Apple and My Living Room
Posted on: October 23, 2008Author: Cali Lewis
19 comments so far (is that a lot?)
Dan Frommer has a piece on Silicon Alley Insider about Apple and the living room. He includes this quote from Steve Jobs who made a surprise appearance on the most recent Apple earnings call:
“I think the whole category is still a hobby right now. I don’t think anybody has succeeded at it and actually the experimentation has slowed down. A lot of the early companies that were trying things have faded away, so I’d have to say that given the economic conditions, given the venture capital outlooks and stuff, I continue to believe it will be a hobby in 2009.”
Dan brings up the importance of adding a DVD player to Apple TV so that Apple TV could replace something in the living room. I’ve hoped for that since day one. He also brings up how Boxee, with some hackery, will add much appreciated functionality (Hulu and CBS TV shows, in particular) to Apple TV. I haven’t tried the hack because of time, but I plan to give it a go this weekend.
We’ve given a lot of thought to the whole idea of an Apple media center solution. We’re always experimenting with different setups. Right now, we’re running a long VGA cable from a Mac Pro to our living room TV so the TV acts as an additional remote monitor. That’s how we’re keeping up with the Daily Show on Hulu lately. It’s also how we watch TWiT Live. We use the Mac Pro setup to watch DVDs and videos stored on a Drobo. It’s not an ideal solution, but it gets a couple jobs done well enough.
Here’s what we’re looking for in a dream Apple-powered Living Room / Bed Room / Home Entertainment System:
- A central storage system that will deliver music and video to any Mac, PC AND TV in the house.
- Hardware and software that will automatically archive and organize DVDs on the central storage system.
- A TV Web browser that supports Flash video so we can watch any Web video from any Web site on any TV in the house.
- Complete control with an iPhone App (way beyond just iTunes control).
Everything we’ve put together to accomplish an Apple-powered living room feels duct taped. An Apple solution should be elegant and seamless and as long as Apple and Microsoft have to build solutions constrained by DRM, I’m afraid the living room will continue to be a hobby project.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:06 am
“Duct taped” – an excellent description of the current situation! I’d love to do more with my Apple TV, but I’m sure for all sorts of reasons, Apple won’t want me trawling around the internet for hacks to install.
There’s an outside chance that you’ll get seamless from Microsoft if you’re prepared to wait (version 5 of whatever they come up with), but I can’t imagine it will be elegant.
So, it’s clear that the ball’s in your court, Steve. And I for one, think there’s an opportunity to score a lot of points.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:14 am
Cali,
We’ve managed to migrate to a purely digital media solution involving Drobo for storage and apple TV for all the tvs in our house. I really think this is the ideal that Jobs has behind his devices and that physical disks are a way of the past. I must say being able to actively selected any show/dvd from a list rather than browsing a book or bookshelf is very handy!
I everyone says it’s a hobby but i think it more or less needs that digital only buy in to be applied correctly. I also agree with you in that we as apple tv owners need a browser or something built into the software to allow us to watch flash/net video.
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 am
Sounds good, Cali! When can I get one? ;-)
John
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:16 am
I hear you on this one! I like your 3 requirements too. Wouldn’t that be great?
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:35 am
Apple does 90% solutions that are pretty. Stop looking for them to deliver the last 10%!
My home media distribution: Western Digital World Edition II (1TB) sharing SMB to AppleTV hacked to mount SMB and play files. DVD library is ripped/filed to the NAS as m4v files manually. No solution yet for flash/browser streaming yet.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:08 am
You’re right on and I guess this is why I don’t spend much time in my living room!
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:09 am
I’m surprised at how much I love and use my AppleTV. I bought it even though I thought it would just wind up an expensive toy, like so many other things I’ve bought over the years, but I really do use the heck out of it. The wife and I have even debated giving up DirecTV for it. (And because their DVR sucks! SOOO happy they’re making up with TiVo now.)
Anyway, I’d love to see a DVR solution from Apple, but I’m happy kludge-ing something out of an AppleTV/TiVo combo for now. I still haven’t gotten into TV on my computer yet… No specific reason why not, just haven’t.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:25 am
Luria, have you looked into fiire (www.fiire.com)? It’s Linux, not Mac, but it might be what you’re looking for. Take a peek.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:28 am
Hi Cali,
Great post!
I too read the article at Silicon Alley and I’m a bit frustrated that Apple sees the living room as just “…a hobby right now.” It seems crazy to me because I think it’s so obvious, at least for the most part. But no one company has gotten it together yet.
Network/Internet connectivity + large hard drive(s) + DVR capability + DVD (or better yet Blu-ray – btw I also don’t get Jobs comment about Blu-ray being a “bag of hurt”, I do understand there are licensing issues, but other companies are making it work) + Apple’s *awesome* software.
In my opinion, this is what Apple TV should be right now, even if it’s without Blu-ray for the time being.
If this were Apple TV, they would rule the living room right now. It certainly shouldn’t be and doesn’t have to be a “hobby”.
This market segment is just their for the taking.
I do understand, that as with the iPhone, Apple likes to sometimes be late to the market so they can get it right, I just think it would be so easy for them to be the first in this market and take it.
They have so much momentum from the popularity of the iPhone, I really wish they would take advantage of it.
The only reason I can see that they are keeping it a “hobby” for now is because of how the release of the iPhone 3G along with Mobile Me went. They obviously stumbled out of the gate with that. So maybe they are concerned again about taking on too much at one time. They are, after all, in a *great* position right now.
Jason
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:46 am
I think boxee is moving in the right direction by focusing on the software for that settop box all of us newteevee fans really want. build the software open source, and let others build the hardware. also, trying to incorporate all the services out there is great too, as it has to be mass market. you dont want to tell potential users that it supports this service, but not that one in such a changing marketplace. but what we really want is better support for the independent producers like yourself. i commented (#7) about that on boxee’s most recent post:
http://blog.boxee.tv/2008/10/22/hulu-cbs-comedy-central-and-whats-next/#comments
i just hope we stay focused on what newteevee can do to make independent media more popular in the 21st century, not just port the same few dominating conglomerates or different ones to the web.
October 23rd, 2008 at 8:32 am
I’ve been using my XBMC until a better HD solution came along. I just ordered the Dell Studio Hybrid with a built in Blu-Ray player.
Being able to watch streaming NetFlix shows, Blu-Ray discs and videos within a browser was too good to pass up.
I just ordered it so no impressions yet.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
I have had my Apple TV for 2 weeks now and I absolutely love it. It is exactly what I have been looking for. An onboard DVD or blue ray player would be nice but it is not a killer for me.
And I have since then stumbled upon your GeekBrief podcast. Love the AMX and Drobo episodes.
I have hacked my Apple TV and currently have the latest Boxee alpha version installed. Boxee is a great addition as you can access shared content on any local computer in the house. I also have Sapphire installed which lets me catalog my tv shows and movies.
I can almost imagine dropping to a basic cable package and using torrents to watch my favorite tv shows in HD format.
I would love to see the Apple HDTV rumors become a reality. Living room web media is the future.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:45 am
ya know, Alex Lindsay has accomplished most of that using a mac mini. That’s what I’m thinking we’ll ultimately do as well. And when you couple it with at 1081i screen, you get that 1:1 pixel ration and it should be quite stunning.
October 23rd, 2008 at 7:45 pm
I think the real challenge (and one geeks like us often forget to think about) is an all-in-one box that needs no setup or configuration short of plugging into power and connecting to a display/TV. There’s certainly fun to be had matching the best possible hardware with the best possible software, but that’s too much work for most potential users. The Apple TV is easy to set up (and usually easy to maintain), but it’s got the obvious limitations such as no optical drive. As much as we understand that files are the future, mainstream users aren’t going to be very interested in a solution that doesn’t allow use of their pre-existing DVDs. And most aren’t going to be interested in taking the time to convert their discs to hard drive based-files.
Like others said, I want a single device that will treat new media and traditional media equally, and provide a wide choice of both. Right now, Apple TV is definitely the most user-friendly way to pull that off. It’s just a bit frustrating realizing how much more it could be.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Putting DVD into Apple TV might have been a good thing if they had done it when it first came out, but now they really need to get real and put Blue Ray support in if they really want to be the main fixture in an entertainment center.
Currently I have a 1 TB drive linked in with a Windows Media center and I can view both streaming (also through NetFlix) and my blue ray content. It works great, although it was more of a setup than Apple TV would have been.
With all due respect, the iPhone didn’t get it right. The accelerometer was cool, but ultimately not enough to make up for its shortcomings (no 3G, no swappable battery, no business class email). The email display is fantastic, but the first time the salesman tried to demonstrate replying to email was enough to get me to look for something else. Not to mention that it didn’t get any decent reviews. It was marketed well, and sold well, but then again so was the first version of Windows and it couldn’t stand on its merits either.
Although a much better device (and very close to getting it right), the iPhone 3g didn’t go well in part because it just didn’t add anything that hundreds of phones didn’t already have; and it was still missing some important features like a slide out keyboard. Also, restricting users to the Apple app store to add applications to the device was just ridiculous. Mobile Me was a blatant copy of Office Live and Outlook Web Access and again just wasn’t anything new. It was also disappointing that Apple had all the original iPhone users pay for the R&D and then offered the iPhone 3G for so MUCH less. It would have been better to wait a little longer and come out with the iPhone 3G as their first phone.
I’m pretty disappointed that Apple has chosen not to support blue ray since quite frankly Apple TV is a fantastic device. Since they do not sell optical media I understand that there isn’t a direct financial incentive for them to do so. Although I would never use Apple in a business, Apple is quite good at consumer devices and that is their strongest point, so treating home theater as a hobby just doesn’t make sense for them. Maybe Steve Jobs plans to come out with a competing technology to blue ray or hopes that he can get people to move completely over to digital media (which will not happen with the current state of bandwidth in the US). I can’t think of another reason for not sucking it up and providing support for blue ray.
In any event, I would expect the XBox or PlayStation to start moving in this direction as well, so one way or another internet based home theater with blue ray will make its way into the mainstream. Its all entertainment after all.
October 24th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Anybody look into using an Elgato EyeTV, iMac, and AppleTV together. I think this combination gets what we are looking for????
October 28th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
CL, like your thinkin’ here. Sounds mavricky (jk)
Seriously, I don’t know why this hasn’t been done yet. Seems like there’s good demand for it.
Zak, would you care to share your setup details? Sounds like you have a nice design.
November 24th, 2008 at 11:12 am
Funny thing is all these big players in the streaming TV world and nobody delivers as much content as http://3click.tv. 3Click.tv is a small startup with a big library, seriously look at this showlist (you can view by show season and episode) http://3click.tv/showlist.php
December 25th, 2009 at 11:16 am
thanks allot for sharing this detailed post!
I found a youtube video about xbox live hacks, that I would like to share- Xbox live Hacks…
but seriously, great post and thanks so much !!
i look ahead to your next post !!
<3