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Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

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Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#31

Post by ThomPete »

naelshawwa wrote: post #28
wccrawford wrote: post #5

My Samsung TV has most (if not all) of that, and already has Hulu Plus. And Hulu Plus was a huge disappointment. For those that don't know, ONLY 'plus' content can be streamed to a device directly. You can't watch the vast majority of Hulu's catalog directly on your TV/PS3/whatever. It cost me $10 to learn that.

you're missing the point I think, and so did the Author of this post. Its not about the bells and whistles, or features that came built in. Its about the apps that YOU may want to install on it, and not what the manufacturer gets to say you'll get. Who cares if the Sony Bravia has Netflix, YouTube, Pandora and even Hulu bundled in if the Apple TV or Google TV will allow you to install the apps you want. Just like wha…

Actually that is exactly where Balmer was wrong.

It doesn't work like that and you certainly won't be making consumber friendly products only with developers.

What he should have said was developers, designers, vision. It's the symbiosis of developers and designers that makes a platform interesting.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#32

Post by ZeroGravitas »

heresy wrote: post #19

If you need any of * MKV support * 1080p support * Subtitles (.sub/.idx/.srt) * Remote control XBMC on a Gen 1 Apple TV with a Crystal HD card is pretty simple to get going, and has decent performance. I've tried: * Gen 1 XBox running XBMC (no 1080p on a Celeron) * XBox 360 with WMC (flakey codec support, requires separate Windows PC, no subtitle support, remote control via Media Control is bad). Microsoft fluffed th…

I've got XMBC on an Acer nettop which as well as being an actual full computer, cost the same as an Apple TV with the same size hard drive. It also has a powerful video card that means you don't need to add a video accelerator card, just add a remote (either a cheap USB-IR model, or use your bluetooth playstation remote, or your Android or iPhone, iPad or netbook).

Unlike Apple, who expect you to have their stuff out on show, it came with a mount that attaches to the back of your TV which hides it's cheap'n'cheerful plastic exterior while minimizing cables.

I believe xmbc also does DNLA too if you wanted to plug it into one TV via HDMI and stream to another.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#33

Post by mveldthuis »

"AirPlay (which is kind of cool but inherently flawed in the fact that when I switch it to the TV from say my iPad, I’d like to use the iPad for some other task.)"

By the time this comes to the iPad, it'll be iOS 4.2 which probably means they've designed this as a background task, which would allow you to do other stuff on your iPad.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#35

Post by gaiusparx »

It is obvious that Apple's direction is streaming. Streaming from the cloud is easily done. Streaming from users content is via AirPlay. Apple probably looked at DLNA. It looks unlikely that AirPlay will support 'non-Apple' format such as divx, mkv, flac. And I hope Apple will change its mind. It is not a Flash vs non-Flash issue.

Will Apple TV turns into an app & games platform? I see alot of pluses. Something not in the interactive TV as we know today. I think this is coming, based on what Google is doing. Google probably has some inside info that Apple is developing such, thus Google is developing its own Google TV to compete. But I think Apple's implementation will be something different. Maybe: using your iPad/iPhone as controller, select the game you want to display on your TV and push it via AirPlay, the game will then load and play on Apple TV. Then you use your iPad/iPhone as controller to play the game.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#36

Post by Raphael »

mikeryan wrote: post #14

There's a ton of connected TV's which do this. Samsung/LG/Sony - they all are playing in this space. The big downside is that right now most of the TV chipsets (outside of the latest models) are severely underpowered, and no one wants to upgrade a TV, when they can upgrade a box for about 10-20% the price. If you want a TV with all the cool interactive bells and whistles wait for the TV's which can run full flash 10.…

I don't see a compelling reason for a smart display when there is so much competition for cheap boxes that drive displays.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#37

Post by naelshawwa »

ThomPete wrote: post #31
naelshawwa wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you're missing the point I think, and so did the Author of this post. Its not about the bells and whistles, or features that came built in. Its about the apps that YOU may want to install on it, and not what the manufacturer gets to say you'll get. Who cares if the Sony Bravia has Netflix, YouTube, Pandora and even Hulu bundled in if the Apple TV or Google TV will allow you to install the apps you want. Just like wha…

Actually that is exactly where Balmer was wrong. It doesn't work like that and you certainly won't be making consumber friendly products only with developers. What he should have said was developers, designers, vision. It's the symbiosis of developers and designers that makes a platform interesting.

The iPhone worked because of the app store, not because of the touch screen or the phone, or any "consumer friendliness" The app store worked because of the thousands of developers that built apps for the iphone. That is what I'm saying. Don't take "developers" to mean just "coder". I look at it as anybody who is actually involved in building the application, ex. designer, tester, coder, etc. etc.

Look around you, Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Twitter, Google Maps, etc. etc. all these are platforms, and they're successful because people found use cases that the original designers haven't thought of. The ecosystem surrounding these platforms is built by developers, developers, developers.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#39

Post by ThomPete »

naelshawwa wrote: post #37
ThomPete wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually that is exactly where Balmer was wrong. It doesn't work like that and you certainly won't be making consumber friendly products only with developers. What he should have said was developers, designers, vision. It's the symbiosis of developers and designers that makes a platform interesting.

The iPhone worked because of the app store, not because of the touch screen or the phone, or any "consumer friendliness" The app store worked because of the thousands of developers that built apps for the iphone. That is what I'm saying. Don't take "developers" to mean just "coder". I look at it as anybody who is actually involved in building the application, ex. designer, tester, coder, etc. etc. Look around you, Fa…

To me the iPhone and the app store are synonymous so I don't disagree with you. But the app store wasn't there to begin with remember.

And it's not what Balmer meant when he said the 3D's.

That it takes developers to build these things is obvious, just as obvious as it takes engineers to build cars. But it's not engineers engineers engineers.

That's all I am saying.

Re: Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

#40

Post by ajaimk »

naelshawwa wrote: post #28
wccrawford wrote: post #5

My Samsung TV has most (if not all) of that, and already has Hulu Plus. And Hulu Plus was a huge disappointment. For those that don't know, ONLY 'plus' content can be streamed to a device directly. You can't watch the vast majority of Hulu's catalog directly on your TV/PS3/whatever. It cost me $10 to learn that.

you're missing the point I think, and so did the Author of this post. Its not about the bells and whistles, or features that came built in. Its about the apps that YOU may want to install on it, and not what the manufacturer gets to say you'll get. Who cares if the Sony Bravia has Netflix, YouTube, Pandora and even Hulu bundled in if the Apple TV or Google TV will allow you to install the apps you want. Just like wha…

Not at all. If you see the direction that Apple has gone with the Apple TV, you will know that an App Store won't work there. It doesn't have any hard disk to work off of.
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