I'm aware it's not just up to Apple on the content front, I'm just saying they should focus on getting a killer movie library rather than trying to replace cable which will take a long time.
I wish I had one of the newer houses wired with ethernet though, because wireless is fine, but not snappy like wired, and don't really want a cable taped around the wall.
I've remodeled all the houses I've lived in, including a lot of apartment units we own in San Francisco. When walls come down, we put them back up and install full low-voltage conduit all terminating at a common point. The conduit is installed so that there is minimal or no interference from nearby AC lines in the walls. Every electrical outlet also has a 1-gang receptacle attached to it so we can feed whatever cabling we want to it. In my case, it's all CAT6, with the occasional coax. Someday, perhaps fiber.
I may sound old-school but nothing beats wired connections. There's far less overhead in terms of bandwidth delivery. Even though all my devices are wireless-capable, it's all wired in. Only convenience items like my iPhone and MBA use wireless. It's just more efficient.
Take the advice of some other posters and look into learning how to do it. If anything, you'll be in better position to do it when the time comes. I've down countless installs, and also for some friends too. It's very easy once you've done a couple of them.
I don't understand why the networks think $0.99 is too cheap for an episode. That's not cheap. They're free all over the net, and even Hulu Plus is only $8/month. Watch a couple shows a night and your monthly cost would be $60 or more.
Movie rentals at $4 for 720p is no bargain either. RedBox is $1 for Blu-Ray. The device is only $99 which is great, but content is priced way above the cost of almost any other alternative. As cool as it is I don't see the mass market flocking to AppleTV at those prices.
if your house catches on fire then the plastic in the cables will turn into toxic fumes
In that case just use plenum rated cable. Costs a few cents more a foot, but designed to be laid in air handling spaces so it has fire retardant and low fume jacketing.
I don't understand why the networks think $0.99 is too cheap for an episode. That's not cheap. They're free all over the net, and even Hulu Plus is only $8/month. Watch a couple shows a night and your monthly cost would be $60 or more.
Maybe they make a lot more from advertising than people typically assume?
All of these positive reports should strengthen sales. I know they have changed my opinion a bit.
This however I don't understand. Yes wired Ethernet is much smarter for a device like this. In fact I have to wonder about people that run wiFi to any sort of media server. What I have trouble with though is the idea that you think you are stuck with what you have in your house. Wiring the house up for Ethernet is very possible even as a DIY project. That is assuming you live in a place where you still have the freedom to do such DIY projects. At worst you have to invest in a few tools and a bunch of wire. Well that and an Ethernet switch.
On the otherhand if you are not DIY inclined you can always hire a contractor. The point is your house is not a static environment and can change to suit your needs over time. In the near future you might want to run optical cable and really shouldn't be sadden by the current state of your house.
Ha!
Brings back memories! When we remodeled our first computer store in 1981, inexpensive LANs were just becoming popular, We wanted to be able to run network cable to any location in the store: Front Window Displays: Display/Demo Pods: Front Counter: Offices, General Purpose/Demo/Presentation/Class room: Service and Repair Shop; Burn-In area; Inventory.
There were several competing network strategies -- Ethernet required coax cable and cost several thousand $ per machine -- so it was out. One early LAN, Corvus, initially used a 50 wire flat cable (later a 2-wire, twisted pair). (AppleTalk came later).
Anyway, it was difficult to determine what cables to use and how to run them everywhere in the store. We considered using the false ceiling -- but that had problems and looked tacky.
What we eventually used was a special baseboard 3 inches tall and spaced 3/4 inch from the wall -- kind of an "L" shape. Where the long leg was the baseboard and the short leg was a spacer.
It was very inexpensive to run these baseboards along the base of every side of every wall in the store. There was plenty of room for cables in the pocket between the baseboard and the wall -- and you couldn't see the cables unless you put your head against the wall and looked straight down.
To run a cable to a specific, machine, a connector was placed in the pocket and the cable run up the wall from the baseboard to the back of the computer -- less viiable than a normal power cord.
Sometimes, we'd run the cable. from the pocket, through the wall to. say the display/Demo Pods -- so there were no cables visible (the last 6 feet went through the wall).
It worked out great -- I have often thought about doing something similar for the home!
I don't understand why the networks think $0.99 is too cheap for an episode. That's not cheap. They're free all over the net, and even Hulu Plus is only $8/month. Watch a couple shows a night and your monthly cost would be $60 or more.
Movie rentals at $4 for 720p is no bargain either. RedBox is $1 for Blu-Ray. The device is only $99 which is great, but content is priced way above the cost of almost any other alternative. As cool as it is I don't see the mass market flocking to AppleTV at those prices.
You have to understand the other models they benefit from. Models that generate guaranteed lump sum payments. You should also note that iTS differs from all those ?free? services in the way the content is viewed and that they aren?t ?free? as they include ads.
What stops you from taking any Mac (preferably though a Mac mini, can be a very old model as well) attach enough storage, and presto you have your server. Or put a 3 TB drive into a TC.
We already have a headless Mac Mini as a Media Center -- with 2 2TB external HDDs (one as backup). It hosts 12,000 songs and 900 videos.
We are running out of space and it takes a bit of fiddling.
I would rather house it all in the cloud, with automatic backup and sync. to a smaller home server that is staged with the content that I am currently accessing -- This month XMAS music, summer soccer movies, not so much.
Apple can do cloud storage economically by storing only 1 copy of any song, movie, etc. that anyone has purchased, and storing a small token for each file in the user's profile.
Brings back memories! When we remodeled our first computer store in 1981, inexpensive LANs were just becoming popular, We wanted to be able to run network cable to any location in the store: Front Window Displays: Display/Demo Pods: Front Counter: Offices, General Purpose/Demo/Presentation/Class room: Service and Repair Shop; Burn-In area; Inventory.
There were several competing network strategies -- Ethernet required coax cable and cost several thousand $ per machine -- so it was out. One early LAN, Corvus, initially used a 50 wire flat cable (later a 2-wire, twisted pair). (AppleTalk came later).
I remember those days, all sorts of technologies where offered up. Most of them from now long gone companies.
Quote:
Anyway, it was difficult to determine what cables to use and how to run them everywhere in the store. We considered using the false ceiling -- but that had problems and looked tacky.
What we eventually used was a special baseboard 3 inches tall and spaced 3/4 inch from the wall -- kind of an "L" shape. Where the long leg was the baseboard and the short leg was a spacer.
I think I know what you are talking about. A very useful way to handle wiring systems that are constantly under change. Thus the use in many commercial environments. It is also useful for homes with hard or solid walls, where hard implies concrete or stone.
Quote:
It was very inexpensive to run these baseboards along the base of every side of every wall in the store. There was plenty of room for cables in the pocket between the baseboard and the wall -- and you couldn't see the cables unless you put your head against the wall and looked straight down.
To run a cable to a specific, machine, a connector was placed in the pocket and the cable run up the wall from the baseboard to the back of the computer -- less viiable than a normal power cord.
Sometimes, we'd run the cable. from the pocket, through the wall to. say the display/Demo Pods -- so there were no cables visible (the last 6 feet went through the wall).
It worked out great -- I have often thought about doing something similar for the home!
I don't know, sounds a little industrial to me for a house. It likely would work good if the you keep it all low voltage. Most of those base board systems are a little to easy to get into if you have kids.
In any event if you had a computer store way back in 81 I bet you could write a very interesting history of the business.
Another solution is to use PowerLine adapters. Basically one side is connected to your router or switch, and ethernet signals go through the house A/C wiring to the other side which you could go to your ATV or a switch. I have not personally tried out PowerLine myself, but a friend of mine who has one swears by it.
For < $100 the powerline adapter kit might be the answer.
I have a kit under the tree. One adapter go by the TV and one in our office. I will wire a router in by the TV ( XBox, AT2, Wi) wire that router to the powerline adapter. Similar setup in the office with the powerline inputting into another router. Only one of the routers will have the wifi turned on.
Speed is supposed to be 200MB/s so is about 4 times better than my wifi. I hope it also solves my NAS disconnecting problem.
We already have a headless Mac Mini as a Media Center -- with 2 2TB external HDDs (one as backup). It hosts 12,000 songs and 900 videos.
We are running out of space and it takes a bit of fiddling.
I would rather house it all in the cloud, with automatic backup and sync. to a smaller home server that is staged with the content that I am currently accessing -- This month XMAS music, summer soccer movies, not so much.
Apple can do cloud storage economically by storing only 1 copy of any song, movie, etc. that anyone has purchased, and storing a small token for each file in the user's profile.
I understand what you are saying here but by implication you are drastically increasing your bandwidth usage. Especially for cyclical usage such as Christmas media.
Right now the best thing I think the providers can do now is to put a cap on bandwidth and charge significantly for people that go over their limits. Frankly that is a personal 180 but something needs to happen to squash this move to cloud computing. In the end it will end up being an extremely negative development for most users. It will put people in a position of being dependent on the network providers for one and two will result in a lot of network congestion.
I wish I didn't see it this way and as mentioned this is a complete turn around from my perspective of only a couple of months ago. The problem is locally I'm already starting to see signs of poor network performance that appears to be a sign of congestion. Things like AppleTV could significantly impact the net if it has even modest sales success.
I just bought one, thinking, well, it's only $99, let me see what it's like.
It was a couple of days after AirPlay came to the iOS.
I immediately found that Airplay, and access to all iTunes libraries on my internal network, make it a much more compelling product than I thought it would be. There's a ton of free content, Netflix is easiest to use on the Apple TV, and controlling it from the iPhone is a gas. Airplay works really, really well!
And I expect Airplay to extend to Safari and Quicktime, not just iTunes as it is now. And numerous other third party apps will be coming to extend the ability.
So now the stage is set to do without my costly, wasteful cable TV entirely.
The problem is Apple doesn't have a home computer suitable for this. The issue is storage and easy access to what storage the machines do have. We could all buy Mac Pros but that is far to expensive for this need.
We are talking TB of storage here. For many a desktop would be fine if it offered up reasonable serviceability.
Oh good lord. How hard is it to buy a mini and a 4 bay FW 800 enclosure? $300 + cost of drives. Or you can order it with drives pre-installed. Up to 12TB with current drives as a JBOD...I'd probably just get 8TB (kinda a sweet spot price wise) and run it as RAID 10. Plug mini and bay into UPS. Pretty much done.
Here's a thought - running cable especially if you have a 2 storey house can be a real pain.
Running cable can be a LOT of work. Fishing cable through cracks and crevices require skill and patience. BUT, doing your own electrics really isn't that hard. You are not going to electrocute yourself even if you grab a live wire. The principles of electricity are easy to grasp. Rewiring a house is a pretty big project, however. Hence the seemingly extortionate cost involved.
Quote:
At my downstairs TV, we have 3 devices requiring ethernet : PS3, TiVO series 3, ATV2. When connecting wireless, the connection could be spotty.
Ended up using a Airport Express to extend the network wirelessly. Base station is a Time Capsule. Ethernet cable from AE goes to a 5 port switch, and the 3 devices connect to the switch. Works really well.
This is the cheap and cheerful option. I can easily run two Netflix streams without interference or drop outs.
Quote:
Another solution is to use PowerLine adapters. Basically one side is connected to your router or switch, and ethernet signals go through the house A/C wiring to the other side which you could go to your ATV or a switch. I have not personally tried out PowerLine myself, but a friend of mine who has one swears by it.
Never tried this but it sounds interesting. Anyone know what the speed of a PowerLine is?
I was at the Apple store just the other day buying a power supple for my MBP. Of course I had to window shop a bit and one thing I'm looking for is a decent storage / server system primarily for media. Sadly they really don't have anything tailored for a modern home installation. By modern I mean no noisy solutions or giant rack mount solutions.....
Try these folks for a really quiet NAS (network attached server) solution.
Synology DiskStation *DS409slim uses tiny 2.5" drives with an embedded unix server. By using the small drives, there is no fan, low heat, no noise.
Comments
Ask the studios
I'm aware it's not just up to Apple on the content front, I'm just saying they should focus on getting a killer movie library rather than trying to replace cable which will take a long time.
I wish I had one of the newer houses wired with ethernet though, because wireless is fine, but not snappy like wired, and don't really want a cable taped around the wall.
I've remodeled all the houses I've lived in, including a lot of apartment units we own in San Francisco. When walls come down, we put them back up and install full low-voltage conduit all terminating at a common point. The conduit is installed so that there is minimal or no interference from nearby AC lines in the walls. Every electrical outlet also has a 1-gang receptacle attached to it so we can feed whatever cabling we want to it. In my case, it's all CAT6, with the occasional coax. Someday, perhaps fiber.
I may sound old-school but nothing beats wired connections. There's far less overhead in terms of bandwidth delivery. Even though all my devices are wireless-capable, it's all wired in. Only convenience items like my iPhone and MBA use wireless. It's just more efficient.
Take the advice of some other posters and look into learning how to do it. If anything, you'll be in better position to do it when the time comes. I've down countless installs, and also for some friends too. It's very easy once you've done a couple of them.
Movie rentals at $4 for 720p is no bargain either. RedBox is $1 for Blu-Ray. The device is only $99 which is great, but content is priced way above the cost of almost any other alternative. As cool as it is I don't see the mass market flocking to AppleTV at those prices.
if your house catches on fire then the plastic in the cables will turn into toxic fumes
In that case just use plenum rated cable. Costs a few cents more a foot, but designed to be laid in air handling spaces so it has fire retardant and low fume jacketing.
150,000 Movie rentals/day
That's a story in itself.
I don't understand why the networks think $0.99 is too cheap for an episode. That's not cheap. They're free all over the net, and even Hulu Plus is only $8/month. Watch a couple shows a night and your monthly cost would be $60 or more.
Maybe they make a lot more from advertising than people typically assume?
All of these positive reports should strengthen sales. I know they have changed my opinion a bit.
This however I don't understand. Yes wired Ethernet is much smarter for a device like this. In fact I have to wonder about people that run wiFi to any sort of media server. What I have trouble with though is the idea that you think you are stuck with what you have in your house. Wiring the house up for Ethernet is very possible even as a DIY project. That is assuming you live in a place where you still have the freedom to do such DIY projects. At worst you have to invest in a few tools and a bunch of wire. Well that and an Ethernet switch.
On the otherhand if you are not DIY inclined you can always hire a contractor. The point is your house is not a static environment and can change to suit your needs over time. In the near future you might want to run optical cable and really shouldn't be sadden by the current state of your house.
Ha!
Brings back memories! When we remodeled our first computer store in 1981, inexpensive LANs were just becoming popular, We wanted to be able to run network cable to any location in the store: Front Window Displays: Display/Demo Pods: Front Counter: Offices, General Purpose/Demo/Presentation/Class room: Service and Repair Shop; Burn-In area; Inventory.
There were several competing network strategies -- Ethernet required coax cable and cost several thousand $ per machine -- so it was out. One early LAN, Corvus, initially used a 50 wire flat cable (later a 2-wire, twisted pair). (AppleTalk came later).
Anyway, it was difficult to determine what cables to use and how to run them everywhere in the store. We considered using the false ceiling -- but that had problems and looked tacky.
What we eventually used was a special baseboard 3 inches tall and spaced 3/4 inch from the wall -- kind of an "L" shape. Where the long leg was the baseboard and the short leg was a spacer.
It was very inexpensive to run these baseboards along the base of every side of every wall in the store. There was plenty of room for cables in the pocket between the baseboard and the wall -- and you couldn't see the cables unless you put your head against the wall and looked straight down.
To run a cable to a specific, machine, a connector was placed in the pocket and the cable run up the wall from the baseboard to the back of the computer -- less viiable than a normal power cord.
Sometimes, we'd run the cable. from the pocket, through the wall to. say the display/Demo Pods -- so there were no cables visible (the last 6 feet went through the wall).
It worked out great -- I have often thought about doing something similar for the home!
I don't understand why the networks think $0.99 is too cheap for an episode. That's not cheap. They're free all over the net, and even Hulu Plus is only $8/month. Watch a couple shows a night and your monthly cost would be $60 or more.
Movie rentals at $4 for 720p is no bargain either. RedBox is $1 for Blu-Ray. The device is only $99 which is great, but content is priced way above the cost of almost any other alternative. As cool as it is I don't see the mass market flocking to AppleTV at those prices.
You have to understand the other models they benefit from. Models that generate guaranteed lump sum payments. You should also note that iTS differs from all those ?free? services in the way the content is viewed and that they aren?t ?free? as they include ads.
400,000 TV rentals/day
150,000 Movie rentals/day
That's a story in itself.
I think that translate to $1M in revenue per day.
What stops you from taking any Mac (preferably though a Mac mini, can be a very old model as well) attach enough storage, and presto you have your server. Or put a 3 TB drive into a TC.
We already have a headless Mac Mini as a Media Center -- with 2 2TB external HDDs (one as backup). It hosts 12,000 songs and 900 videos.
We are running out of space and it takes a bit of fiddling.
I would rather house it all in the cloud, with automatic backup and sync. to a smaller home server that is staged with the content that I am currently accessing -- This month XMAS music, summer soccer movies, not so much.
Apple can do cloud storage economically by storing only 1 copy of any song, movie, etc. that anyone has purchased, and storing a small token for each file in the user's profile.
Ha!
Brings back memories! When we remodeled our first computer store in 1981, inexpensive LANs were just becoming popular, We wanted to be able to run network cable to any location in the store: Front Window Displays: Display/Demo Pods: Front Counter: Offices, General Purpose/Demo/Presentation/Class room: Service and Repair Shop; Burn-In area; Inventory.
There were several competing network strategies -- Ethernet required coax cable and cost several thousand $ per machine -- so it was out. One early LAN, Corvus, initially used a 50 wire flat cable (later a 2-wire, twisted pair). (AppleTalk came later).
I remember those days, all sorts of technologies where offered up. Most of them from now long gone companies.
Anyway, it was difficult to determine what cables to use and how to run them everywhere in the store. We considered using the false ceiling -- but that had problems and looked tacky.
What we eventually used was a special baseboard 3 inches tall and spaced 3/4 inch from the wall -- kind of an "L" shape. Where the long leg was the baseboard and the short leg was a spacer.
I think I know what you are talking about. A very useful way to handle wiring systems that are constantly under change. Thus the use in many commercial environments. It is also useful for homes with hard or solid walls, where hard implies concrete or stone.
It was very inexpensive to run these baseboards along the base of every side of every wall in the store. There was plenty of room for cables in the pocket between the baseboard and the wall -- and you couldn't see the cables unless you put your head against the wall and looked straight down.
To run a cable to a specific, machine, a connector was placed in the pocket and the cable run up the wall from the baseboard to the back of the computer -- less viiable than a normal power cord.
Sometimes, we'd run the cable. from the pocket, through the wall to. say the display/Demo Pods -- so there were no cables visible (the last 6 feet went through the wall).
It worked out great -- I have often thought about doing something similar for the home!
I don't know, sounds a little industrial to me for a house. It likely would work good if the you keep it all low voltage. Most of those base board systems are a little to easy to get into if you have kids.
In any event if you had a computer store way back in 81 I bet you could write a very interesting history of the business.
Another solution is to use PowerLine adapters. Basically one side is connected to your router or switch, and ethernet signals go through the house A/C wiring to the other side which you could go to your ATV or a switch. I have not personally tried out PowerLine myself, but a friend of mine who has one swears by it.
For < $100 the powerline adapter kit might be the answer.
I have a kit under the tree
Speed is supposed to be 200MB/s so is about 4 times better than my wifi. I hope it also solves my NAS disconnecting problem.
We will see.
Merry Xmas
We already have a headless Mac Mini as a Media Center -- with 2 2TB external HDDs (one as backup). It hosts 12,000 songs and 900 videos.
We are running out of space and it takes a bit of fiddling.
I would rather house it all in the cloud, with automatic backup and sync. to a smaller home server that is staged with the content that I am currently accessing -- This month XMAS music, summer soccer movies, not so much.
Apple can do cloud storage economically by storing only 1 copy of any song, movie, etc. that anyone has purchased, and storing a small token for each file in the user's profile.
I understand what you are saying here but by implication you are drastically increasing your bandwidth usage. Especially for cyclical usage such as Christmas media.
Right now the best thing I think the providers can do now is to put a cap on bandwidth and charge significantly for people that go over their limits. Frankly that is a personal 180 but something needs to happen to squash this move to cloud computing. In the end it will end up being an extremely negative development for most users. It will put people in a position of being dependent on the network providers for one and two will result in a lot of network congestion.
I wish I didn't see it this way and as mentioned this is a complete turn around from my perspective of only a couple of months ago. The problem is locally I'm already starting to see signs of poor network performance that appears to be a sign of congestion. Things like AppleTV could significantly impact the net if it has even modest sales success.
It was a couple of days after AirPlay came to the iOS.
I immediately found that Airplay, and access to all iTunes libraries on my internal network, make it a much more compelling product than I thought it would be. There's a ton of free content, Netflix is easiest to use on the Apple TV, and controlling it from the iPhone is a gas. Airplay works really, really well!
And I expect Airplay to extend to Safari and Quicktime, not just iTunes as it is now. And numerous other third party apps will be coming to extend the ability.
So now the stage is set to do without my costly, wasteful cable TV entirely.
The problem is Apple doesn't have a home computer suitable for this. The issue is storage and easy access to what storage the machines do have. We could all buy Mac Pros but that is far to expensive for this need.
We are talking TB of storage here. For many a desktop would be fine if it offered up reasonable serviceability.
Oh good lord. How hard is it to buy a mini and a 4 bay FW 800 enclosure? $300 + cost of drives. Or you can order it with drives pre-installed. Up to 12TB with current drives as a JBOD...I'd probably just get 8TB (kinda a sweet spot price wise) and run it as RAID 10. Plug mini and bay into UPS. Pretty much done.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other...g/MEQX2KIT0GB/
4 bays is how many you get in a mac pro. Sure, the data rate via FW is lower then eSATA but for streaming media it's plenty fast enough.
Funny, my wife dropped some more Christmas presents under the tree...
What was the address again?
Here's a thought - running cable especially if you have a 2 storey house can be a real pain.
Running cable can be a LOT of work. Fishing cable through cracks and crevices require skill and patience. BUT, doing your own electrics really isn't that hard. You are not going to electrocute yourself even if you grab a live wire. The principles of electricity are easy to grasp. Rewiring a house is a pretty big project, however. Hence the seemingly extortionate cost involved.
At my downstairs TV, we have 3 devices requiring ethernet : PS3, TiVO series 3, ATV2. When connecting wireless, the connection could be spotty.
Ended up using a Airport Express to extend the network wirelessly. Base station is a Time Capsule. Ethernet cable from AE goes to a 5 port switch, and the 3 devices connect to the switch. Works really well.
This is the cheap and cheerful option. I can easily run two Netflix streams without interference or drop outs.
Another solution is to use PowerLine adapters. Basically one side is connected to your router or switch, and ethernet signals go through the house A/C wiring to the other side which you could go to your ATV or a switch. I have not personally tried out PowerLine myself, but a friend of mine who has one swears by it.
Never tried this but it sounds interesting. Anyone know what the speed of a PowerLine is?
I was at the Apple store just the other day buying a power supple for my MBP. Of course I had to window shop a bit and one thing I'm looking for is a decent storage / server system primarily for media. Sadly they really don't have anything tailored for a modern home installation. By modern I mean no noisy solutions or giant rack mount solutions.....
Try these folks for a really quiet NAS (network attached server) solution.
Synology DiskStation *DS409slim uses tiny 2.5" drives with an embedded unix server. By using the small drives, there is no fan, low heat, no noise.
You are kidding, right?
Hey- thanks for all those links. I paid $300 for my 1TB G drive. How much is that MIni again?