I've just been playing with the ORB free service. It allows you to take your own PC and turn it into a personal streaming server for audio, video, music, and Live TV. Yup -- if you have a TV Tuner card it will allow you to stream live TV anywhere.
The website (www.orb.com) acts as a session setup/co-ordinator so firewalls are not a problem. I suspect (although I haven't verified) that all the streaming is actually P2P between your PC and the end station, orb.com is only used to set up the connection.
Besides being firewall friendly, the key thing that orb does is transcoding on the fly -- it will adjust the stream to fit the bandwidth requirements of the transmit pipe and the end device.
they state that you can stream to a PDA or certain cell phones, not just PC's but I haven't tried that yet.
It does not require PVR software in the PC, but will co-exist with Windows MCE or other PVR software too.
I think the real "breakthough" with the Video iPod is that Apple is resetting the stage for how consumers should approach digital video.
Until now, with PVR's, TV Tuner cards, et. al. the conventional approach has placed the burden on the consumer to understand all the different video formats (AVI, MPG, Tivo, DVR-MS, DVD, DivX, etc.), which ones work on which platforms, how to convert between formats (where allowed), how to crack formats where not allowed (DeCSS, cracking TivoToGo, etc.), and most importantly, each user is on their own to transcode the file to fit a different target device. (i.e. DVDShrink to make a full movie fit on a single-layer DVD, or downsample a video files to play on a small screen, etc.)
This is a consumer nightmare and even for techies. I tried Tivo ToGo and sure, it's cool to be able to view the contents of your Tivo through web services, pull files across (slowly). But grabbing a 1 hour TV show across a fast wired lan and then transcoding it so you can view it on a PDA or other device takes forever. Even just transcoding to burn it to an official Tivo sanctioned DVD for offline viewing takes much too long.
With the video iPod Apple is saying that for a nominal fee they will arrange the transcoding/encoding for you and have the file ready to download. Seems to me very similiar logic to music file sharing - instead of the hassle of Kazza, spyware, pop-ups, and the RIAA police, for a nominal fee you can download a song reliably. So in this vein, the video ipod is really about setting consumer expectations for easy-of-use and simplicity. I'm sure the content floodgates will be opening soon enough.
You just spent $960 on the drives (8 x $120).
So obviously, you can afford to spend a few dollars. So you probably can spend about $100 more and get a 3Ware raid card (afterall, you saved a lot on the drives themselves.)
Since reliability is important, and you got a great deal on the drives (I hope you remember that only 1 mail-in rebate per address when you send in for your refunds), so spend a small fraction more to get something that works - hardware RAID with a real controller.
Sorry, but human-powered bicycles are the most environmentally friendly.
Given the photos and horror stories of manufacturing in China and the lack of evironmental concerns, building those e-bikes, and especially the waste materials from the batteries, is probably adding to the pollution, not reducing it.
Then there's all the additional fossil fuels needed to provide the electricity to charge the batteries.
Can you say "gas price increases"? Business magazines claim part of the world squeeze in oil is the huge demand coming from China buying up all available spot market oil.
Something I have only seen mentioned briefly is that it can actually be cheaper to run a free hotspot than a paid one.
With a free hotspot, there is no need for proxy software, billing software, authentication server, and of course customer service or tech support.
Since an inexpensive broadband accesspoint/gateway is only $50 to $100 now, and a broadband line (DSL or cable) is about $50/month, a free hotspot can cost under $100 to setup and only $50/month to operate.
That's why a lot of the smaller/independent coffee shops or other businesses are offering free Wifi.
It's a competitive value (free vs. paying at Starbucks or other spots) and the fixed cost of $50/month is much less than even one newspaper or yellow pages ad so the cost can be absorbed as general marketing/promotional expense.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe they are just doing competitive analysis. In the search engine war, this is just recon before the kill :-)
I've just been playing with the ORB free service. It allows you to take your own PC and turn it into a personal streaming server for audio, video, music, and Live TV. Yup -- if you have a TV Tuner card it will allow you to stream live TV anywhere. The website (www.orb.com) acts as a session setup/co-ordinator so firewalls are not a problem. I suspect (although I haven't verified) that all the streaming is actually P2P between your PC and the end station, orb.com is only used to set up the connection. Besides being firewall friendly, the key thing that orb does is transcoding on the fly -- it will adjust the stream to fit the bandwidth requirements of the transmit pipe and the end device. they state that you can stream to a PDA or certain cell phones, not just PC's but I haven't tried that yet. It does not require PVR software in the PC, but will co-exist with Windows MCE or other PVR software too.
I think the real "breakthough" with the Video iPod is that Apple is resetting the stage for how consumers should approach digital video. Until now, with PVR's, TV Tuner cards, et. al. the conventional approach has placed the burden on the consumer to understand all the different video formats (AVI, MPG, Tivo, DVR-MS, DVD, DivX, etc.), which ones work on which platforms, how to convert between formats (where allowed), how to crack formats where not allowed (DeCSS, cracking TivoToGo, etc.), and most importantly, each user is on their own to transcode the file to fit a different target device. (i.e. DVDShrink to make a full movie fit on a single-layer DVD, or downsample a video files to play on a small screen, etc.) This is a consumer nightmare and even for techies. I tried Tivo ToGo and sure, it's cool to be able to view the contents of your Tivo through web services, pull files across (slowly). But grabbing a 1 hour TV show across a fast wired lan and then transcoding it so you can view it on a PDA or other device takes forever. Even just transcoding to burn it to an official Tivo sanctioned DVD for offline viewing takes much too long. With the video iPod Apple is saying that for a nominal fee they will arrange the transcoding/encoding for you and have the file ready to download. Seems to me very similiar logic to music file sharing - instead of the hassle of Kazza, spyware, pop-ups, and the RIAA police, for a nominal fee you can download a song reliably. So in this vein, the video ipod is really about setting consumer expectations for easy-of-use and simplicity. I'm sure the content floodgates will be opening soon enough.
You just spent $960 on the drives (8 x $120). So obviously, you can afford to spend a few dollars. So you probably can spend about $100 more and get a 3Ware raid card (afterall, you saved a lot on the drives themselves.) Since reliability is important, and you got a great deal on the drives (I hope you remember that only 1 mail-in rebate per address when you send in for your refunds), so spend a small fraction more to get something that works - hardware RAID with a real controller.
Sorry, but human-powered bicycles are the most environmentally friendly. Given the photos and horror stories of manufacturing in China and the lack of evironmental concerns, building those e-bikes, and especially the waste materials from the batteries, is probably adding to the pollution, not reducing it. Then there's all the additional fossil fuels needed to provide the electricity to charge the batteries. Can you say "gas price increases"? Business magazines claim part of the world squeeze in oil is the huge demand coming from China buying up all available spot market oil.
Something I have only seen mentioned briefly is that it can actually be cheaper to run a free hotspot than a paid one. With a free hotspot, there is no need for proxy software, billing software, authentication server, and of course customer service or tech support. Since an inexpensive broadband accesspoint/gateway is only $50 to $100 now, and a broadband line (DSL or cable) is about $50/month, a free hotspot can cost under $100 to setup and only $50/month to operate. That's why a lot of the smaller/independent coffee shops or other businesses are offering free Wifi. It's a competitive value (free vs. paying at Starbucks or other spots) and the fixed cost of $50/month is much less than even one newspaper or yellow pages ad so the cost can be absorbed as general marketing/promotional expense.