Cell in Home Media Center?
I do not buy into the theory that Mac Mini is Apple's solution to home media centers. This is the year of HD video and the media center needs processing horsepower, low cost and low heat. It needs a solution that looks forward rather than looks backward. It needs huge hard disk expansion capability with Apple-branded modules like the xServe RAID. I also do not buy the theory that Apple would create an open system for third-party devices. No way, Apple wants the business for themselves.
Enter the Cell processor. The home media center does not need to run OS-X just like the iPod does not need to run OS-X. This calls for a small, high-performance OS which can stream H.264 to MULTIPLE wired and wireless music and video devices simultantaneously. Under this scenario, I would see the device connecting to a Apple media store with user interaction via a TV and remote control. No computer needed, though I could see iSync functionality for home network and backup functionality.
Do you see any marketing or technical issues with this theory?
Enter the Cell processor. The home media center does not need to run OS-X just like the iPod does not need to run OS-X. This calls for a small, high-performance OS which can stream H.264 to MULTIPLE wired and wireless music and video devices simultantaneously. Under this scenario, I would see the device connecting to a Apple media store with user interaction via a TV and remote control. No computer needed, though I could see iSync functionality for home network and backup functionality.
Do you see any marketing or technical issues with this theory?
Comments
Originally posted by jaslu81
Do you see any marketing or technical issues with this theory?
Yeah -- not this year, and Cell is an IBM/Sony/Toshiba thing... no evidence (yet) that Apple could have access to that technology.
Originally posted by Programmer
Yeah -- not this year, and Cell is an IBM/Sony/Toshiba thing... no evidence (yet) that Apple could have access to that technology.
Maybe with all of the work that Apple does with Java. I believe that cell is a hardware JVM, that will scale from servers to cell phones. I wonder how difficult it would be to port Quicktime to Jave. My guess is that Quicktimie for Java could save Apple money porting Quicktime around. But this is a guess. Apple at one time looked at writing the OS in Java, but that was a long time ago and nothing appeared to come of it. Java is a core technology in OSX, and I believe that TextEdit was written in Java, if I remember correctly.
"Faultline has speculated for the past two years about whether or not the Cell could ever be big enough for servers and at the same time small enough for mobile phones. IBM?s patent says that not only that the Cell can be used for both of these, but that it was also designed specifically to be that way."
http://www.theregister.com/2005/01/13/ibm_cell_chip/
If Cell is going to be as big as many predict, Apple will surely need to support Cell with Quicktime. Cell could be used in Home Media Centers and in future iPod Media Players and maybe even the often-rumored iPhone.
IBM, Sony and Toshiba are more than happy for other companies to use Cell technology since they will rake in the royalties. Can you imagine Apple trying to compete with Mac Mini's 1.25 GHz G4 and slow 80 GB drive against Sony Media Centers using Cell processors? Ouch!
Brendon, aren't dashboard widgets also written in JAVA?
Originally posted by jaslu81
From a recent posting on The Register
"Faultline has speculated for the past two years about whether or not the Cell could ever be big enough for servers and at the same time small enough for mobile phones. IBM?s patent says that not only that the Cell can be used for both of these, but that it was also designed specifically to be that way."
http://www.theregister.com/2005/01/13/ibm_cell_chip/
If Cell is going to be as big as many predict, Apple will surely need to support Cell with Quicktime. Cell could be used in Home Media Centers and in future iPod Media Players and maybe even the often-rumored iPhone.
IBM, Sony and Toshiba are more than happy for other companies to use Cell technology since they will rake in the royalties. Can you imagine Apple trying to compete with Mac Mini's 1.25 GHz G4 and slow 80 GB drive against Sony Media Centers using Cell processors? Ouch!
Brendon, aren't dashboard widgets also written in JAVA?
From what I remember Java Script, which is an open standard but is very different from Java.
Originally posted by Programmer
Yeah -- not this year, and Cell is an IBM/Sony/Toshiba thing... no evidence (yet) that Apple could have access to that technology.
Programmer isn't Cell also a PPC thing - which in turn has technologies created, and derived from the AIM alliance? Theoretically wouldn't Apple already be in a good position on this, or even be considered a contributer possibly from previous technological advancements of the PPC from their part in the alliance?
Originally posted by onlooker
Programmer isn't Cell also a PPC thing - which in turn has technologies created, and derived from the AIM alliance? Theoretically wouldn't Apple already be in a good position on this, or even be considered a contributer possibly from previous technological advancements of the PPC from their part in the alliance?
It is rumoured that there is some part of Power in the Cell, so if we take that as fact: considering that IBM was the originator of POWER, and PowerPC was the subject of the AIM alliance, it is possible (even likely) that Apple has no claim to any part of the IBM/Sony/Toshiba arrangement. IBM has eschewed the PowerPC label for the Power label in the last year, which might be a telling move. Still, my feeling is that Cell is mostly an IBM thing and we don't really have enough information to decide if it is Apple's future or not. I sure hope it is.
It sure as hell is not something as irrelevent as a hardware Java VM!
Originally posted by Programmer
It is rumoured that there is some part of Power in the Cell, so if we take that as fact: considering that IBM was the originator of POWER, and PowerPC was the subject of the AIM alliance, it is possible (even likely) that Apple has no claim to any part of the IBM/Sony/Toshiba arrangement. IBM has eschewed the PowerPC label for the Power label in the last year, which might be a telling move. Still, my feeling is that Cell is mostly an IBM thing and we don't really have enough information to decide if it is Apple's future or not. I sure hope it is.
It sure as hell is not something as irrelevent as a hardware Java VM!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/13/ibm_cell_chip/
Explain please.
A hardware JVM would put IBM/Sony at the complete licensing mercy of Sun. It would also be forever locked into the particular JVM version at the time of manufacture which is a serious disadvantage for a chips future. Not to mention the whole point of a JVM is hardware independence! Implementing the JVM in HW is something even Sun dismissed after looking at it for awhile. All strong reasons the Reg is all wet.
It would be much more likely the Cell family had some sort of abstraction layer that allows scaling of Cell processors from servers to small mobile chips while running the same code. Something "like" a JVM allows, but not a JVM or even running Java.
Originally posted by Brendon
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/13/ibm_cell_chip/
Explain please.
Well the easy and obvious explanation is that "Faultline" doesn't know what the hell he is talking about. The Register is not what I would call an authority.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology...w=wn_tophead_2
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1645221,00.asp
Originally posted by jaslu81
I do not buy into the theory that Mac Mini is Apple's solution to home media centers. This is the year of HD video and the media center needs processing horsepower, low cost and low heat. It needs a solution that looks forward rather than looks backward. It needs huge hard disk expansion capability with Apple-branded modules like the xServe RAID. I also do not buy the theory that Apple would create an open system for third-party devices. No way, Apple wants the business for themselves....
Why not? The G4 has the power to do what is needed for a media center type machine and certainly the G5 has it - What we need to be looking at it the video card - and pretty much all the video cards they are using can do what is needed. The G4's are low power - low cost - and they have the speed to do what we need. I just don't see what it is that you envision that current machines can't do that you think they need to?
As far as the disk - well they could easily start using 3.5" hard drives and boost the capacity up to 250 if they were so inclined to do so. Expansion - well I don't understand why you think Apple wants that market for themselves - they don't currently and haven't for a while made any external hard drive type products except the xserve raid which isn't anything like what a typical home user / media center setup would be using. There isn't any reason that people couldn't just use some kind of an adapter that goes on top of the MiniMac that uses firewire 800 and lets you plug in like four huge IDE hard drives - kind of like that old VST firewire raid setup that they used to sell that ran off powerbook batteries. Four 250 GB hdd's on a media pc setup - not bad at all, and that is just this year - by the time something like this came out - who knows how big the hard drives will be.
Originally posted by PeePeeSee
Why not? The G4 has the power to do what is needed for a media center type machine and certainly the G5 has it - What we need to be looking at it the video card - and pretty much all the video cards they are using can do what is needed. The G4's are low power - low cost - and they have the speed to do what we need. I just don't see what it is that you envision that current machines can't do that you think they need to?
Many others seem to agree with you but I'm struggling with this:
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/h264faq.html
A 250 GB drive may be just fine for a lot of people but I'd like to re-rip my CDs to Apple Lossless so my music alone will pretty much fill a 250 GB drive. At full HD resolution, a 250 GB drive will fill up fast and there's not much point in having a media server if there's no space for a decent library.
I also do not think that Mac Mini's form factor fits well with A/V equipment. Seems like a larger device would not be out of place and would provide space for HD expansion. Mac Mini frees up valuable desk space as a computer but does not really save any space stacked on top of a DVD player.
Originally posted by jaslu81
Many others seem to agree with you but I'm struggling with this:
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
720p is ~44% the pixel rate of 1080p, and is far more common currently. It will be interesting to see how the mini's G4 does at that resolution.
Originally posted by jaslu81
Many others seem to agree with you but I'm struggling with this:
"While H.264 is a computationally advanced codec, it runs on today?s shipping computers with no additional hardware required. For example, a full HD movie (1920x1080, 8 Mbps, 24 fps) encoded with H.264 plays back beautifully on a dual Power Mac G5. Internet-sized content (40kbps - 300kbps) will run on the most basic of processors, like those in mobile phones and consumer-level computers."
http://www.apple.com/mpeg4/h264faq.html
A 250 GB drive may be just fine for a lot of people but I'd like to re-rip my CDs to Apple Lossless so my music alone will pretty much fill a 250 GB drive. At full HD resolution, a 250 GB drive will fill up fast and there's not much point in having a media server if there's no space for a decent library.
I also do not think that Mac Mini's form factor fits well with A/V equipment. Seems like a larger device would not be out of place and would provide space for HD expansion. Mac Mini frees up valuable desk space as a computer but does not really save any space stacked on top of a DVD player.
As far as 250GB hard drives and HD content - 250GB is common right now and right now there isn't much HD content to begin with. Every few months/year hard drive capacity grows - I think we are up to 400GB as it is right now maybe even 500GB - with 2 hard drives you are close to a terabyte of hard drive space already with little HD content to even record - but standard defitnition content is plentiful and that much space is plenty.
As hard drive space goes up so will HD content so expect to be able to buy more space for better prices at a local electronics store near you.
What I envision as far as a MiniMac home theater type deal - maybe it's something you keep in your stereo cabinet maybe not - you put the MiniMac on top of some kind of a case that can hold maybe 4 hard drives and you can swap them out if you want to.
4 drives right now at 400GB each - that's quite a bit of space, near 2 TB. Also - you won't have to put this on your DVD player - it will be your DVD player.
Originally posted by PeePeeSee
Also - you won't have to put this on your DVD player - it will be your DVD player.
Only if you buy several hundred DVDs from me.
A few other points:
1. We have a number of channels of HD content through Time Warner today.
2. I'm pretty sure the copyrights on existing DVDs will not let you legally "rip" them onto a hard disk.
3. Start looking at people's AV equipment - vertical space is usually at a premium so I can't imagine a stack of little boxes. It makes no sense.
4. Imagine competing against Sony boxes with plenty of expansion and cell processors.
Originally posted by jaslu81
Only if you buy several hundred DVDs from me.
A few other points:
1. We have a number of channels of HD content through Time Warner today.
2. I'm pretty sure the copyrights on existing DVDs will not let you legally "rip" them onto a hard disk.
3. Start looking at people's AV equipment - vertical space is usually at a premium so I can't imagine a stack of little boxes. It makes no sense.
4. Imagine competing against Sony boxes with plenty of expansion and cell processors.
I don't understand what you mean by buy several hundred DVD's from you?
1. A number isn't very specific - most channels today are not in HD - the minority are - a small minority. Also I already said - as time goes on and and hard drive capacity increases - so will the choice of HD content.
2. You can copy a DVD - what you can't do is circumvent the copy protection scheme used on the DVD's by using something like DeCSS to strip the encryption method when you copy it. Copyrights shouldn't have anything to do with it - you can backup anything you own such as VHS tapes/CD's/tapes.
3. Yes if you look today it is a premium since you might have such things like an HD tuner, DVD player, CD player/100 CD changer. However you fail to understand that you won't need any of this stuff with one of these things so you would have plenty of space to add whatever and I might add - it will take up less space.
4. As far as I know there are no cell machines like this at all and even if there was - who cares? It isn't as if a cell processor machine could do anything the machine I am talking about couldn't do and possibly cheaper. All this stuff can be done right now with all the expansion you could want.