Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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No real solid recent rumors, beyond the low-level rumors of a MediaMini that were big a while back.
There's a product that just about every Mac owner would buy, that's easy to make, that could sell right now. The product is an Airport Video. Hauppage has had a similar product out for a little while now: http://www.hauppauge.com/pages/produ..._mediamvp.html Hauppage's software is total crap, but third-party programs like SageTV and GBPVR use the hardware flawlessly. It seems like it would be a piece of cake to fit something like this into frontrow, so that your mac could stay in the back room and a tiny little box hooks up to your entertainment center to stream video wirelessly. What's holding something like this back? It seems like a no-brainer. Why build a Media Center when you could just stream the content from the office? |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Coupled with an external plextor and an external hard drive, the Mac Mini would be all the media center you'd ever need.
http://www.plextor.com/english/produ...lm=TD497LL%2FA http://www.plextor.com/english/products/TV402UMac.htm |
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Senior Member
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I can't seem to get your top link to work. What was it?
The problem for me is ir blasters. Most of the ones I've seen aren't that good. Cablecard is promising, but I see too much feet draging on it. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
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Cue groverat...
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Subdued and Medicated
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You may want to check out the Elgato EyeHome device. It is the mac equivalent of your Hauppage thingy.
If you have the EyeConnect software, I believe you could also use a Roku Photobridge (HD Capable) to access music, photos, and movies from your Mac. |
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Join Date: Jun 2005
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Still, it seems like that's an easy conversation to have. It doesn't copy media, it just streams it. Yeah, the MPAA/RIAA/TV folks are a bunch of tech morons, but surely they'd understand that difference. |
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Selfish Heathen
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Zone of Pain
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They understand the difference, but they also understand the point I just made above. Also, keep in mind that the *AA have been working to remove consumers' ability (right?) to record and timeshift content in the first place. Have you not heard about all the broadcast flag legislation and efforts to plug the analog hole? The quality of this board depends on the quality of the posts. The only way to guarantee thoughtful, informative discussion is to write thoughtful, informative posts. AppleNova is not a real-time chat forum. You have time to compose messages and edit them before and after posting. |
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Join Date: Feb 2006
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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"What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds." - Steve Jobs |
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I agree. I was wondering if young couples not having tv is becoming a trend. More and more often I see people who have physical units, but no way to recieve broadcasts. The ones I know said it was hard to get used to, but now they like not having tv. It seems to me if you make money from advertising, like televison execs do, youd be best to focus on increasing your audience and creating a more compelling user experience. Other wise people may find something else to do. For example, posting messages to strangers. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
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Count me as one of those people who no longer subscribe to anything like cable or satellite television. I've paid for both in the past but it is simply an inferior product by today's standards and I choose to spend my money elsewhere.
They want me to watch content on their schedule? They've got to be kidding. I've got a terrabyte array filled with content to watch on my schedule. It's available instantly and conveniently from any display in my house. If they'd sell that content to me with what I consider to be reasonable distribution and licensing, we'd both be happy. But right now, it seems that the video-content industry is headed down the same pathetic and self-destructive path that the music industry stumbled down. All they have to do is sell television and movie downloads at a decent resolution and they'd have a profitable and sustainable business model. Until then... there's always bittorrents. When they wake up, i'll be there with my wallet open. |
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Veteran Member
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Pittsburgh
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Count me as one of those people who no longer subscribe to anything like cable or satellite television. I've paid for both in the past but it is simply an inferior product by today's standards and I choose to spend my money elsewhere.
They want me to watch content on their schedule? They've got to be kidding. I've got a terrabyte array filled with content to watch on my schedule. It's available instantly and conveniently from any display in my house. If they'd sell that content to me with what I consider to be reasonable distribution and licensing, we'd both be happy. But right now, it seems that the video-content industry is headed down the same pathetic and self-destructive path that the music industry stumbled down. All they have to do is sell television and movie downloads at a decent resolution and they'd have a profitable and sustainable business model. Until then... there's always bittorrents. When they wake up, i'll be there with my wallet open. |
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Member
Join Date: Feb 2006
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I agree with Brad. It would be almost impossible for apple to produce a dvd because of the tv shows being sold on itunes. You wouldn't want to buy shows from itunes for 2 bucks f you could just record them for free. That would make apple lose money and the network execs would quickly pull their shows off itunes.
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Member
Join Date: Feb 2006
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the RIAA might be clever at manipulating politics and the law but that doesn't mean they're not morons. The idea of trying to sustain an industry by locking down things the customers want to do is moronic, however "cleverly" you attempt to do that.
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Now in lower-case™!
Join Date: Feb 2006
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Is the plextor converter thing better then the elgato eyetv 200 or 250? I had never even seen or heard of it before.
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Veteran Member
Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Portlandia
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...which is why I love the EFF. "What a computer is to me is it's the most remarkable tool that we've ever come up with, and it's the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds." - Steve Jobs |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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The biggest thing, though, is it's a MUCH better hardware product for a better price than the comparable Elgato machine. Frex, the Plextor handles MP4 hardware encoding, which is pretty nice. It handles hardware DivX encoding, which is even nicer. Last edited by Anthem : 2006-04-23 at 23:30. |
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Seriously, the *AA are stupid in everything except legal matters. They've got terrible business practices and their tech advisors aren't worth anything, but they have the best lawyers money can buy. Just look at the whole HDMI debacle. It's going to be cracked before it even hits the street. Watch the video from the panel at this year's darknets forum... the MPAA and RIAA representatives were completely clueless. I want to believe they're deviously and insidiously playing stupid, but after watching it a time or so you realize they're not playing. Anybody stupid enouogh to wage war on their customers deserves to go out of business. |
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is the next Chiquita
Join Date: Feb 2005
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Erm, nobles saw many peasant revolutions, yet remained in power for centuries.
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Subdued and Medicated
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HDCP is intentionally easy to break on purpose. The point is not to stop people from using watching video, but to actively control the production of HDTV devices. This minimal level of encryption makes the technology susceptible to DMCA laws. There is a LOT more money in lawsuits that selling entertainment as the RIAA discovered. This leverage not only gives the MPAA a monopoly over "Authorized" devices, but allows them veto future innovations and design by threatening to withdraw their licensing.
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careful with axes
Join Date: May 2004
Location: Hillsborough, CA
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Now in lower-case™!
Join Date: Feb 2006
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Senior Member
Join Date: Jun 2005
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Join Date: Feb 2005
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One killer feature I have read about in regards to the Elgato EyeHome 250…
Game Mode - allows you to pass a game console signal thru, zero latency… So, jacked up Mac mini (Core Duo, 2GB RAM & 120GB HDD), four 250GB Lacie FW HDDs (the ones that stack ever so neatly under the mini), a set of Logitech Z-5500 5.1 surround sound speakers (w/optical cable), a 23" Apple Cinema Display (w/VESA wallmount) & a PS2… Put a wireless Apple keyboard/mouse combo on the coffee table with the Apple remote & wireless PS2 controllers… Be a pretty sweet compact home theatre rig, with everything available right now for less than US$4500… And excepting the PS2, everything is available from one source… The Apple Store, duh! Last edited by MacRonin : 2006-04-25 at 23:57. |
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Member
Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: North Jersey
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The best DVR system out there at the moment is MythTV. It is an open source system with lots of cool add on modules and user support. At the moment the backend (server) for the system only runs under Linux but Macs are supported for use as a front end to the system.
MythTV features, details and screen shots can be found here: http://www.mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures I used to drool at the thought of an Apple DVR but then others convinced me that if Apple gets into the market they will almost certainly cripple the unit. Meaning no commercial advance (30-second skip), no easily ripping protected DVD's to your drive, etc. It is also quite possible that Apple won't support DVR functions at all and will support downloaded shows only. If they do support DVR functions it is almost a given that there will be no commercial skip function. Apple will need to avoid moves like that to appease the networks and movie studios to obtain content rights for download shows. MythTV not only has commercial advance but has AUTOMATIC commercial advance like the 4500 and 5000 series ReplayTV units do. I have a 5000 series ReplayTV and it is wonderful! A commercial break hits, a small arrow shows up in the right corner of my screen and the show starts up again. It isn't perfect and works only about 80% of the time. The remaining 20% I have to use the manual commercial advance and skip the commercials by pressing a button a few times. It's not as nice as the automatic and believe me, you get spoiled quick! Hour long shows are often over in 40 minutes if you skip the commercials as well as the beginning and ending credits. If your not up to a Myth system you can still get used Replay units on eBay at reasonable rates. Only the 45xx and 50xx units have automatic commercial advance though. The others have manual commercial advance only. There is freeware hack software available on line so you can easily replace the hard drive, so buying a used unit with only a 40 gig drive is fine. I bought a new unit before they stopped selling them with a 40 in it, got a 400 from CompUSA and slapped it in, in about an hour. Details on the drive hack can be found at: http://rtvpatch.sourceforge.net/ This hack is easiest to do via Windows but can be done via a Linux boot disk as well. I formatted the drive with a $19 external case from CompUSA and my Winblows laptop at work. It would have taken less time but I was using a USB 1.0 external case. There are a number of programs written for the Mac that allow me to interface your Mac with a Replay to do things such as download MPG2 files right off the ReplayTV to your Mac. Mac's can also be front ends to ReplayTV's. More on these various ReplayTV hacks can be found here: http://pvr.digitalinsurrection.com/r...tv_hacking.php The main page of this site: http://pvr.digitalinsurrection.com/ is also a good resource for DVR hacking in general. Back to MythTV... Some people quake in their boots at the thought of dealing with Linux and with good reason as Linux is certainly more difficult than a Mac or even Winblows installation. Because of that and the ever-increasing popularity of MythTV, there are some shortcuts that you can take now that make the whole process MUCH easier than you might think! For starters, you can buy a preassembled MythTV compatible computer here: http://mythic.tv/product_info.php?products_id=44 This site has parts, preassembled units called Dragon's, and also tells you what you need to build your own MythTV server if you are so inclined. As for installing MythTV and Linux, there is a distribution of Linux out now that has MythTV included as part of the installation package. This is called KnoppMyth and can be found here: http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html In addition to Myth's other features, Myth also can record off-air HDTV. If you don't need to do this, you can save some $ on your backend as typical NTSC video capture cards are less money than HDTV ones. Since the backend runs Linux, you can also set up a RAID system quite easily. All of this software is free. If you buy a Dragon or build a computer that has enough power, one box can do it all (front-end and backend). A Dragon can record two shows while letting you watch another. It is mainly a function of hardware. If you have more than one TV tuner card, Myth also supports picture in picture. Last but not least, MythTV uses FREE Internet guide data. Unlike ReplayTV and TIVO where you have to pay a monthly fee for guide access. All this data should keep those of you who are serious about DVR's busy doing some research for more than a few hours! Hope it helped... Corey |
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Formerly Roboman, still
awesome Join Date: Jul 2004
Location: Portland, OR
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Apple mentioned a Mac Media Center at their annual shareholder conference today.
http://www.engadget.com/2006/04/27/a...-in-the-works/ |
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Join Date: Feb 2005
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