The Elgato chips should be easy enough to use. People report that they get hot under use so I'd rather not have that kind of TV equipment inside the Mac.
No sense in including it and raising prices when few people will watch TV on the computer. It will likely force people in the UK to buy a TV license even owning one of those computers too.
Just Recently i discovered Windows 7 has built in H.264 Decoder and TV Viewer.
Every Mac ships with H.264. It is called QuickTime.
Windows 7 is not a product. It is a development project. You should have learned from the Vista disaster that the features of a shipping Microsoft OS have little bearing on the features at the start of development.
That said, even in North America a single TV tuner will only frustrate the buyer. If Apple were to include a TV tuner, then it would need to include several TV tuners:
ATSC to receive dgital broadcasts.
NTSC to receive broadcasts throught February 2009 and analog cable until 2012.
Clear QAM to receive unencrypted digital cable.
CableCARD-compatible tuner for encrypted digital cable.
Outside North America, entirely different combinations of tuners on an entirely different timetable are required. It would complicate Apple's product line and raise costs.
The computer/TV combination caters to the college kid market, but is of little use to most other buyers. To the contrary, TV tuners are undesirable for computers used by businesses. The bottomline is that Elgato makes some really nice tuners for your computer. Buy one if you want to watch TV on your Mac. Allow the rest of us to keep our prices low.
Comments
No sense in including it and raising prices when few people will watch TV on the computer. It will likely force people in the UK to buy a TV license even owning one of those computers too.
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Just Recently i discovered Windows 7 has built in H.264 Decoder and TV Viewer.
Every Mac ships with H.264. It is called QuickTime.
Windows 7 is not a product. It is a development project. You should have learned from the Vista disaster that the features of a shipping Microsoft OS have little bearing on the features at the start of development.
That said, even in North America a single TV tuner will only frustrate the buyer. If Apple were to include a TV tuner, then it would need to include several TV tuners:
- ATSC to receive dgital broadcasts.
- NTSC to receive broadcasts throught February 2009 and analog cable until 2012.
- Clear QAM to receive unencrypted digital cable.
- CableCARD-compatible tuner for encrypted digital cable.
Outside North America, entirely different combinations of tuners on an entirely different timetable are required. It would complicate Apple's product line and raise costs.The computer/TV combination caters to the college kid market, but is of little use to most other buyers. To the contrary, TV tuners are undesirable for computers used by businesses. The bottomline is that Elgato makes some really nice tuners for your computer. Buy one if you want to watch TV on your Mac. Allow the rest of us to keep our prices low.