs primarily for their workstations. So, their power usage has always been much closer to Intel's..
Slashdot Mirror
My educated guess is, No, there won't be Linux support..
ATI was the leader in MPEG2 acceleration, enabling iDCT+MC offload to their video processor almost 10 years ago. How'd that go in terms of Linux support, you ask? Well, we're still waiting for that to be enabled in Linux.
Nvidia and S3/VIA/Unichrome have drivers that support XvMC, but ATI is notably absent from the game they created. So, I won't hold my breath on Linux support for this very cool feature.
Okay, I think the premise is off base.. But, I could see some very useful services being offered by Google.
They have copious amounts of bandwidth and storage, and the clout to create business relationships with content producers. Google could offer a competing video download/purchase service - similar to what iTunes is doing, but creating a more open service (Google could be less of a threat than Apple).
Integrate that video purchase service with open source PVRs (MythTV, Freevo) and create APIs to allow others to integrate.
He bases his conjecture on some domains he believes were registered by google, such as googlehdtv.com.
I think Google could come up with a better name than "googlehdtv" if they really wanted to get into this game.
Anyway, apparently he doesn't know about 'whois', because he could have easily seen that this was registered by a domain speculator, not by Google.
domain: googlehdtv.com
created: 09/Apr/2004
last-changed: 09/Apr/2005
registrant-firstname: Hdtv
registrant-lastname: Websites
registrant-organization: hdtvwebsites.com
registrant-street1: 2821 egypt road
registrant-pcode: 19403
registrant-state: PA
registrant-city: audubon
registrant-phone: +1.235551212
registrant-email: hdtvwebsites@yahoo.com
( That Slashdot "lameness filter" sucks. It wouldn't let me post the basic whois output, saying there were too many "junk characters". I have to keep adding crap to get around it.)
This sounds like more wild conjecture.. people taking little bits of information and drawing some extreme conclusions. But..
As we've seen in other articles here, Google also likes to contribute to existing open source projects. I think this is one of those cases. MythTV is a large project, with a lot of features. It's quite usable now, but like most projects I'm sure it could benefit from getting some more good developers.
The UI could use some work, XvMC acceleration improvements (or integration of other acceleration devices) would be great, and integrating into some Google WWW services would be very good. MythTV has a WWW scheduling interface, but you need remote access to your machine to use it. Integrating the scheduler into your Google account services would be a big improvement.
Silicon Valley is ridiculously expensive..
Commercial real estate is not too bad here, with over-capacity after the internet bubble burst. But, it's not exactly cheap compared to the rest of the country.
Housing prices are insane (2 bedroom condo for $500K, small houses for $1M).
Salaries are higher than other areas (though, not high enough to pay for housing).
Silicon Valley is the land of the high roller startup, getting 10s of millions from VC firms. Obviously, this is not the standard operating procedure for open source projects.
Oregon is in fairly close proximity to Silicon Valley and Seattle, but has lower costs associated with it.
Okay, so where are the Oregon jobs listed? I would gladly get the hell out of Silicon Valley and move to Portland where I can buy a house.
The majority of /. readers obviously lean more to the left, judging by the comments here leading up to the election.
But, honestly I do find it hard to understand what the basis was for thinking he would make a good president. Anyone care to give some examples? The only group I can see being happy with Bush is the religious extremists, which want to see religion within our government.
The traditional small government / fiscally conservative republicans have got to be outraged.
So, I'm no fan of Bush. But, I am really curious.. what about this man and his performance made you believe he would be a good president? Seeing his continued performance, do you still support him?
When thinking about what WiMax will offer us, I am not sure what all the advantages will be. Obviously, the current Wireless network ISPs will be able to support a much larger area, making them a lot more useful.
Beyond that, you have all the same limitations as current ISPs (i.e. I don't see this giving me a low cost 30Mbps connection.. hopefully DSL or Cable will eventually do this).
But, in relatively dense areas, I see some cool possibilities in community networks. In these, we don't worry about a big pipe to the Internet, which would be expensive. We just join a local network and share resources at high speeds.
As it is now, if i leave my upload speed reasonable on P2P apps, it quickly swamps my outbound bandwidth and all my Internet access goes to crap. P2P networks, file servers, could be a lot more useful at high LAN speeds -- and most people would be more willing to serve at high speeds when it doesn't effect their Internet connection.
Even sharing huge files, like HDTV programs, could be feasible on the local networks.
Link a few of these WiMax networks together, and you can get some huge alternate networks, where people provide useful services for their communities. Without bandwidth costs, it becomes very cheap.. I can easily set up a Linux box to dedicate to this network for a couple hundred bucks.
HD video.
MPEG2 is tough on a CPU, but within the capabilities of current processors.
AVC / H.264 / MPEG4.10 is much harder. Doing 1080p AVC is beyond the capabilities of most current processors, and is certainly not do-able with other stuff going on (e.g. a MythTV PVR, recording a couple HD streams simultaneously, transcoding another, while viewing one.
AVC, or future codecs, will require either much faster CPUs, hardware acceleration, or both.
Google and NASA are both very close to each other, in Mountain View, CA (which is where I live, less than 2 miles from both of them). Google is currently in the offices built by Silicon Graphics, which is a pretty nice place by Silicon Valley standards. Most companies around here are in nondescript office parks. The Google/SGI building is large, uniquely designed, and colorful.
Google is North of Shoreline Blvd, South of Shoreline Blvd is Moffet Field. It used to be a Navy facility, and its most prominent feature is the huge blimp hangar that you've probably seen if you've ever flown into the Bay Area during the day. (Microsoft's facility is actually between the two, just across the Stevens Creek trail from Moffet. This used to be their WebTV facility).
Moffett has been scaling down operations for quite a while. They already have a lot of space that is leased out to private companies. Also, they just shut down the nation's (world's?) largest wind tunnel a year or two ago.. There has been a lot of talk in the local papers about re-using that land for something more productive (that, and about cleaning up the toxic chemicals on the site and lead paint on the huge blimp hangar).
Although there is a ton of open commercial real estate in silicon valley, most of it consists of those small non-descript office parks I mentioned before. So, apparently Google has been looking for a huge space to expand the business. Since there is practically no large space available (and thus the ridiculously high housing prices), the Moffett facility was one of few options.
So, I think this is a whole lot more about precious real estate than it is about any technology cooperation, as the articles claimed.
> Doesn't that mean they won't save scrambled channels?
Yes, the HD PCI Cards cannot decode scrambled cable channels. Cable systems will scramble the "premium" channels, like HBO-HD and Showtime-HD, possibly others like ESPN-HD. This limitation is also true of the current commercial standalone DVRs.
You can get some TV's that support "CableCard", which is a PCMCIA-like card that you get from your cable provider, plug it into the TV, and it can decode scrambled channels. But, you cannot do this with a PC solution. Presumably the closed commercial DVRs could offer CableCard support (Tivo has plans
to do this) but, none support it today.
I am not sure about the firewire options. If you are using firewire from your cable box, the box is descrambling, so it could theoretically pass the unscrambled transport stream to your PC. But, it could also refuse to do this.. I am not sure what the current state is there because I don't use this.
But, as it is now, it is still useful to do HD DVR functions with unscrambled channels, either over the air or cable (most cable providers have all the broadcast network HD channels in the clear). So, you can still get all the big ballgames, and network shows (Lost, The West Wing, E.R., etc.) in HD.
Also, some cable providers, including mine, leaves other HD channels in the clear. I get ESPN-HD, InHD1, InHD2, and Fox Sports Bay Aread HD. HBO and Showtime HD are scrambled on mine.
No cards take uncompressed HD in (Component, DVI, RGB, VGA, HDMI) that is way too much bandwidth and compressing that in real time is well beyond the capability of current products.
All of the various cards or devices described above take the HDTV video in its transmitted format, which is pre-compressed MPEG2. So, recording HDTV is relatively easy because you just spool the ~20Mbps data stream to disk.
All of the HD receiver devices take the MPEG2 stream from a few sources:
- Over The Air broadcast, received via antenna.
- QAM256 stream via Cable TV system.
- MPEG2 Transport Stream via cable box + firewire
There are many options for HDTV DVR.
- Get it from your cable company, for $5 to $10 more per month. The simplest solution.
- MythTV works great with HDTV. I have two HD receiver cards plugged into my cable TV system, so I can record two shows while watching a third that was recorded previously. It's not the easiest thing to set up, and it takes some decent horsepower to do HDTV display. But, once it's set up it's great.
- MythTV can connect to the firewire port on your cable box and record shows that way. I've not done this, but others are using it. The advantage is, it offloads display work to your cable box.
- Commercial DVRs. DirecTV has an HD Tivo, LG sells a standalone HD DVR, I think there are a few more that Google would turn up.
- Windows Solutions. Microsoft XP Media Center Edition supports HD, SageTV and a few other PVR apps have some HD support, PCI cards are available with standalone software apps for HD viewing (e.g. MyHD MDP-130).
Well, Europe is a bit behind in HDTV deployment, but widescreen TV (at DVD resolutions) is more popular there. When you got a new TV, did you get widescreen? That's probably a more relevant comparison to US HDTV.
Also, I am sure that a lot of your countrymen would spend a lot on a TV that would let them see World Cup Football/Soccer in HD resolutions. In the US, almost all of the NFL Football games are in HD, and that drives a lot of purchases.
This would be reasonable if everyone used desktop computers, which were always connected to a network with good bandwidth. But, the reality is that laptop computers have overtaken desktops, and the trend is increasing. When you have portable computers, you will not be able to assume ubiquitous bandwidth at a reasonable level. So, there will still be a need for the PC, OS, local apps, etc.
Microsoft got The Wall Street Journal to publish that free advertisement? That's incredible.
Look at MS's big challenge now.. They are a monopoly, they are not going to increase their market share any more, because they already own the market. Their challenge is getting people to stick with their stuff, despite the demonstrated long standing problems in security.
So, they throw in some tidbits critical to MS's past practices, because everyone is painfully aware of the problems they have had with security, viruses, etc. And they introduce our savior, Jim Allchin, who in a miraculously short amount of time, fixed all the development issues and got the company on track producing bug-free software.
Now, IT managers can breathe easy, assured that the next release of Windows will solve all that pains them, and will be well worth the high price MS demands.
This article is a great demonstration of why MS is on top. They have the clout to place a piece of propaganda in a national publication that will be read by a good percentage of corporate execs. That's innovation, MS style.
Based on his comments in the article, he just seems pissy because GMail works differently than the mail client he is used to, and he isn't given an option of working the way he wants.
One clear indication of this is: he complains about having labels rather than folders. Labels are essentially the same thing as folders, except labels allow you to put the message in several labels/folders. The only difference is how they are stored in the filesystem, which is irrelevant in a webmail environment. If they put folder icons on his labels, I bet he would love it.
He also complains about the "Conversation" view of e-mails (threaded view). I like the conversation view. But, I can see his point that it should be an option (even though I still think threaded/conversation view is a better way to use e-mail, because it allows for better context).
He complains about the ads in GMail, which cannot be turned off. Okay.. I guess that's a point. If it used large distracting banner ads, like Yahoo! Mail, I would want to turn them off too. But, the small text ads in GMail blend in and don't distract at all.
There is certainly room for improvement in GMail. But, Mr. Mossberg is a bit harsh when ranting about Google's arrogance for deciding they have a better way to do e-mail..
I don't have access to the new Yahoo! Mail interface. I used the old one for several years, and was never very impressed with it. I am very fond of the Gmail interface. I wonder if Yahoo is just closer to a Windows app that Mr. Mossberg is used to, or if it's truly better than Gmail.
Some of the things I like about GMail, that I have not seen in any other
web mail application:
- POP Access. I consolidate several mail accounts into a single e-mail application. This is great for offline access. I can look up things in GMail e-mails on my laptop, without needing to be online.
- Labels. I find this to be very good for organizing mails. A message can have multiple labels, which improves on simple folders.
- Keyboard shortcuts. GMail has good keyboard inputs, j/k up & down in menus (like vi), u to go up a level, gi - go to inbox, etc.
Does the new Yahoo! Mail match or improve on these features? Does it add others that GMail doesn't have?
I don't know how you got ahold of a Nano board.. I think it's been almost two years since VIA announced them, and continually pushed back the release date. I long ago gave up on any plans I had for the Nano.
But, you're right, the MPEG2 decoder in the CN400 would make a great MythTV frontend. If the Nano ever sees the light of day, and the mythtv compatibility seems good, I might pick one up.
It's a damn shame Apple doesn't open APIs to their MPEG2 acceleration in the Radeon display chip in the Mac Mini. It would also make an excellent HD MythTV frontend. But, lacking that iDCT offload, the Mini is not fast enough for HDTV.
Another really interesting option is the MythTV frontend port to the Roku Photobridge HD. It's a cheap HD media player, with a hardware MPEG2 decoder.
http://mythroku.blogspot.com/
The original response was comparing to the VIA Mini-ITX boards. The G4 processor in the Mac Mini is much faster than the VIA C3. Depending on the instruction mix, the VIA C3 comes in somewhere between 50 and 75% of a comparably clocked P3. The fastest ITX boards are somewhere in the 1.2 - 1.3GHz range.
Whether it's powerful enough is really a question about what you want to use the system for. I really have not had any problems with the performance. But, I'm not a gamer, which seems to drive CPU requirements for many.
The only time the CPU has really come into play is when doing really heavy lifting, like making a DVD. But, that's gonna take hours with any CPU, so fast is a relative term..
The Mini *does* support video out. You just need an adapter. From the Mac Mini prodct page on apple.com: "Televise Your Visions - You can use any TV with Mac mini as a display. Some newer HDTV models already sport a DVI connection, but you'll need the optional S-Video/ Composite Video adapter to use Mac mini with regular TVs.
Or, get an HDTV, many/most have DVI and/or VGA inputs. Mine has both, and the Mini looks great in 720P HDTV.
But, you're right about the audio. It only does analog stereo output. You need a USB audio adapter to get Dolby Digital surround output.
Also, it would have a great HTPC, if Apple opened APIs for the MPEG2 acceleration hardware onboard. With that, it would be capable of HDTV video playback. Without that acceleration, it's not fast enough to keep up with 1080i video.
> industrial automation places may be willing to sell single units at a reasonable price.
I looked into a lot of these back when I was building Mini-ITX boxes. There were several more powerful options (e.g. mini-itx form factor, socketed for Pentium M), but, any time I would find a reseller willing to talk to me they would want $500+ for just the motherboard in small quantities. Small volumes are apparently not worth the effort for those guys.
go to www.apple.com
click on Mac Mini
click "Buy".
I have messed around with the Mini-ITX's for a couple years. The Mini-ITX and the VIA C3 processors they use were way ahead of their time in low power/heat small sized computers. But, the Mac Mini did a big leap frog over the Mini-ITX boxes. It's smaller, cheaper, and faster than any of VIA's offerings - not to mention all the included software, and it looks better than any of the ITX options. If you must have x86, Mini-ITX is a good option. If not, save some headaches & pick up a Mac Mini.
VIA announced the Nano-ITX a LONG time ago, but have thus far failed to deliver anything.. The Nano-ITX might offer some interesting possibilities. But, at this point I think there is little chance of them actually shipping it.
$12/month is at the extreme low end of the pricing spectrum. As you mentioned, it's a line for an alarm system.. not exactly typical usage.
Most people are paying upwards of $30/month for basic voice service.
But, in either case, their phone infrastructure is a sunk cost, paid for a LONG time ago. The revenue they continue to milk out of all those people is highly profitable. Even at $12/month, they're not hurting. At $30++ per month, they're very happy, and will fight tooth and nail to maintain that captive market.
> Sure an input jack is a much better option but it too suffers from these sound quality problems.
I don't know why you think this would be true. FM transmitters have poor sound quality with all kinds of interference. There is no major problem with analog line-out.. This is the same thing your home CD player uses to connect to your stereo amplifier.
Do you get crackles and distortion when listening to your iPod with headphones? ( if you do, return it for a replacement, because yours is bad ).
Of course, you can get unamplified Line-Out via the dock connector. The Belkin car adapter I use hooks into the dock connector, getting line-out, and also charging the iPod. I hook that into the Line-In adapter on my car stereo (I use an adapter that plugs into the CD changer input), and it sounds great. I don't have any issues like the interference you mention.
The article refers to the lowest voltage chips.. This, of course, is one factor that contributes to the real issue: low wattage. The system needs to consume less power and generate less heat.
They also claim that Freescale (former Motorola chip division) cannot achieve these low power levels. I'm not sure where they get this impression from. The PowerPC has always been a low power processor. They are most commonly used in embedded devices, like routers and switches. They keep ratcheting up performance, while trying to keep it under 10Watts.
While the PowerPC's from Freescale won't be at GHz par with the Intel P4's. They aren't far behind the more comparable Pentium M's in clock speed.
IBM, on the other hand, makes CPUs primarily for their workstations. So, their power usage has always been much closer to Intel's..