On the subject of the hard-drive in the iTV. I don't believe it for a second. Iger was probably guessing, or misunderstood when the exact specs were given to him (I can imagine him getting the same glazed-over look in his eyes that my mother gets when I try to explain things to her).
It'll obviously have to have some sort of persistent storage where Front Row will sit and where it can be updated. I'm guessing that it'll probably have a few gigs of flash memory--maybe 2GB and probably a max of 4 GB, for combined OS/Front Row storage and buffering.
The software in the iTv would have to make sense of all of the playlists on all of the machines in order to be able to combine them into one large, understandable list.
If it just lists the individual playlists, then we're back to square one.
The problem with the "10% of households with DVRs", and that it's doubling in the next year, is that any computer with Windows Media Center edition counts as a DVR, at least in the forbes report. Presumably, that doubling could occur once Vista comes out, as it will also have full Digital Video Recording capabilities, and lots of people will be upgrading from pre-media centre edition XP. The thought that 10% of Americans have Tivo or the other set-top boxes is totally ridiculous. That would put it up to about half the market penetration of mobile phones...
On the other hand, I don't think everyone with XP media centre edition or Vista will use it to record TV, so it's hard to get real numbers as to how many people are regularly recording TV shows and using their DVRs, although I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft is collecting the information somehow right now.
I think what iTV will do is be a cost effective, and hopefully user friendly (not to mention well-branded) way to connect the computer to the home theater, something Microsoft still hasn't really accomplished. There's still not many people watching TV and movies on their computers except on flights,etc. (computer in the living room will just never be cozy) If Apple can make "iTV" a part of the vernacular like they have with "iPod", "podcasting", etc., they'll automatically be at the forefront of the public's consciousness in the area. Unlike TiVO...
you'd better check your numbers. Everyone I know has a DVR of some type.
Also, check out just how many people have cell phones. You will be schocked.
I am glad that it will include a hard drive. I have a macbook pro and I was thinking it would kind of suck to always have my computer on next to the tv or in the other room if I want to stream something. For example if I am using a bittorrent I want to be able to use the itv at the same time without any bandwith problems.
No one knows, at this time, whether it will contain a HD. That's merely speculation by some.
UMMMM Isn't the fact that the iTV has HDMI a pretty solid indication that it will be HD capable? Ya HDMI is backwards compatible with DVI but then what's the point of having the HDMI plug?
According the Nielsen 90% of TV is still seen in live in real time even in homes with DVRs. Of the remainder 50% are played the same day for timeshifting puposes and the demographic is mostly that of younger couples with kids.
Set to double to 18%? Meh...if that were true the advertisers would be even more up in arms. If you believe in those number and even faster uptake then you should also believe in the end of advertising based content. That CBS report is a forlorn hope and likely the effect is based on the fact that 90% of all viewing is still "live" so the commerical are seen in their entirety.
Were DVR penetration to reach 50% and were used to timeshift more aggressively then fewer ads would be seen in their entierty and with the sound off and the image zipping by you might get some sense of what was being advertised but doubtful you would know or care what.
I know that my method was always to start watching a show about 15-20 minutes after it started at a minimum. Usually I'd prefer to watch something stored and then replay the just recorded event. Ads are too aggravating to waste time watching.
Personally, if the season passes were uniformly like $15 I'd just do iTunes for prime time shows and leave cable for ESPN and CNN.
Vinea
I don't know anyone at this time who does not have some DVR. Do I do most of my watching real time? Sure.
Having a DVR doesn't mean that most of your watching will be delayed. But, I'm willing to bet that, as time goes on, more people will be doing that.
And when two programs are on at once that one wants to watch, a delayed viewing is required for one of them.
I don't know anyone at this time who does not have some DVR. Do I do most of my watching real time? Sure.
Having a DVR doesn't mean that most of your watching will be delayed. But, I'm willing to bet that, as time goes on, more people will be doing that.
And when two programs are on at once that one wants to watch, a delayed viewing is required for one of them.
Yes, because you have better data than advertisers and Nielsen...
As I said, if you believe most folks will be using a DVR and will timeshift and will skip commercials in the near future then you also believe that advertising based TV is doomed in the near future. The advertising folks seem not to quite as skeptical for the near future so the adoption of DVRs hasn't reached the tipping point.
In which case the iTS model works about as well as the cable + DVR model for the studios no? The AT&T IPTV offering is rather pathetic for the cost but perhaps that's the new model. A $1/month per channel a la cart (they offer a meager 20 ch for $20 now I believe) but that seems too low to sustain TV studio production. $1.99/ep is a bit high so perhaps $15/season works better.
iTV can also stream content live through the box to a TV screen, Iger said. "Or it has a small hard drive on it so you can download what you put on the device -- on your computer on your itunes -- to the television set."
This statement does not sound like the ramblings of confusion, speculation, or uncertainty to me. He said he's seen the prototype and directly said it has a hard drive and described how the hard drive would function in the machine. We certainly shall see.
Quote:
I just got latest Battlestar Galactica 2.5 DVD from Netflix. Watching it on my 42" plasma, picture quality is okay, not great. The dark scenes don't look very good. Almost DVD quality? I don't think that is for me.
This could be from a number of reasons. The contrast on your screen may be too much. The gamma settings on your television may be adjusted to crush the blacks. Some DVD players themselves have contrast adjustment in them. Any of that could be the cause and can be corrected.
[i]This could be from a number of reasons. The contrast on your screen may be too much. The gamma settings on your television may be adjusted to crush the blacks. Some DVD players themselves have contrast adjustment in them. Any of that could be the cause and can be corrected.
The TV set has been calibrated (poor man calibration) as the blacks looks great when watching CSI:NY or the details on Dave Letterman's suit (in HD). No contrast on the DVD player though.
iTV can also stream content live through the box to a TV screen, Iger said. "Or it has a small hard drive on it so you can download what you put on the device -- on your computer on your itunes -- to the television set."
This statement does not sound like the ramblings of confusion, speculation, or uncertainty to me. He said he's seen the prototype and directly said it has a hard drive and described how the hard drive would function in the machine. We certainly shall see.
This could be from a number of reasons. The contrast on your screen may be too much. The gamma settings on your television may be adjusted to crush the blacks. Some DVD players themselves have contrast adjustment in them. Any of that could be the cause and can be corrected.
He didn't say that at all. Just read what you quoted.
"Or it has a small hard drive on it ".
Notice the "or". He's just guessing. He doesn't know any more about how it works than we do. Or (ha!), he's merely publicly obfuscating the issue.
"iTV can also stream content live through the box to a TV screen or it has a small hard drive on it so you can download what you put on the device -- on your computer on your itunes -- to the television set."
The way I read it is you can stream content from your computer or store content on iTV's hard drive. OR meaning you have either choice.
"iTV can also stream content live through the box to a TV screen or it has a small hard drive on it so you can download what you put on the device -- on your computer on your itunes -- to the television set."
The way I read it is you can stream content from your computer or store content on iTV's hard drive. OR meaning you have either choice.
There has been no indication from Apple in the announcement that you had a choice of anything.
To me, his statement means that he watched it work briefly, but has no idea what it does, other than from what he saw.
Look at the device itself. It's about the size of the Mini, except for being half the height, It costs $299. It has the power supply built-in. What about heat?
How much for the HD? What about the processor to control all of this? What other circuitry will it need to display the menu? What purpose would a HD really serve here, where content will be coming from a computer?
A small amount for RAM can be used to cache incoming files while they are being played, if needed.
He has no idea about this device. It's a rambling statement.
Jobs left plenty of questions about iTV that we cannot completely rely on what he has told us so far. Of course Jobs being the showman wants to save the best for the product launch.
The iPod has no heat dissipation for its hard drive either.
It may be true that he's rambling none of us can say for sure because we don't even fully know what iTV will do. If Apple does include an HD they have the answers to all of your questions.
If he is just talking out of his ass he isn't really doing Apple any favors by promising features that iTV won't have.
Comments
It'll obviously have to have some sort of persistent storage where Front Row will sit and where it can be updated. I'm guessing that it'll probably have a few gigs of flash memory--maybe 2GB and probably a max of 4 GB, for combined OS/Front Row storage and buffering.
Play Lists
The software in the iTv would have to make sense of all of the playlists on all of the machines in order to be able to combine them into one large, understandable list.
If it just lists the individual playlists, then we're back to square one.
The problem with the "10% of households with DVRs", and that it's doubling in the next year, is that any computer with Windows Media Center edition counts as a DVR, at least in the forbes report. Presumably, that doubling could occur once Vista comes out, as it will also have full Digital Video Recording capabilities, and lots of people will be upgrading from pre-media centre edition XP. The thought that 10% of Americans have Tivo or the other set-top boxes is totally ridiculous. That would put it up to about half the market penetration of mobile phones...
On the other hand, I don't think everyone with XP media centre edition or Vista will use it to record TV, so it's hard to get real numbers as to how many people are regularly recording TV shows and using their DVRs, although I wouldn't doubt that Microsoft is collecting the information somehow right now.
I think what iTV will do is be a cost effective, and hopefully user friendly (not to mention well-branded) way to connect the computer to the home theater, something Microsoft still hasn't really accomplished. There's still not many people watching TV and movies on their computers except on flights,etc. (computer in the living room will just never be cozy) If Apple can make "iTV" a part of the vernacular like they have with "iPod", "podcasting", etc., they'll automatically be at the forefront of the public's consciousness in the area. Unlike TiVO...
you'd better check your numbers. Everyone I know has a DVR of some type.
Also, check out just how many people have cell phones. You will be schocked.
I am glad that it will include a hard drive. I have a macbook pro and I was thinking it would kind of suck to always have my computer on next to the tv or in the other room if I want to stream something. For example if I am using a bittorrent I want to be able to use the itv at the same time without any bandwith problems.
No one knows, at this time, whether it will contain a HD. That's merely speculation by some.
FrontRow is already capable of looking for shared movies on your local network.
Most movies began playback immediately.
802.11g has a max datarate of 54 Mbits/sec and a typical datarate of 25 Mbits/sec.
25 Mbits/sec = 3,200 kb/sec (twice the data rate of your typical iTunes movie)
So the bottleneck for most consumers will be the speed of their cable/DSL connection.
Typical broadband in the US is only 6Mbits or 768 kb/sec(half the data rate of your typical iTunes movie).
Most consumers will be able to start watching a movie they start downloading after about 20-30 minutes.
If the file is already on your local network, your iTV can start streaming without delay.
Please try to be less confusing by using proper abbreviations.
Mb/s is megabits per second.
MB/s is Megabytes per second.
Kb/s is Kilobits per second.
KB/s is Kilobytes per second.
25Mb/s equals (about) 3.15 MB/s
6.144 Mb/s equals 768 KB/s. But you can knock that down by about 15% for network traffic.
So far, most people have been able to start watching the movie between 1 and 10 minutes after starting downloading.
According the Nielsen 90% of TV is still seen in live in real time even in homes with DVRs. Of the remainder 50% are played the same day for timeshifting puposes and the demographic is mostly that of younger couples with kids.
http://www.am-strategies.com/en/news.php?ID=149
Set to double to 18%? Meh...if that were true the advertisers would be even more up in arms. If you believe in those number and even faster uptake then you should also believe in the end of advertising based content. That CBS report is a forlorn hope and likely the effect is based on the fact that 90% of all viewing is still "live" so the commerical are seen in their entirety.
Were DVR penetration to reach 50% and were used to timeshift more aggressively then fewer ads would be seen in their entierty and with the sound off and the image zipping by you might get some sense of what was being advertised but doubtful you would know or care what.
I know that my method was always to start watching a show about 15-20 minutes after it started at a minimum. Usually I'd prefer to watch something stored and then replay the just recorded event. Ads are too aggravating to waste time watching.
Personally, if the season passes were uniformly like $15 I'd just do iTunes for prime time shows and leave cable for ESPN and CNN.
Vinea
I don't know anyone at this time who does not have some DVR. Do I do most of my watching real time? Sure.
Having a DVR doesn't mean that most of your watching will be delayed. But, I'm willing to bet that, as time goes on, more people will be doing that.
And when two programs are on at once that one wants to watch, a delayed viewing is required for one of them.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060921-7801.html
Ya HDMI is backwards compatible with DVI but then what's the point of having the HDMI plug?
DRM reasons?
I don't know anyone at this time who does not have some DVR. Do I do most of my watching real time? Sure.
Having a DVR doesn't mean that most of your watching will be delayed. But, I'm willing to bet that, as time goes on, more people will be doing that.
And when two programs are on at once that one wants to watch, a delayed viewing is required for one of them.
Yes, because you have better data than advertisers and Nielsen...
As I said, if you believe most folks will be using a DVR and will timeshift and will skip commercials in the near future then you also believe that advertising based TV is doomed in the near future. The advertising folks seem not to quite as skeptical for the near future so the adoption of DVRs hasn't reached the tipping point.
In which case the iTS model works about as well as the cable + DVR model for the studios no? The AT&T IPTV offering is rather pathetic for the cost but perhaps that's the new model. A $1/month per channel a la cart (they offer a meager 20 ch for $20 now I believe) but that seems too low to sustain TV studio production. $1.99/ep is a bit high so perhaps $15/season works better.
Vinea
Here's an article to start some more speculation.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060921-7801.html
Cool. Too much of the current speculation was getting tediously repetitive, which will happen soon enough with discussion around that article …
This statement does not sound like the ramblings of confusion, speculation, or uncertainty to me. He said he's seen the prototype and directly said it has a hard drive and described how the hard drive would function in the machine. We certainly shall see.
I just got latest Battlestar Galactica 2.5 DVD from Netflix. Watching it on my 42" plasma, picture quality is okay, not great. The dark scenes don't look very good. Almost DVD quality? I don't think that is for me.
This could be from a number of reasons. The contrast on your screen may be too much. The gamma settings on your television may be adjusted to crush the blacks. Some DVD players themselves have contrast adjustment in them. Any of that could be the cause and can be corrected.
They shot it on HD. I think the look they want has way too much contrast for HDCAM.
I've heard they have shot the newest season on a newer HD camera which should be a lot better.
[i]This could be from a number of reasons. The contrast on your screen may be too much. The gamma settings on your television may be adjusted to crush the blacks. Some DVD players themselves have contrast adjustment in them. Any of that could be the cause and can be corrected.
The TV set has been calibrated (poor man calibration) as the blacks looks great when watching CSI:NY or the details on Dave Letterman's suit (in HD). No contrast on the DVD player though.
DRM reasons?
HDMI carries both audio and video signals, but DVI only carries video.
DRM reasons?
HDCD DRM works over DVI.
iTV can also stream content live through the box to a TV screen, Iger said. "Or it has a small hard drive on it so you can download what you put on the device -- on your computer on your itunes -- to the television set."
This statement does not sound like the ramblings of confusion, speculation, or uncertainty to me. He said he's seen the prototype and directly said it has a hard drive and described how the hard drive would function in the machine. We certainly shall see.
This could be from a number of reasons. The contrast on your screen may be too much. The gamma settings on your television may be adjusted to crush the blacks. Some DVD players themselves have contrast adjustment in them. Any of that could be the cause and can be corrected.
He didn't say that at all. Just read what you quoted.
"Or it has a small hard drive on it ".
Notice the "or". He's just guessing. He doesn't know any more about how it works than we do. Or (ha!), he's merely publicly obfuscating the issue.
The way I read it is you can stream content from your computer or store content on iTV's hard drive. OR meaning you have either choice.
"iTV can also stream content live through the box to a TV screen or it has a small hard drive on it so you can download what you put on the device -- on your computer on your itunes -- to the television set."
The way I read it is you can stream content from your computer or store content on iTV's hard drive. OR meaning you have either choice.
There has been no indication from Apple in the announcement that you had a choice of anything.
To me, his statement means that he watched it work briefly, but has no idea what it does, other than from what he saw.
Look at the device itself. It's about the size of the Mini, except for being half the height, It costs $299. It has the power supply built-in. What about heat?
How much for the HD? What about the processor to control all of this? What other circuitry will it need to display the menu? What purpose would a HD really serve here, where content will be coming from a computer?
A small amount for RAM can be used to cache incoming files while they are being played, if needed.
He has no idea about this device. It's a rambling statement.
The iPod has no heat dissipation for its hard drive either.
It may be true that he's rambling none of us can say for sure because we don't even fully know what iTV will do. If Apple does include an HD they have the answers to all of your questions.
If he is just talking out of his ass he isn't really doing Apple any favors by promising features that iTV won't have.