Comment Startup? (Score 1) 167
A $3.5 billion company is a "startup"?
A $3.5 billion company is a "startup"?
I think it's amazing how far-ranging the sharks are. It's interesting that it swims in a wide circle that includes Bermuda. How did it navigate to the island? How did it find its way back to the mainland? I would have expected a much more meandering course, but it's almost like it made a bee-line for it and then another bee-line back to the coast, but in the opposite direction.
The Kinect was a great piece of kit, but in its next iteration, it went right back to "How can we use this to monetize our customers?" Turning into a spying platform to serve targeted ads did nothing but turn people off buying the latest.
No, I haven't changed my requirement. My requirement was "I'd like to find one single device that can stream from all of my sources natively". In this case, my NAS happens to be one that supports SMB, but that's not really relevant. What IS relevant is my point that there is no one device that can stream from all sources without requiring some sort of hacked-in add-on. My tablet can stream from a NAS over SMB, why can't Roku? Roku can stream Netflix, why can't XMBC? I had high hopes for the Chromecast, and it's still a nifty little device for what it is, but I was afraid that they were going to lock it down and that's exactly what they're doing.
And that's where it falls down. Every option is missing some key ingredient. With XMBC, it's Netflix. With Roku, it's local streaming. There are always work-arounds, but why not build it into the core so it actually works well? One device that streams everything, that is small enough to throw into my suitcase so I can take it when I travel. Chromecast had promise, but falls flat in so many ways.
XBMC is the closest I've come, but it lacks good support for Netflix. It can be done, but it's not native and getting it to work well is also a bit of a hack.
If you really want to go straight from your NAS to your TV, then by one of those set-top boxes that have slots or USB ports for hard drives.
How are you missing the point? I don't want to use Plex. Period. Plex is a third-party add-on with a component that runs on the local PC. I want native, built-in support (that doesn't require me to run a server agent on another box) in whatever streaming device I select.
If you really want to go straight from your NAS to your TV, then by one of those set-top boxes that have slots or USB ports for hard drives.
What? How does that even make sense? If I want to stream from a NAS, I should get a set-top with a USB port?
Again, this just illustrates the hack nature of this process. That the Plex service (or Roxsbox, which is essentially the same thing) can run directly on the NAS is irrelevant. It's still a collection of third-party tools that involve setting up remote agents off of the player unit (the Roku, in this case). I can stream on my Android tablet from a plain SMB NAS with no additional agent software or intermediary. Direct. I should be able to do the same thing with a Roku (or any of the other similar devices on the market).
Each one of them lacks a key feature. Either they can't stream from an SMB NAS, they don't have YouTube, they don't do Netflix, etc. There's always something. That each of these can be streamed from SOME device means that they're being deliberately left out of the ones that "can't".
I'm not asking for transcoding, either. If your device doesn't have enough power to transcode, that's fine. But I can copy a file from my SMB NAS to a thumbdrive and play it directly on my Roku. That is a bush league hack in 2013. It already has network access, there should be no reason to force me to use sneakernet.
Agreed. Those 4-UID's are jerks.
You can with Plex.
...which is a Roku add-on and it requires a PC component to serve the files. The Roku, natively, can't stream directly from a local network source such as a NAS. At best, it's a hack and it while it works, it doesn't work as well as a native solution would.
I'd like to find one single device that can stream from all of my sources natively. Is that really too much to ask?
So, the only way to get our representatives to take note of civil rights abuses is to have them affect a protected class. I wonder how I get myself classified as a journalist?
Master's degree. You will have already dropped $100k on your 4-year degree before ponying up another $6k for this one.
You had me until you brought out the "dumb sheep" trope. You would be more effective in persuading people if you could leave out the hyperbole and tired, cliched insults.
I wonder what role social media is having on the timeline for this event?
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. -- Albert Einstein