There’s a new Apple TV coming, and, as Atrios points out, the tech press is wrapped up in whether Apple will “kill” the competition, without wondering how cable companies are going to react. Comcast already has a cap, and Time-Warner is flirting with different usage billing strategies. If Apple TV causes more people to switch from cable to the Internet as the pipe for their entertainment, I expect we’ll hear more about bandwidth “hogs” even though Internet bandwidth is getting cheaper every year. For the cable ISP monopolies, you’re only a “hog” when you use your bandwidth to watch TV.
As usual with the tech press, Apple gets a lot of attention, but an excellent new Apple TV (the current little box is by all accounts mediocre) will only accelerate the inevitable. I bought a Roku on impulse a couple of months ago, for something like $50. Like Apple TV, it’s a tiny little box that lets you stream different services, mostly Netflix, on your TV. Since then, there’s been very little traditional TV watching in my household. We already had Netflix, but the Roku Netflix app is just a little better that the Wii we were using, plus it’s hi def. Since we don’t watch a lot of sports, our TV service is now vestigial, and we’ll probably trash it soon. I can’t believe that the cable company will take that loss of $70/month in recurring revenue lying down, so I’m expecting to be labeled a hog in the near future.
inkadu
What does Apple TV / Roku have that Blu-ray players don’t? Most I’ve seen have at least Netflix and Hulu+.
zzyzx
If you rip all of your DVDs to a format that the Apple TV likes and you live in that ecosystem, it’s amazing. Nothing like flying when your iPad has 18 movies on it to choose from…
Brian
My wife got me the apple tv box for christmas.
It is only good for two things, netflix streaming. Which wasn’t hard to do anyway. And youtube videos. You can’t just use it for hulu or anything like that because of course Apple has it locked down. Oh and you can of course pay to use the itunes movie store.
I am not an Apple fan. Its best for the people who hate to use computers because they idiot proof everything.
BO_Bill
I was very excited as today I purchased a brand-new Blue-Ray player from Wal Mart. I made this purchase as I had previously bought the movie Taxi Driver from Amazon since my friend had a CD player for his TeeVee but then Taxi Driver didn’t play on my friends CD player. Now I find that there are wires that come out of my new Blue-Ray player and no place to stick them into my TeeVee. So this sucks. Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you in advance Balloon Juice commentators.
inkadu
HBO isn’t playing along. Their stuff is only available on DVD a few months after the season is over. Can’t find a legal way to view a digital copy of “Game of Thrones.”
The Dangerman
I’ve got nothing bad to say about my Roku; ok, one thing, the way the Netflix queue is built in the Roku kinda blows, but if you use the 20th Century technology (computers) to do the queue thing, you’re golden.
Can’t compare to a Blu-ray, however.
Villago Delenda Est
I think Apple’s attitude about “dumb pipes” is unspeakably naive.
Those dumb pipes can put the crimp in your Police Academy jones in a heartbeat.
Bandwidth control is all the rage amongst the pipe owners. It’s the new metering, and they are, after all, Ferengi, and can see nothing but sweet sweet profit in making people pay through the nose for that next movie “on demand” from the cloud.
Apple is making a serious mistake. They’re about to run into people who have a far more insatiable greed than they do, which is saying something.
debit
@The Dangerman: Yep to that. I have to set up my queue on my laptop, then I’m set. I wish I could figure out a way to do that with Amazon Prime movies as well; as it is, I have to search and then select them from the Roku, which is not fast or fun.
JPL
@The Dangerman: My Roku picks up more stations that the blu-ray. For example, I can get al jazeera on Roku but haven’t found a way to access it on my blu-ray.
I’ve used an antenna for a few years now and can get quite a few local channels. I don’t miss the cable at all.
Garm
I’d happily pay the cable company $70/month for gigabit internet.
inkadu
@BO_Bill: Oh dear. I think you may be completely screwed there, Bill. If a box only has digital signals out (like HDMI), it can’t legally be converted to analog (RCA, component, coax). Something about copy protection encrypted in the digital form that would obviously disappear in the analog… I could be wrong, but I have it on the authority of a friend who is very into home theater. I was able to find an AUDIO converter on monoprice, but it’s not going to be much fun listening to movies, assumign you could even set up the player without a screen — which you probably couldn’t.
So one more trip back to Walmart for you. Either to return it or to get tv with digital inputs.
Bort
My roku has: Al jazeera, BBC news, Vimeo, Youtube, Tunein (every radio station in the world, literally), archive.org (old movies), National Film Board of Canada (via Nowhereman channel), justin.tv, Cnn intl, bloomberg, France 24. All for free. I also pay for Hulu to get Colbert. And I stream Amazon Prime free movies. Roku is so worth the money.
Kirk Spencer
I use a wdtv live hub myself, but otherwise (mostly) same-same. Add Playon (which runs through it) with its user-created scripts to the youtube, hulu, and netflix options and, well, I don’t miss cable tv at all.
techno
I am not so sure about Apple TV and I’ve been an Apple guy since 1985. It’s not that they can’t do the hardware, it’s that they insist on running everything through iTunes.
My solution was to buy a wifi-equipped Blu-ray player that played every format around. I have a bunch of .mkv high-def movies and even though they look terrific on my 27″ iMac, I wanted to watch them on my big-screen. So we now have Netflix and could buy other services. Even better, I can play all my discs—including AVCHD discs that Toast can burn to a regular $0.30 DVD blank. The only thing I would add if doing it again is an SD reader so I could play back my raw high-def footage without hooking up the camera.
High-def is still an annoying little hobby with all the format incompatibilities. Ironically, the hardware is now WAY ahead of the software. For $300, you can buy a camcorder that takes dynamite high-def—for $25,000 you can shoot like Steve Soderbergh. Getting it out of that camcorder and into an edit program and then playing it back on your big screen is still a major headache. Of course, now that YouTube lets you upload 1080p movies for free, perhaps even Blu-ray is just a phase.
debg
@inkadu: No kidding. HBO’s policies are the worst.
I have a cable plan only for wireless service, so I stream everything. It’s the best.
inkadu
I use an old iMac with an eye-tv analog-to-digital converter for basic cable, plus Hulu+ and Amazon.
It’s a little slow, can be choppy, and has limited recording capabilities (only one stream at a time can be watched or recorded)… but it’s sure better than sitting through commercials.
And now my SO has an iPad and she spends a lot of time watching Hulu-based TV shows on that.
For the Roku – It seems weird to me that, in the age of software and open internet, that you have to buy a piece of specialized hardware to get those channels. What’s the deal with that? Does Roku insert its own commercials and kick that back to the content providers? Why isn’t it just an aggregator that is hardware neutral?
Raven
I’ve got the month trial of Amazon Prime Instant video and it seems to work OK but trying to find content can be a challenge. We had the 1st DVD of North and South from Nexflix and we didn’t want to wait so I went to the Amazon option. The search function on my Sony Blu Ray did not show it so I hooked my MacBook Pro to the hdmi inlet and streamed it from there.
Villago Delenda Est
@inkadu:
As long as you have the “unfettered” “free market” in play, there will be proprietary distortions deliberately designed in to create monopoly control. This is what the “free market” types failed to pick up from The Wealth of Nations, if they bothered to read it at all. It’s why “government regulation” is needed to prevent what amounts to “private regulation” to create monopoly control situations. Government can hinder or aid this impulse, and the ideal situation is where government works hard to keep the market actually free and not privately controlled. Because those seeking control intend to bleed consumers dry if they can.
the fake fake al
Cable cutter here. I built a pc for the TV and dumped cable (a $100 savings). My 46 LCD is now a giant monitor. Have a wireless keyboard/mouse that works great. NF, YT, Hulu, and internet in general. Takes some getting used to, got to hunt for content, but would never return to cable. Tough on football fans. NFL cracks done on foreign streaming sites and they suck anyway. So I got an antenna which works really well, HD and all. Probably use that for the Olympics too. Apple TV does interest me.
BO_Bill
Thank you inkadu. I think that I’ll try the Salvation Army first.
negbert
My BluRay player has lots of channel selections similar to a Roku. They are not free, as most are pay-per-view, and I can’t watch all my favorite network shows, that this year are really good. So, the cable company is still the best alternative for me. Yes, I can watch some shows online, but I like a bigger screen too.
barath
I’ve been thinking it’d be cool to get an Apple TV for a while after futzing with various Western Digital TV boxes that all are lacking in one way or another.
But I just reread Mander’s classic Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television and now I’m wondering whether I ought to step away from the screen (TV and computer) a bit more (or a lot more)…
jheartney
@inkadu:
You don’t need any particular hardware to stream Netflix, but you do need something. Many TV’s have some sort of Netflix app, but few of them update it ever, so the interfaces are generally simplistic, poorly designed, and won’t include things (like captioning, ability to search the Netflix database, etc.) beyond the basics.
I first bought a Roku because I wanted to watch Netflix on an old TV next to my workout area, and the AppleTV requires an HDMI input. Roku doesn’t; it’ll happily connect to obsolete TV’s as well as shiny new ones. Now I own 3 Roku’s and zero AppleTV’s.
Roku also has a do-it-yourself API for creating channels, and lots of scruffy little ones have sprung up, some actually useful. As Bort mentions, there’s a lot of Pro ones too. It’s a sterling example of the virtues of an open platform, which you don’t get with either AppleTV or the afterthought app included with your Blu-Ray player or new HD TV.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
allow this to be my fart in the wind for the culture already lost.
i am talking about all the bad tv and terrible movies, to say nothing of infomercials in all their cultish slice of life glory. who amongst us hasn’t added color and pageantry to our pop culture parade by accidentally watching an entire movie a minute or two at a time? in the old days some of the most joyously regrettable moments were spent watching stuff that just happened to catch your eye, and reeled you in with its sheer schlocky brilliance.
the on screen programming guide wounded, and tv from a menu, and movies by stream and queue kill some of the great accidental favorites and guilty pleasures of tv past. this is why there no longer is any great bad music, i know it doesn’t matter and the ego driven entitlement and consumer is king mantra that drives accessory technology will not be stopped. but when you wonder at some point why there are no more cult classics, or accidental hits, except on youtube, no thee that one’s desire for control has killed what only truly passive viewing can yield.
dexwood
I have a Roku and a Roku2. First was a gift, the second I purchased. The Roku2 ques Netflix more sensibly and is easier to select from. Terrific selection of channels too. Several pay per view options for movies in addition to all the free channels. Music and news also. Both Rokus stream content faster than my Sony Blu-ray wi-fi DVD player, a machine I only use for watching DVDs now. By the end of the year, Roku will offer a new device, about the size of a jump drive that plugs into a televisions HDMI port for about 50 bucks. No more connection wires.
jheartney
@Villago Delenda Est:
I think the cable guys are making a serious mistake if they think they can clamp down on broadband access over the long term. The incumbents aren’t the only way to move data around. My brother-in-law, for example has some sort of wireless broadband. Google is running a pilot project to do fiber direct to residences in Kansas City.
If the cable companies and telco’s try to be hardasses about “bandwidth hogs,” they may find the internet being routed around them. What they’re offering is a commodity, and one that can be delivered in a variety of ways. Any monopoly in it won’t last long.
The more interesting issue is whether the current content owners will continue licensing their stuff to the likes of Netflix, Crackle etc. I think they’ll try not to, but in the end they won’t have much choice. Netflix, for example, is going to exclusively offer this year’s Best Picture winner later in the year. They are already too big to ignore.
Cassidy
We watch Netflix and Hulu Plus on the Xbox 360 and we have Xfinity with the most basic TV and internet. All in all I pay about $70 a month for great internet (easily 3-4 wireless devices streaming something), almost all the tv shows I watch, and a great selection of movies.
Keith
@zzyzx: I did that on my Win7 Media Center PC. It took weeks, but I can play over 200 DVDs and 600 CDs on my bigscreen, and it’s incredible. The only bad part is that the Xbox 360 can’t read those ripped DVDs, so I need a full PC running the TV rather than using the Xbox as an extender (a normally cool feature)
drew42
NFL, NCAA Men’s basketball, and MLB account for over 80% of my TV watching. I live in the regional TV market for all the teams I like, and general cable complaints aside, Time Warner is actually pretty awesome about covering every Syracuse basketball game, and dealing with Giants/Jets/Bills schedule conflicts.
The rest is Colbert Report and Game of Thrones. I use Netflix for movies. And I since I work from home, I specifically need to keep my PC and TV separate or I’d go insane.
Are there any benefits in Apple TV or Roku for me, or am I not part of the target demographic?
fasteddie9318
There are HDMI to component converters on the market.
On Roku, what’s the Netflix quality like? My Panasonic wireless Blu Ray offers high def Netflix, but it can be shoppy and occasionally the picture goes black for a split second. My understanding is that the Panasonics do this because they’re constantly adjusting picture quality in reponse to the wireless signal strength. So if signal strength drops a hair, the picture drops for a second to adjust. Is Roku better?
jheartney
@Marcellus Shale, Public Dick: In my experience most of what passive viewing yields is wasted time. There’s a whole internet full of avid watchers finding interesting stuff, and if you plug into them you can find it too without having to wade through the dreck.
Villago Delenda Est
@jheartney:
Well, over the long term, perhaps. But these outfits are run by Harvard MBA asshats who have no way of groking anything longer than the next fiscal quarter.
Pee Cee
@Keith:
That’s what those Western Digital WDTV Live boxes are good for. Older models can be had dirt cheap, and they will play nearly any video format you can think of from a network drive. They’re fanless/completely noiseless … which is a must for the home theater room or the bedroom.
Nylund
Between Roku, BR player, and an HD antenna, one can get a huge chunk of their TV needs. So much so that ordering cable on top of that for the few extra things increasingly seems like a waste of money. But, those few extra things are pretty desirable. They’re mainly live sports and “premium” shows on channels like HBO and Showtime. The nefarious regions of the internet can provide those premium shows (if one is willing to do that), but a legal solution there would be great.
Ideally, I’d love it if HBO offered HBOgo to non-subscribers as a stand-alone thing. I’d happily pay $10 a month for HBOgo. It’s the $70 for basic cable that one has to purchase first that’s the deal-breaker for me. If Apple has enough savvy to get content providers like HBO and companies like Comcast and TimeWarner to play along and make things like HBO programming available a la carte, then they’ll have something big. But, I’m not sure why they think the others will play along nicely and hand over to Apple all the profits.
And if Apple isn’t getting things like HBO available a la carte, then the whole thing just sounds like an excuse to get their fanbois to pay double for something that already exists because it looks pretty and has the Apple logo on it.
Jason
Dan Gillmor recently wrote a nice piece on the other topic of this post, that of the tech press’s reluctance to write about Apple products without somehow implying that the only question is the “dominance” of their technology: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/mar/02/apples-over-compliant-media
I’ve wondered more than once over the past year whether tech “pundits” weren’t, overall, more stupid/annoying/mendacious than political pundits. Certainly Scoble’s a great analogue for Reynolds, Gruber is Lileks, and all the VC dipshits the Ace O’Spades “cavalry” types? When the Daily Beast starts the “TED is just MLA with better PowerPoints” stuff, you have to wonder if it’s a new front in culture warfare or just a turf war.
Cain
I have frontier and it has been great. They recently upgraded my 25/25 Mbits to 35/35 for free. I am golden with no caps and a cost of 80 a month for that and phone.
I don’t do much bit torrent. I have like two shows that I download all shows from public broadcast. They are castle and fringe. The rest are on netflix.
schrodinger's cat
Testing
cmorenc
@inkadu: (responding to BO_Bill’s question about his Blu-Ray Player):
Fortunately, the cost of good-quality high-def digital TVs has rapidly dropped over the last two or three years. You can get a pretty decent 32″ 720p TV with HDMI inputs for the $200-$350 range now. Yes, that’s hardly trivial pocket change, but it’s probably far better quality than what you now have.
schrodinger's cat
How much bandwidth does Roku require. In the boonies where I live I only have MiFi for my internet and no cable. So no TV for me.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
@jheartney:
i think your missing my point and the spirit in which it is offered.
i will say that when you are trying to appeal to people’s conscious tastes, you are more likely to take less risks and you appeal to narrower sensibilities.
jheartney
@Villago Delenda Est:
I guess you need an MBA to run companies as poorly as the cable companies are run. Normal folk wouldn’t think of charging that much for such sucky service.
slag
I got a Google TV several moons ago to replace a CRT space hog. The Gtv is good for watching dvds and providing a big screen to plug the mac into for watching Stewart and Colbert. And that’s it. The interface is the absolute worst for people like me who prefer to do things that don’t involve sitting around surfing stupid YouTube channels. It’s ridiculously appalling how bad the interface is.
Apple’s right that providing a remotely decent UI will be where it’s at to get consumers like me. However, since they’ll probably still be relying on shitty products like iTunes, I have no faith that they will accomplish the goal. Apple seemed to hit a sweet spot in their UI development several years ago and since then has been essentially riding the ebb of that initial wave, with very few overhyped useful feature additions and a whole lotta obfuscation of what good was already in there. In a battle between them and cable companies, I might just end up following JC’s football strategery and root for injuries.
Chyron HR
@schrodinger’s cat:
D-
See me after class
Percysowner
@drew42:
The NFL channel is not yet on Roku. MLB does have a channel. You have to pay a subscription to MLB of $25 per month for premium $20 per month for regular or $125 for the premium channel or $110 for the regular per year According to Roku
Playon a private channel does access ESPN so whatever sports content you want can be accessed there, again there may be a subscription fee.
The Roku is wonderful! I love it completely. Get the HD version, the streaming is excellent.
schrodinger's cat
@Chyron HR: Oh noes! I contest my grade and will appeal to a higher authority, Tunch!
pseudonymous in nc
@the fake fake al:
May not help you for most of the Olympics, which will be broadcast on MSNBC, USA, Bravo, etc. We don’t know how NBC’s going to handle streaming this time round — i.e. whether you’ll need a basic cable sub to get access to online live streams.
pseudonymous in nc
As for me, I’ve not had cable TV in three years, and don’t miss it much. Networks through a coathanger antenna, and TiVo to pipe other stuff in from the home network — not the most efficient solution, but I’ve had a TiVo since they first came out, and I still think their UI is better than anything else on offer.
different-church-lady
There’s this thing called “broadcast TV”. It’s free. It’s limited, yes, but nobody has to get in a snit about who’s charging what outrageous sum for the pipe.
When you choose to buy your optional entertainment from someone who controls a pipe I just don’t understand why people then think there’s some kind of right or expectation that the pipe be priced cheaply. TV is not a public utility, nor a necessity.
Desert Rat
@inkadu:
HBO isn’t playing along.
Since their parent company also owns one of the two largest cable companies in the US, this is hardly surprising.
kindness
No SPORTS? What are you….a Communist???
Raven
@different-church-lady:
“nor a necessity”
Honey, you know not what you speak.
march madness ain’t no option
Billy Beane
BAhahahaha, I guess we can add iTard to the mistermix FAIL sauce!
FAIL on political knowledge……on a board about politics.
FAIL on judging singing ability
FAIL just for being an iTard which automtically = no knowledge of technology.
Nothing but FAIL
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSGnPlqMleeALa9-snrThagOEseXYm3RqoKbMCZbV-5jbA8TQ-M
http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS0VXI_lvL-8_L27Sityq709ojAW3cIe_P1Uu90JcqNhqsJVH0P3dBI_E0a
Raven
Is there any difference between RCA and Composite cables in terms of performance from a VCR to a TV?
JoyfulA
Ten years ago, the power companies were testing prototypes to send Internet through electricity lines. What happened?
trollhattan
@inkadu:
Since they can be captured on a DVR, can you just transcribe them to DVD by recording the DVR playback?
trollhattan
@Billy Beane:
What are you? I usually only see stuff like this on gadget blogs, “I read about this [gizmo/discovery/funny thing] MONTHS AGO, why are you wasting my time?” The writer is thirteen.
Life–you kan haz one–it’s never too late.
lol
I use TVersity to stream from my computer to my 360. Very easy to setup and it streams anything my computer can play.
I’m looking for a blu-ray player now that can do streaming though.
@JoyfulA:
IIRC, it works fine but the bandwidth was only good enough to compete with dial-up, not cable or DSL.
slag
@different-church-lady:
Television is no longer a necessity, no, but you’re living in a cave if you don’t think the Internet is a necessity. And that’s the point of this post. It’s the supposedly free broadcast television (which not everyone gets, by the way) that’s the dinosaur here. Cable/DSL/or some other brand of internet infrastructure should absolutely be a public utility.
Billy Beane
@trollhattan: What am I by Billy Beane
I am art imitating life. With pointed fangs I sit and wait. I am riddles in the dark. I never was, I am always to be. I’m smiles and tears. White and black. Gangstarr remix. I get wetter and wetter the more I dry. I can run but not walk.
What am I?
Spaghetti Lee
I’m a curmudgeonly grump and the 27-inch box I have now works just fine for the limited TV-watching I do. I’ll upgrade when smoke starts coming out the back.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Billy Beane:
An asshole.
Amy C
We had no tv at all through the early 2000s, then went to a Netflix/Hulu/EyeTV system in 2008. That was great solution for a while, but when my TV-addicted mother came for a long visit last year, we ordered DISH Network and haven’t looked back. I feel like I went backwards, because I keep hearing that the future is all about NOT getting TV from places like DISH. But to be honest, I love it. Everything I want to watch, I DVR. I never have to watch commercials or deal with connectivity issues or wait for something to be made available in streaming format or pay extra for certain shows.
It helps that I live somewhere with a reliable signal, and the cost is significantly less than the cable TV options around here. But using Internet as TV is still kind of a headache, which is why I dont do it anymore. I look forward to that not being the case, and if any company can make that happen, I tink it’s got to be Apple.
Billy Beane
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Now that is something a 13yo with no life experience would say. So I guess YOU have answered my other groupies question.
One other thing….about that handle…..sigh…
Willard
My vote is to build your own home theater pc. XBMC is a beautiful interface and has a number of channels plus available Hulu integration. Add a service like PlayOn and all your content is there; Netflix, amazon VOD, sports, etc.
I run ubuntu 11.10 with gnome shell, playOn runs in a Windows XP virtual machine. PlayOn can stream content through windows OSes that aren’t officially supported by the service; such as Netflix on 64 bit windows XP.
I use a lenovo multimedia keyboard remote and mouse to control it all.
It’s a nice setup because it doesn’t rely on an “ecosystem.”
pseudonymous in nc
@JoyfulA: Home networking over power lines exists, and it’s useful in situations where wireless isn’t feasible — for instance, buildings that are built like Faraday cages.
Broadband over power is more difficult for a couple of reasons: one is the structure of the US grid; the other is the knock-on interference on the radio spectrum.
And I believe a bag of freshly salted dicks is on its way to the Beane household, which will go well with his 15-hour Reddit sessions.
ice weasel
I thought this was interesting, especially in light of the idea that it’s utterly ridiculous.
“the current little box is by all accounts mediocre”
By all accounts? Really? I’m guessing you do very little reading.
And i’m not even an AppleTV fan. I own a Roku and love it.
The important idea here is that Apple is going to somehow run into the content owners and lose. While an Apple victory here is hardly a foregone conclusion, I recall lots of people saying the same thing about iTunes. Eventually, the labels and artists who want to make money, are there. End of story. So I think it will be, eventually, with streaming video (AppleTV, GoogleTV, Roku, Vudu, Boxee and all the rest). People want this stuff. The cable companies can be assholes now but eventually, they’re going to lose customers so this issue will have to be addressed somehow, at some point.
Point of reference, I dropped a $113 @month comcast cable package fourteen months ago and now actually enjoy watching the television on the Roku. Is there stuff I miss? Sure. Is watching the things I can watch infinitely more pleasant without commercials and editing? Absolutely.
A: to the person above asking about cables. Your terms are confused. RCA cables aren’t. RCA refers to the connectors. Composite video cable (with RCA connectors on the end) are typically yellow and offer, generally speaking, the lowest quality video transfer available. That said, I’ve used that connection on my cheap ass Roku box and seem get a very nice picture. You go with HDMI cables or with Component video cables, both offer a significantly better picture assuming you have the right devices that use such connections.
Karen
@Bort:
And it’s easy to set up.
burnspbesq
I haven’t sprung for an AppleTV yet, and I probably wont. I’m OK with Watch ESPN and MLB AtBat on my iPad. And the Home Sharing feature that’s now in iTunes means I can stream anything that’s in my iTunes library to my iPad as long as it’s connected to our home network. It’s pretty slick.
Raven
@ice weasel: Thanks but I have a complicated, silly setup. I have an HDTV and have my bluray and HD box connected with HDMI cables. I also need PIP so I am using a vcr as the tuner for that. Lastly, I have a tunerless VCR/DVD recorder that I’m running the vcr with the tuner through. Surprisingly, the picture on the vcr>vcr/dvd>HD TV sucks. I tried the s’vid from the vcr/dvd but it didn’t help.
Michael Finn
Our town is in the middle of nowhere and we couldn’t get any decent Internet. So our local power company built out fiber to every house. You can get 100mb/100mb for $40 a month without a cap. With a cap, it’s $26.
David Koch
cable channels began responding years ago by producing their own proprietary shows.
You want to see The Sopranos or The Wire or Breaking Bad or Mad Men or It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, hot off the presses, then you’ll need cable.
Some people won’t mind waiting 6 months to a year until it hits Netflix, but the vast majority will want their fix immediately.
Also too, most people like sports, news, or general entertainment and they don’t want to wait until the end of the day to watch Rachel Maddow, Sportscenter, and Stephen Colbert off the internet.
David Koch
I’m always surprised how technophiles and Apple groupies revel in the latest gadget, yet pee their pants over unmanned aircraft.
I have never heard one person complain about the technology of F-18 fighter or even a stealth bomber raining 2000 lbs. bombs, but use a inexpensive, low carbon footprint unmanned plane that uses 18 lbs missiles and the tech-heads break out in cold sweats.
Wile E. Quixote
mistermix wrote:
Whose accounts are those? Seriously, here’s the thing with the AppleTV/iTunes combo that none of the other solutions offer, it just fucking works. You plug the thing in, enter your iTunes account information, point it at your iTunes library on a media server (if you have one) and you’re in business. Total set up time: about 10 minutes. Now, I know that various and sundry fanboiz will be out there whining and complaining that it doesn’t connect to Hulu or won’t play their Ogg Vorbis encoded Ookla the Mok but who cares about those morons? If I want to watch TV with commercials I can hook up a set of rabbit ears, no need to go to Hulu.
I got rid of my DirecTV service five years ago after I realized that I could just hook a Mac Mini up to my TV, purchase the shows I wanted to watch from iTunes and instead of paying 75 bucks a month to DirecTV pay about 25 bucks a month to Apple.
Wile E. Quixote
@Willard:
Cool story bro. I use an Apple Mac Mini connected via FireWire to a 2Tb RAID (4x1Tb disks running RAID 1+0) and stream video from this to my Apple TV. Sure, I can’t do all sorts of cool things like stream NetFlix video to 64 bit Windows XP or OS/2 but on the other hand it just fucking works and I don’t have to deal with Ubuntu, which is great because Ubuntu sucks a huge bag of greasy dicks. Its UI sucks, is completely derivative and the dipshits at Canonical are too busy fucking with the desktop to do any work on the internals of the OS, because OS internals are boring. This is why you have stupid fucking shit like the half-assed way that Upstart was implemented, with some packages using the traditional SYS5 init.d scripts, some packages moving to the new Upstart system (The fucking retards at Ubuntu decided that Upstart scripts should be stored in a directory named “/etc/init” instead of “/etc/upstart” because that way they could confuse and annoy more users due to the similarity between “/etc/init.d” and “/etc/init”) some packages remaining with the old SYS5 scripts and some packages using both (openSSH) and behaving differently depending upon how they were executing (running “/etc/init.d/ssh restart” on an Ubuntu system with Upstart does not produce the same results as running “restart ssh”). Ubuntu is garbage.
Willard
@Wile E. Quixote: Hey man it’s just software.
Enjoy your ecosystem and Apple’s strategy of planned obsolescence.
Meanwhile I can serve all my content to any device in my house; iOS, android, windows, & linux.