Viiv 1.5 May End Traditional Media PCs 263
An anonymous reader writes "CNET.com.au makes an interesting case for why the next revision of Viiv will kill off living room PCs as we know them. Instead, we'll be streaming content to digital media adapters from a PC in our home office. From the article: 'The existence of digital media adapters will totally remove the need to have a media centre PC taking up space in your living room, unless you're one of the few users that finds it practical to do anything other than passively soak up multimedia content whilst relaxing on the couch.'"
advert (Score:5, Insightful)
"Viiv is a platform marketing initiative from Intel "...
(bolding mine)
Nothing else needs to be added...
Re:advert (Score:4, Interesting)
For about 350-400 bucks you can have a box that:
Can watch and burn dual layer DVD's
Can listen to and burn CD's and internet radio (and basically any other audio content)
Load full of emulators and Gametap and play games on
Browse the web
And a low power always on media file server that people coming over to your house can grab media from
Like I said, I'm sure there's a market for people who just want to play MP3's over their stereo. But there are already much better solutions that can do more that aren't tied so closely with DRM.
Re:advert (Score:2)
They problem with a streaming applicance is compatibility. There is NO way a single device is going to meet many peoples needs without being a bitch to a specific software vendor and doing everything one way. Here are some examples.
Re:advert (Score:3, Informative)
So far, it has a 300G disc, DVD+/-R/RW/RAM, 2xDVB-T cards, 1xAnalogue NICAM PAL TV/FM Radio/Composite/SVideo card, DVD-Rom, RGB SCART output at full PAL resolution and 5.1 sound output (discrete, or via co-ax). It also has an infrared remote control and full-size keyboard/mousepad. Via mpl
From the Sales Floor (Score:2, Informative)
I love to do PK (product knowledge) and in my search for info about Viiv... I didn't find anything that would make it stand out above and beyond any other HP Media system.
To summarize -- cool things can now happen in your living room. Users that come in
Re:From the Sales Floor (Score:2)
Re:advert (Score:2)
Re:advert (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh wait...
Re:advert (Score:2)
Media linux (Score:2, Funny)
Will I be able to run a cutom built "media linux"?
I like xbmc so I am thinking of doing something like that with linux....ohh, it must exist already...no?
Dual core *required* ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Hahaha ! What about requiring a good scheduler ? Multitasking has nothing to do with multi cores...
Marketing push or simply cluelessness ?
Re:Dual core *required* ? (Score:2)
Re:Dual core *required* ? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't be stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
You're going to be like everyone else and rent or buy DVDs and live with the warnings and advertisements in them. Viiv isn't going to change anything.
Re:Don't be stupid (Score:2)
Hey, I have one of those! It's called a "DVD Changer" holds 400 discs, HDMI, and decent upconversion. Pick one from a menu and voila...
Couple that with a Tivo, and what else does anyone need?
Any subsequent Home theater revolution is going to be so encumbered with DRM, you will most like ly need to license the machine, clic
That's not really a VIIV thing... (Score:5, Interesting)
You see that already with the XBox hacks, XBox 360 and Windows Media Center, and networked DVD players
Now VIIV may help that along but the technology has already been in existence (and in use) for years.
Well... except for maybe the DRM controls that VIIV will provide...
Re:That's not really a VIIV thing... (Score:2)
You see that already with the XBox hacks, XBox 360 and Windows Media Center, and networked DVD players
... and MythTV [mythtv.org], which has worked that way since it's inception several years ago.
Re:That's not really a VIIV thing... (Score:2)
Well... except for maybe the DRM controls that VIIV will provide...
These are exactly my thoughts. Any COTS out-of-the-box solution is going to be too restrictive. After having the freedom of using my own setup to do what I want, I doubt I could be happy with some DRM-ridden device.
More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:4, Insightful)
The idea of building a server to house your media collection is fascinating to the nerds out there, but for the average movie fanatic, the thought of mixing the right hardware and software on a file server that resides else where in the house is not appealing. Further, like any other home computer, this server will require maintenance. The last thing most consumers want when they come home after sitting in front of their office computer for 10 hours is to have to retreat to the home office, patch their server, download their favorite shows, etc. etc. just so they can finally veg out.
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
I gave up on Windows Media Center because of stability issues, as well as usability (what do you mean, the only way to sort my mp3s is either alphabetically or with ID3 tags!?! Sort them by directory! That's why I put them in genre/artist/album/ directory structure and named them artist-album-##-songtitle!!) It was a neat idea, but just poorly executed. Myth TV does some things better and a lot of things worse.
Then, I got tivo, and I saw the light. No joke; if you don't have tivo, it will change your l
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
Simply put, it can be done well enough (using technologies such as ZeroConf) that it really requires almost no effort on the part of the end-user.
It makes a lot of sense to me. I am a Mac user, and I have an iMac with about 500 gigabytes of storage attached in my bedroom. I keep thinking about picking up a cheap Mac mini for my living room. Everyone keeps talking about throwi
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
That is the problem. It shouldn't need maintence (unless your hardware fails). It is not (or should not be) open to an insecure network, the requisites don't change often, and it should have standard software. Why maintence? (answer: because of DRM)
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
Huh?
How does the notorious fragility and flakiness of Windows PCs have anything to do with DRM? They were that way when DRM was still a twinkle in the *AA's eye. If you had completely DRM-free media streaming from a Windows server you'd still have the same issues.
The general point is on target, though... non-geeks don't want to futz around with a computer just to watch a show. A living-room streaming device will ONLY work when you just hit a button on the rem
Re:More Marketing, Less Innovation (Score:2)
Microsoft could very well downgrade Windows until it done nothing unsecure. And fix the settings to not let them 'fade away' with time.
But with DRM, all that is futile. You'll need to be coneected on the internet every time, you'll need to let new programs run on your box, and you'll need complex routines to check if the user didn't change anything on the computer (and probably more).
MP3s existed before the iPod too (Score:4, Insightful)
And its success is just an indication of how uncoupled the office really is from the home.
The reason Microsoft can't make inroads into the home is that they're too intimately tied to the office. (And the 'innovations' that they're they're trying to bring to the office OS are being firewalled from that office as a waste of time. Multi media features aren't WANTED in the office. My client went to Win2K only after NT 4.x was EOL'ed, killed off by MS. And they've got tens of thousands of PCs.)
Sorry Mr. Gates but they're not even interested in XP or Vista until they're forced into it.
Look for Apple to make BIG inroads in the 5-to-9 world and for Microsoft to stay stuck in the 9-to-5 world.
Steamed to my TV.. but not from my PC (Score:5, Informative)
I want video on demand. I want my local video store or cable company or telco to manage all the GB's of TV shows and movies. But when I want to watch a movie, be it the latest flick staring Angelina Jolie, some old movie a friend recommended or a movie I've watch 50 times, I just want to select it from a list, pay my 50c (or maybe 4.95 for a new release?) and watch it (pause it, rewind it and maybe see some "making of" style doco).
Re:Steamed to my TV.. but not from my PC (Score:2)
Wish I had my mod points today.
Re:Steamed to my TV.. but not from my PC (Score:3, Interesting)
But if you want niche programming or the truly inspired stuff that never took off (Fox's "Action" anyone?) or underground video, then you can't depend on a commercial service to provide it.
South Park and Tripping the Rift would never have become mainstream if it weren't for viral memetics, and that doesn't happen on services managed by payola-whores like Time-Warner, Adelphia or Charter
Cheapest way (Score:5, Interesting)
No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because somethign can be used for several purposes doesn't mean people want it to. They have a dedicated TV for a games console, and generally don't even use a DVD player as a CD player. If a device has a single dedicated purpose, it becomes a lot easier to use, and usualy does the job its designed to do a lot better.
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe at some point convergence works, but right now you get things that are so-so at a lot of things and excellent at none. Cell phones are a good example.
I don't want or need a shitty camera built in. What's the point? The quality sucks, bad resolution, bad picture quality, maybe an LED for a shitty flash. I rather carry my small digital camera instead. Having one company as your gate keeper is perilous too. Take the cell phone example. I got a LG PM-325 from Sprint. I used the camera twice before realizing unless I paid X dollars a month for "Picture Mail", there was absolutely no way to retrieve them from the phone.
The future downside is that if they every do make the ultimate device that does everything, you're fscked if it get's stolen. There goes your media, your pictures and probably tons of other stuff that you wouldn't want other people to have access to. Carrying your life in your pocket might be convienent, but also dangerous.
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:2)
Now there definitely are advantages in having specialized devices. When I know I'll want good-quality p
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:2)
The fact that it had a camera was incidental, but one day I had it on me and took a couple pictures and to my chagrin, couldn't get them. It was aggrevating and very deceptive as it was no way stated the camera was useless without it "Picture Mail". I don't know if it applies to all phones, but the phone I bought, I bought it knowing it wa
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:2, Interesting)
A few years ago I remember someone telling me about a Sears Roebuck catalog he'd seen from the early 1900's. One of the more expensive items was an electric motor which came with a variety of specialized tools and adapters. The idea was you would take a drill, saw, whatever, plug it into this motor to draw power (mechanical power, I mean; probably incredibly dangerous, to judge by similar setups on modern farm equipment, but presumably it worked), do the job, unhook the tool, and then fit the next w
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:2)
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:2)
I, for one, would appreciate if my laptop could do so much more than it currently does, including TV and radio.
Re:No kidding. It's about divergence. (Score:2)
Hrm? I thought that single box was something we called a "computer" and I already have one.
You know... That thing I can do excel spreadsheets on, surf the web, play Half-Life, write an email, download a movie, play my Mp3s, edit a photograph, or rather do anything that I can think of the top of my head.
Sure, I could have bought a game console, dvd player, and maybe hand write my excel sheets on a peice o
Conglomerates vs General-Purpose Devices (Score:2)
Precisely! I think the issue so many people have with "convergence" is that the devices which have that term applied to them are devices which at one time did a single utilitarian function, and had OTHER single-function devices stuck in the same box with it, and so on until you've got the digital equivalent of a Swiss-Army knife. I too d
Can you say Airport Express? (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sort of a doomed idea anyway (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Sort of a doomed idea anyway (Score:2)
You mean like an Xbox with media center installed on it?
Re:Sort of a doomed idea anyway (Score:2)
Have you looked at PC prices lately? You can buy a PC that would be more than capable of acting as a media PC for $300.
I already do that. (Score:2, Informative)
Handy Tech (Score:2, Informative)
A friend of mine discovered a cheap, low tech solution for pushing audio as well, using playlists and a small FM transmitter. Basically, you run your own custom radio station. No remote control, but available throughout the house and yard, and no streaming de
Mac Mini (Score:4, Insightful)
Relaxing on the couch... (Score:2)
Ever since I got a bright, hi-rez projector (Dell 5100MP [dell.com] 1440x1050), my couch is where I do everything except programming. It is great for email, web-browsing, IM, video-phone, games and yes, even the occasional TV show or DVD.
I highly recommend using an 8 foot wide screen with a wireless keyboard - it is amazingly comfortable to sit back in the laz-e-boy an
Re:Relaxing on the couch... (Score:2)
whatever (Score:2)
Oh, and no, I don't like Intel. I've been lied to enough by that company over the years.
Between the lines (Score:5, Insightful)
1. License fees to Intel, so no Linux support.
2. DRM.
Pick Your Flavor... (Score:5, Insightful)
I get my work frustrations out with gaming. During the last 14 days, I came to the conclusion that gaming on the PC is "for more expandable then any console" but The maintenance involved is just not worth it. It SHOULD just work(tm?) I deal with machines problems at work, nothing fancy just your usual monkey help desk. So in theory, You just reformatted your pc, reinstalled windows, and started the painful restoration. (blockers) virus,spam,firewalls,blah blah blah. Once that is completed, you begin to reinstall your game lineups. And if you're a gamer, you got 10+ titles . Within a week you begin to feel a "sluggish" response. You click on the Yellow Shield in your task bar, and get the latest critical updates. Couple days later, your game begins to stutter. Even tho You/I took ALL the precautions, Not running IE,using (virus/spam) scanners etc etc... Within 2 months your Gaming RIG is now crawling. Drink a 12 pack, and back Step 1. Am I wrong in saying IF YOU ARE a daily, heavy windows users (downloading, running various apps, gaming) Your WINDOWS machine has about a 1 year lifespan before some thing critical begins to happen. Whats my point? I packed up my PC and got a console. It just works. Now, for the conclusion, since im sure you're already sick of reading this, and are preparing to mod me down, What if i had a so called MEDIA PC. TONS AND TONS of crap, movies, music etc etc. DO you actually think that user is going to backup 250-500 megs of shit? Do you really think that windows based machine will run smoothly? When will the next life saving critical patch come out and screach your system to a hault? For a media PC to work, it has to have uptime reliability. One of my web severs has been up for over 2 years. No, it doesnt run windows. This whole Microsoft Media PC is just a marketing ploy. Sure it works out of the box... but for how long?
This is really just Intel propaganda.... (Score:2)
Integral electronics, set-top boxes, media center PCs, WiFi-controlled media centers, home IDFs, and ot
horsepower and bandwidth (Score:2)
In addition, we do not always have sufficient runs of network cables. This means that we may be talking about a wireless solution, which will be fine for audio, b
Been saying this for a while... (Score:5, Insightful)
I envision (using existing methods and technology) a "server" with massive amounts of storage and six or so TV decoders. It will handle all the requests for media, from live TV to DVDs (in a carousel? since they don't want us copying them) to recorded TV to music and stream those out to what amounts to a thin client connected to the TV.
Microsoft is starting to do this with the XBOX 360 and its connectivity with MCE, but the problem there is that the 360 doesn't really extend the functions; as I understand it, it only has limited playback abilities. Imagine if the 360 could connect to MCE, select a channel, and display it...or schedule a show to be recorded by the server while you continue gaming.
We're just scratching the surface of how networking is going to affect the way we distribute and view television and movies.
Re:Been saying this for a while... (Score:2)
The 360 already does that.
Re:Been saying this for a while... (Score:2)
360 is a fully functional front end for MCE.. (Score:2)
Infact the functionality of the 360 is only limited as it is because previes extenders were horribly under powered and thus developers artificially limited functionality.
360 is great as a MCEX. I regularly play HDTV over mine and its pretty flawless and smooth. I typically do 6-8mpbs hd s treams or 3-4 mbps dvd rips WMV no problem.
Re:Been saying this for a while... (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, sounds
Re:Been saying this for a while... (Score:2)
I picked the number six because that's typically the largest number of available slots. And 1 TB is pretty massive
I agree (Score:2)
I've had been debating a media center pc for over a year. Finally I heard about the devices based around the SigmaTel media chipset. I bought a Pinnacle Showcenter 1000 for about $100. IT handles all the movie files I have (excluding the DRM ones which I don't have
The Dbox Rocks! (Score:3, Informative)
The DboxII will connect to your PC (Suse 10 in my case), show your pics, play your movies via VLC, record with commercial skipping, play your mp3 files, check your email, receive news feeds, check the weather......blah blah blah
Oh yeah, it also receives Cable or Sat TV too!
Couch Surfing (Score:3, Insightful)
Living Room media PC's are held back by DRM issues (Score:3, Informative)
The cable companies won't let a decent PC card cable tuner onto the market which can handle all the channels to which you subscribe. The music people work to prevent reasonable in-home music storage and access for the desperate fear that *GASP* you could share music across a network. The dvd people work to prevent any reasonable disk based storage and access of quality video.
What's really needed is a different paradigm altogether. Ideally, a pass through set top box on one tv in each room, which uses IP to connect to a base unit in the basement or media closet. The base unit is a PC. The set top box provides user friendly tv based menus to the device. The device itself controlls one or more cable company tuners -- the cheapest ones they have that will give you your content descrambled. For additional concurrent non-scrambled channels, regular PC tuner cards could be used. The device would be responsible for which tuner is being used by which tv or whatever.
The total number of tuners would then reflect the number of LIVE concurrently different channels of content you could capture or watch. Once captured, the limit is bandwidth in the house. If two tv's were looking at the same content, it would require only a single tuner. Suppose you mostly watch network TV but also like HBO. You now would need one cable company tuner which you'd use for capturing the HBO content, while you could have several tuner cards (or external USB versions of same) to capture unscrampbled video. Each tuner could supply one or many tv set tops within your house provided they were on the same live channel. Content could be captured to disk just as it is with most dvr's now, so that each set top box could still have pause/rewind/fast forward capability independant of each other.
Additional menus on the set top box could easily stream back to the main box from a dvd player or whatever, effectively making the act of watching a dvd tantamount to capturing that content and adding it to your library. You could get fancy and automatically record new feature movies as your subscribed channels show them, and add them to your home library. The same could easily be done with a sat. radio subscription assuming your can read the track data while capturing the audio.
Hell, we can already be our own phone company with Asterisk. Its time to think about being our own media companies.
vim (Score:2)
Upstream streaming... (Score:3, Interesting)
I guess I'm 'one of those weirdos'... (Score:2, Informative)
EyeHome does this for Mac users (Score:2)
The EyeHome unit accesses media content from any Mac in your home network and displays it on your TV. It requires a small server (OK, maybe not so small - its a modded version of Tomcat) to be installed on the Macs you want to access. The EyeHome unit can then access all the media in your music and movies folders etc. I've been using this for a while and its a good
Don't Believe the Hype! (Score:2)
Intel to cut Linux out of the content market [theinquirer.net]
DRM: Three dirty letters you won't hear in a CES keynote [zdnet.com]
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:5, Informative)
I use three of them as my Mythtv frontends using http://mvpmc.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net]. Low energy consumption, boots Linux over the LAN from my Mythtv server and supports slimserver's protocol for listening to music.
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:2)
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:2)
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:2, Informative)
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:2)
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:2)
Iodata LinkPlayer2, Buffalo LT, Pinnacle SHowcenter, Momitsu V880N, Kiss, Bravo
The newer chipset model (Showcenter 200) can actually play Windows DRM files but I don't have any so I don't need it.
Re:So can anyone recommend (Score:2)
How well does this work over wireless? I've got a Myth setup..wanting to separate the server in the backroom from the frontend...but, don't have wires run...will wireless be fast enough with a good signal? Do you have to use G or one of the Super G systems?
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2)
Sounds like you are validating what the article said....
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:5, Insightful)
As TFA points out, all of the existing solutions have drawbacks (too bulky, too loud, too inconvenient). A more elegant solution is to harness the power and disk space of your PC to store and manage your digital media but wirelessly feed them into your theater system with a simple interface. That's what the new VIIV products claim to do. How well they do so remains to be seen, but if they can pull this off it could be a great product.
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2)
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2)
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2)
MythTV [mythtv.org]
Exactly. Here's why I still think VIIV will fail: (Score:2)
For example, D-Link's media players are little slim pizza boxes (nowhere near as small or light-weight as a Squeezebox, sadly) that would seem to be a great fit for a media viewer and relatively inexpensive -- until you find out that t
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2)
browsing, selecting, decoding, and displaying all your media is the hard part. You don't need powerfull box to store all that media.
Why not have the "media adapter" connect to a NAS box in your home office?
In fact, why not skip the NAS box, and get a cheaper USB enclosure for the drive?
In fact why not skip the expensive USB enclosure and put the drive in the "media adapter"?
Oh wait...
(PS. how co
Re:Not The Big Box (Score:2)
No we wont. I'll be back on the couch as he describes, and certainly not walking into the "home office" to queue up my next piece of media.
Somewhere between a small laptop and a PDA / phone to transmit input via WiFi maybe, but replacing a home stereo component with a traditional PC will not catch-on.
*sigh* You don't have to do this (get up and change media) NOW. You can have full control over your "office" located
Re:You're right, it's a small box (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine it? I can already remember it...
Re:You're right, it's a small box (Score:2)
But then you bought a second DVD, and it all went to hell.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You're right, it's a small box (Score:2)
Re:You're right, it's a small box (Score:5, Insightful)
When a 300GB HDD costs less than 100Eur, the PC is the obvious solution, not mentionning it serves as a backup as well. All my DVDs, CDs, home movies, pictures,
There is NO MATCH to that as of today, anywhere.
Re:You're right, it's a small box (Score:2)
Re:You're right, it's a small box (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Done. (Score:3, Insightful)
As for cost, there's a PC up in the study, anyway. It's just a bit more powerful, has a bigger hard drive, and has a capture card to make it a MythTV backend. Yes, there's cost. But it's not a whole PC's worth o
Re:Who need any of them? (Score:2)
Re:Who need any of them? (Score:2)
Re:hardly an article, more of an advert (Score:2)
Dude! (Score:2)
What the hell is a hoar though?
Re:Dude! (Score:2)
Re:Nonsense (Score:2)
Guess what? The Linksys media center extender is a computer!!
Sure, it's purpose-built, but definitely it's a computer.
A LAN-bootable Mini-ITX machine would probably do the same tasks.