"Digital Hub" - Thanks for clarifying, Steve.

I know now not to hold out for any piece of hardware from Apple that will sit in my home theater system and unify my audio-visual experience under one sleek and easy system of control. To Steve the "digital hub" means just adding more software to a mac to maniputate different media.

And speaking of media, by now it is just wierd that Steve has accomodated digital cameras, camcorders, and DVDs while neglecting the far more ubiquitous media of TV. C'mon, how many people out there spend more time editing and burning home videos or composing digital photo albums than they do sitting on their couch potato asses watching TV (my couch potato ass included)?

I want my DTV! I suppose the "D" is the key here and we won't see apple integrating TV until it is all being broadcast digitally. I mean at that point a computer merely has to listen to the pre-encoded video being trasmitted to it through the friggin air.

Steve hates TV, fine, but he's gonna have to accept the reality that in a few years as TVs get bigger, thinner, and cheaper the center of our digital lifestyle will once again be the couch.

[quote]Originally posted by suckfuldotcom:
<strong>The difference between TV as a 'medium' and DVD, mp3 and jpg as 'media' is pretty distinct.

Check the dictionary.

SdC</strong><hr></blockquote>

What do DVDs contain? Media. What do DV camcorders generate? Media. What do digital cameras make? Media. What are Mp3s? Media. What's on TV? ____

You seem to be racking up the posts while saying nothing. Is there even a point to your post? Are all the people who watch TV and would like to have a slick way to manage all the media on TV supposed to be mollified by such a distinction. Is there anything in your point that would make someone say, "O, I'm sorry, I guess my desire to simplify the management of the media I most frequently use was innappropriate, because it is a medium not media." Huh?

Check reality.

[ 01-07-2002: Message edited by: Nordstrodamus ]</p>

I guess I never paid attention. I have a new amp, but only because the old one died a while back. The whole stereo - and I mean stereo, as in two channels - is currently in storage because I have no place to put it right now. When I do have room, I see no reason to change it. Two speakers will handle everything I need them to - mostly, music. I don't own a TV. Haven't in years. Not because I can't afford one.

Obsolescence is in the eye of the beholder. What I do know about the progress in this kind of convergence I know because my roommate is busy building a low-end home theater in the living room.

[quote]<strong>Now, consider the alternative- a true digital hub. The computer easily interprets new sound standards (say Dolby 7.1 ) and sends them to the amp (which it can turn on and control) by firewire. All my television shows are organized like on Replay, but I can burn them to DVD or add additional firewire drives for more storage. The hub can stream them to any computer in the house by ethernet or airport (higher compression of course) as well as act as a file server.</strong><hr></blockquote>

This would require a setup where the amp could feed any number of speakers over a FW cable or two (with all the speakers daisy-chained together). I'm not sure how feasible that is, or when it would become feasible. As for the rest, when my roommate turns on his amp from his all-in-one remote, all the connected components also fire up, so that appears to be something of a solved problem. It could be more elegant, but it can also become more elegant without bringing a computer into the mix.

Want to burn TV shows to DVD? Good luck. The industry tolerates videocassettes because they got Congress to pass the AHRA, and because they have relatively poor video quality which degrades (rapidly) over time (and also because the Supreme Court ordered them to). DVDs are capable of capturing broadcast-quality video and replaying it for years at full picture quality, in addition to enabling lossless copying an arbitrary number of times with no degradation. (TiVos are indeed one-way, so they can't be used that way.) You can bet money that as soon as the medium goes digital, the streams will be encrypted. It's already illegal to break that encryption, or abet the breaking of that encryption in any way. So there goes TiVo and ReplayTV and the rest, unless the broadcasters decide to allow some limited ability to delay the shows (but you can bet the ad-skipping features will vanish). Rebroadcasting signals? Good luck. You won't be able to compress them, because they're already going to be compressed. But even if bandwidth is not an issue, I doubt the industry will want you to be able to. They'll want every display that gets a signal to have a cable hanging off of it, and a subscription.

If it's not digital, or it is digital but it can't be used as raw material to create new things, Apple is probably not interested in building it into the Hub. That just seems to be the way it is. Furthermore, if it's not something that plays directly into Apple's expertise - building computers and applications - Apple probably feels that won't have any luck competing against more specialized vendors. That's the lesson it learned while it was selling printers, scanners, cameras, etc. Apple can compete with the iPod because it's a little dual-processor computer with a software interface, not just because it's a digital hub device. It's something they can do better than a peripheral company can. On the other hand, most of what you want a Mac to do as far as managing components could as easily be incorporated into a Marantz.

[quote]<strong>Ah, what the hell am I explaining this for, I suppose the people who are happy with the current mess of RCA cables, speaker wire, and multiple remotes are the same people who were satisfied with editing videotape by scotchtaping it together.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Not at all. It's just that the alternative is not putting a personal computer at the center of everything. FireWire is the future connector for stereo components - which opens up the possibility that a Mac could be a peer on a network of stereo components - and a specialized component (maybe integrated into an amp) could be used to organize and control the rest of the stereo for much less than the cost of a Mac. And unlike most Macs, which don't have IR interfaces, you can use a remote to control the component.

[quote]<strong>I guess it just couldn't possibly get any better than this and no one is going to capitalize on such a market. </strong><hr></blockquote>

Tastes apparently vary, because the most compelling aspect of your vision is the one I think is least likely to happen: The ability to copy and edit broadcast footage. Otherwise, I don't see anything that requires or even prefers a personal computer at the center of everything.

[ 01-09-2002: Message edited by: Amorph ]</p>

Wow, this thread got kicked from "Future Hardware" to "General Discussion" to "Digital Hub"!

Here's the main points people seem to be making in opposition to TV being integrated into the digital hub...

1. Computers are for creating stuff not consuming stuff.

2. TV recording on the Mac would open Apple up to lawsuits.

3. Other companies will come out with better solutions.

My responses-

On #1- Maybe you are a DaVinci but for everyone else, 99% of the time we are on our computers listening, playing, reading, or watching content created by someone else.

2. Apple didn't get sued for iTunes, mostly because they have the muscle to fight such a lawsuit. Also, lawsuits haven't impeded numerous video card manufacturers from incorporating PVR features. It's just not an issue, really, since media companies know the real beachhead is HDTV.

3. Other companies made video editiig aps, and mp3 aps, and photo aps, and ... It's called competition, you do it or die. Speaking of competitors...
<a href="http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/TechTV/techtv_moxie020108.html" target="_blank">Moxie</a>

Oh yeah, I think someone also made a good point about how cool it would be to have TV in an iMac for the purpose of satisfying the needs of a college kid. I would have definately gone for that instead of hauling all the junk I needed.

[ 01-08-2002: Message edited by: Nordstrodamus ]</p>

[quote]Originally posted by CosmoNut:
<strong>

Didn't I see a USB or Firewire TV tuner dongle and software somewhere? Honest question.</strong><hr></blockquote>

I think there are a few hack-job solutions available for the Mac. Nothing as slick as some fo the PVR cards for PCs. It was particularly annoying when PVR features started appearing in ATI PC cards, but were hobbled in macs.

You highlight another point I wanted to make which is that Apple must take the lead in this area to capitalize on their ease-of-use rep and avoid consumer confusion.

Also, I don't think Apple can take the same approach they took toward DV cams and digital cameras since PVRs as peripherals will never conform to a single standard format. That and the reality that the control and schedualing features in PVRs are as valuable as their ability to turn analog vid into dig.