Google and Apple Finally Teaming Up? 126
nieske writes "Rumors are spreading about Google and Apple teaming up to form a video alliance. Google might provide streaming video content for Apple's upcoming iTV, which was revealed in last week's Apple event. The only thing that seemed to be missing in the iTV preview was streaming video, and with Google's Eric Schmidt on the Apple board of directors, this alliance might actually not be so far-fetched."
Poo Pooing ITV (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of people dismiss this product, but the kicker for me is that its priced so I can put one in each room with a TV, instead of a PC beside each TV.
Imagine watching Youtube on your bigscreen... (on the other hand, with that crappy video, perhaps not).
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Re:Poo Pooing ITV (Score:4, Insightful)
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Even the original Mac Minis are fast enough to handle MPEG2 decoding required for the EyeTV 500 (in software, since the Minis don't have a good video card). Pair it with a projector for a "cheap" HDTV (only $2000 for as-big-as-your-wall vs. $2500 for a wussy little 42").
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First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).
Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).
Re:Poo Pooing ITV (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).
Does that happen? I've never, ever broken any of my USB ports, even though I routinely plug and unplug peripherals, especially for my laptop.
Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).
If you go back to the Elgato Web site, you'll see they offer a half a dozen different PVRs, including several designed to stack under a mac mini. I bought one of these years ago and it has happily been storing my TV shows since, including easy archiving to DVD. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good.
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It looks like another good vendor has decided to commit suicide by ridding themselves of a decent product line. I was just about to buy one of their EyeTV 200's (I already have the 500) so I could use analog sources into my Mac Mini. Oh well.
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Unfortunately, I looked at Elgato's site after I posted the link, and the "old style" breakout boxes are all gone in favor of that crappy USB dongle one.
Perhaps you're having difficulty with their odd Web site design? They seem to be selling 250, 310, 410, 610, as well as the USB dongles. The 250 is available directly from their store if that is what you're interested in. Here is a link [elgato.com].
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was thinking of the larger ones (like the 200 and 500) with more connectors on them, as well as a Firewire interface.
Well, they have refurbished 500's for sale on their online store. New 500s are available from a number of resellers including macmall.com and www.dvd-rwmedia.com.
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There. Problem fixed.
If *that* is not good enough for somebody, I'll gladly sell them my EyeTV 500 (which connects via firewire) for the price of one of the new hybrids. Not because I give a rip about analog signals, but because I tend to stuff my firewire connection to the gills with external drives and what-not, so shifting the TV
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Sorry, what I meant was snapping off the USB connector on the device itself, not the port on the computer. Sadly, my iPod Shuffle met that fate (it was plugged into the front port a desktop sitting on the floor, and my boss bumped it sideways with his leg).
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Seeing that it's not a DVR, there's really no purpose to have a
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And I agree, YouTube video would look even worse on a big screen than it does in that little Flash player.
Re:Poo Pooing ITV (Score:4, Informative)
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Apple has done a lot of stuff with wireless networking features that other companies have not matched.
Look at Airport Express "Air Tunes" integration with iTunes running on a Mac or Win 2000/XP PC, for example.
Apple might be pulling some cool, unexpected features out of
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I do it frequently with my Xbox running XBMC, using an XBMC youtube script. it also will also play nearly any audio/video format out there- I won't be jumping in with iTV, despite being a recent mac switcher (mini).
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Oh be still my beating heart.
What exactly is an iTV? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Mac OS X on the iTV? Don't be silly. The next thing you tell me is that there's a toaster that runs NetBSD...
Oh wait...
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Steve said iTV would use wireless streaming or Ethernet and it would have an USB port and a built-in power supply, which kind of points to AirPort Express [apple.com] (and AirPort Extreme), which has wireless (obviously), Ethernet, USB and AirTunes (analog+optical audio). Sounds to me something you could build iTV on.
Don't know what kind of software it runs, though. Probably something custom made with a couple of shared libraries with OS X.
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I'm sure it'll be something similar to that (if not based on that). The Neuston/showcenter is actually a nifty little box that was priced way too high when first released. I bought one on sale ($100AUD) and
Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
My MythTV box in the UK consumes about 1.4 GB of data per hour of programme. That equates to about a 400kbit/second bandwidth requirement to be able to stream broadcast quality standard definition video (I think? Can anyone confirm that?). So basically I'd need at least a 4Mbit ADSL/Cable connection to stream video in real time and that's without enough of an overhead to ensure a 99.9% free picture.
What resolution did they say the iTV was running at? If I download a film from iTunes, what resolution is it? 640x480? That's a fair bit less than PAL. Maybe they could use a different codec to squeeze some more performance out of it, but it seems that the bandwidth requirements are pretty high right now...
The problem is that my dad, for example, expects the TV to work, when he turns it on, all the time. If he turns on his TV and gets some "buffering" messages up, he's going to take the thing back to the shop and tell the guy that sold it to him that "it doesn't work properly"...
Anyone else think that streaming TV is just not ready yet? I'd say we need another couple of years at least...
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Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)
Honestly, I think _quality_ streaming TV is just a pipe dream. As we introduce new TV standards, such as HD, we increase the size and standard of "Normal". With Normal going higher and higher, is it feasible to think that the web will catch up? Will Normal even plateau? I'm not sure, but I venture to say "No"
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When you consider that most home Internet connections became fast enough for streaming good quality music just a few years ago, I'd say that we have a ways to go before
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Exactly, exactly, exactly! TV over t'internet needs to learn to crawl first- technology writers talk about IPTV and TV over the web as though it's something that can be deployed in the next few years, or as if it's something that isn't going to cost trillions of dollars to roll out. We don't have the means to deploy that kind of network yet, nor do we need to.
We currently have a way of deploying streaming video to hundreds of millions of T
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Not really; the only reason cable doesn't need "extra" bandwidth is that you're already sending all the possible data. The better comparison would be that you'd be sending all those 6 different programs all the time, and if 6 people didn't want to watch then the bits would just be piped to /dev/null.
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What do you think digital cable is? It's streaming a digital feed over a network. Now, I don't know exactly what protocols and compression they use, and I'm sure they must be doing some QoS stuff behind the scenes so my neighbor's bittorrent doesn't keep me from ordering a movie, but it demonstrates the capability of high-quality streaming. I can get OnDemand HDTV movies over the same line that I could order a theoretical 30Mbps downstream-- don't tell me that video streaming isn't possible.
Plus, HDTV i
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anybody got numbers on the bandwidth needed for one or two HD streams in H.264?
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Well that would be easy to fix. Just require a Macintosh. You schedule what you want to see and the Mac downloads it. Then when you go to watch it off your iTV it gets streamed from the Mac in your house. Or a little hard drive in the iTV would work too.
It's a reasonable solution, and they can let you watch it directly over the net as soon as your connection is fast enough.
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Other codecs offer much better compression and can even keep close in quality- divx, wmv,
they offer much better size and bandwidth issues than the outdated mpeg2
Youtube is flash driven- isn't it motion jpeg for video and mp3 for audio?
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1.4Gb of data equals 400kbytes a second, or 3200kbits a second. Your calculations are right though. The 3-4Mbits speed is the sweet spot for MPEGII: judging by the crap on the screen I'd say Sky runs some of its channels way below that, but yes you'll need a fast connection to make broadcast streaming work, for very low values of broadcast.
As to iTunes movies being 640x480 - Apple has only rolled the service out in the US so far and 640x480 is NTSC. I
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The math gets worse for HD (Score:3, Informative)
Run fiber instead of copper and you get 100 Mbit/sec or a tad under 7 hour downloads. So for those lucky folks who have fiber, downloading HD is feasible today if you're willing to download overnight or while you're at work. The rest of us will h
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Apple's 1080p trailers are about 10Mbit. Streaming 1080p is out of almost all consumers reach but 720p comes right in around 5-6Mbps. Streaming isn't realistic, but the delay to start a program would be tolerable.
My 3Mbit connection (with a bit of traffic on it) gives me a delay of about 50% for 720p content. A 26 minute program would require me
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i don't think this is going to replace TV, your dad will still have that to watch if he doesn't have things queued up on iTV. besides, devices like TiVo are acclimating people to watching previously arranged things at a later date
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Using an MPEG4 variant can easily halve that bandwidth requirement at nearly the same quality. You can get quality comparable to VHS much much lower--300-500kbits is not unreasonable, but might look crummy on a larger screen (then again, so would VHS).
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This might not be instant-on accessible to everyone, but if it's instant-on to some people and buffer-on to other people, then I'm fine with that.
Your father might not understand why his TV shows have to 'buffer', but then again, is
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Or, I mean, maybe you could use it as its intended, i.e. on a network, streaming video from a computer/device on the network. I don't think this is 1985 anymore. 10BaseT ethernet has gone the way of the horsed carriage to make room for the horseless carriage that is 11 or 54 Mbps wireless technology. You have plenty of bandwidth, if you use the iTV as it is intended to be used.
And perhaps you have never experienced, but with the digital c
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My cable company allows me to stream movies in high definition using their cable box. To support streaming high definition movies over IP, all they need to do is re-allocate their bandwidth.
Besides, I think we'll initially see a DVR-style service for high-bitrate media. You'll subscribe to shows, and they'll be downloaded and ready to play when you sit down. (This is how iTunes works for television series.)
Speculation of course (Score:2, Informative)
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Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)
"It's not hard to imagine a Gapple iTV that that would not only allow you to consume media files on your home theater system, but also stream television content and display relevant advertisements from Google..."
Let's see, iTV plays movies, TV shows and music I buy from the iTunes music store, why do I need Google? To show me targeted ads? No thanks.
"...especially since this device requires a network to do anything useful."
Yeeeaaahhh.... I have broadband just like all the other people the iTV wil
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So you can search the web trying figure out exactly how one goes about "consuming" a media file?
KFG
Yeah! (Score:2)
So is this... (Score:5, Funny)
Apple-Google links map (Score:1)
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Al Gore is on the Board too... But you don't see (Score:1, Insightful)
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benefit (Score:1)
Net Neutrality (Score:3, Interesting)
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yay (Score:2)
Hooray.
-stormin
Dumb, dumb, dumb rumor... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Coming up the Stretch.. (Microsoft... *GASP* (Score:1)
From what i hear and see in Job Postings,
M$ is working on something similar..
http://www.microsoft.com/tv/IPTVImpact.html [microsoft.com]
Just my 2 cents.
Possible TV content? (Score:1)
ITV (Score:2)
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Gapple? (Score:2)
OK, it's probably about entertainment... (Score:1)
Now that would be entertaining.
Maybe, but doubtfull (Score:2)
First, Google Video is great, but its video quality is nothing special. The video is very highly compressed and encoded in to a Macromedia Flash container. The result is a very very lossy conversion prosses. Herein lies the problem. Google video's quality is perfect for free PC content, but for TV?? The trend lately is heavily towards H
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If you, like millions of others, pay for digital cable television then you're wrong. You would pay for something far less than antennae quality video. All cable networks compress (with old poor quality codecs) all "Digital Cable" video. Commonly it's MPEG2 compressed with hardware. These systems are expensive, never upgraded, and produce some of the worst compression artifacting available. Try playing any high
Timing's off (Score:2)
I'll believe it when... (Score:2)
I read about it on the Fake Steve Jobs Blog. [blogspot.com]
A Small Spat (Score:3, Funny)
Or just split the difference and call it hTV
The Future (Score:1)
Oh the Humanity (Score:2, Funny)
Whole religions were started for less my mortal brethren.
matchmaking in the 21st century (Score:1)
Everyone loves you and thinks you'd be a good match for each other. So please get together, if for no other reason than quelling these "will-they-or-won't-they" rumors that keep cropping up.
Stay safe,
VJ
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Logical Step (Score:2)
If Google is happy to team up with the Chinese government, than the least they could do is get in bed with the big DRM pushers.
Trademarked? (Score:2)
What happened to Akamai? (Score:1)
What does Google got that Akamai ain't got, other than courage?
HH
What makes the hottentot hot?
Streaming TV (Score:1)
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Thank you, I'll be here all week.
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But Apple will have to change its product's name: ITV...
Apple announced the iTV device as a preview of things to come. iTV is a product code name, not what it will be shipped/marketed as. This was practically the first thing they said about it.
Not quite (Score:1)
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Re:no streaming content? (Score:4, Interesting)
No they aren't. (Score:3, Interesting)
DVD is 720x480 for both fullscreen and widescreen. The iTunes movies are 640x480 for fullscreen, and for widescreen the number of vertical pixels is decreased to keep the same pixel shape (around 640x270 depending on the aspect ratio of the movie). The end result is that widescreen movies have half as many pixels as DVD.
You may or may not notice the difference on an interlaced fullscreen display, but you will definatly notice the difference on a progressive-scan widescreen
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