"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>

[quote]Originally posted by Amorph:
<strong> As for integrating all your stereo components, most modern amplifiers do that quite well.</strong><hr></blockquote>

Amplifier, huh? Glad you brought that up. I have an amplifier, a receiver to be more accurate, that I bought a few years back and it was obsolete about a year after I bought it. Was it broke? No, but it didn't have Dolby 5.1 that DVDs use (and now their moving on to an even better sound processing specification). Furthermore, my receiver has no idea whether my VCR is on or if it's set to VCR/TV and even if it did know it has no way of controling them.

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.

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. I guess it just couldn't possibly get any better than this and no one is going to capitalize on such a market.

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