Anybody think that this new system, and FrontRow, would be part of a new iLife? Isn't it usually January when it gets updated?
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New Media Content Distribution System?
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Mechcozmo said:
As in FRiVolouS...
Just kiding, but I am wanting to know how any such service can be expanded outside the USA? We other-country-ers are still waiting for some of our favourite TV shows to become available...
I finally read it and one can feel the electricity surrounding this article, its going to be big. 
For as far i can see it all falls into place
- mac mini to test the market for a small almost mediacenter like device.
- Intel with the hardware drm chip, not to protect osX but the new digital content, it fits perfectly
- limited video contend again to test the market and it seems to be ready.
- Contend will be protected with the drm chip so for the time being intel Mini only.
- Sell the mini at no profit, get it with the content.
- Its not a computer but a media device, the next step thats clearly on Apple's roadmap.
- online content only cached on the hard drive or lower quality for the iPod, we can't currently own HD contend so this is the reason its online stored, cached and hardware drm protected.
- acceptable itunes drm conditions to test the market, if its free enough people accept it and don't turn to illegal methods. Apple is not making big profit on iTunes but get a lot more for the video's.
- iTunes phone testing corporate interest, cable companies working with mini mediacenters?
...
It promises to be a very exited speech.
For as far i can see it all falls into place
- mac mini to test the market for a small almost mediacenter like device.
- Intel with the hardware drm chip, not to protect osX but the new digital content, it fits perfectly
- limited video contend again to test the market and it seems to be ready.
- Contend will be protected with the drm chip so for the time being intel Mini only.
- Sell the mini at no profit, get it with the content.
- Its not a computer but a media device, the next step thats clearly on Apple's roadmap.
- online content only cached on the hard drive or lower quality for the iPod, we can't currently own HD contend so this is the reason its online stored, cached and hardware drm protected.
- acceptable itunes drm conditions to test the market, if its free enough people accept it and don't turn to illegal methods. Apple is not making big profit on iTunes but get a lot more for the video's.
- iTunes phone testing corporate interest, cable companies working with mini mediacenters?
...
It promises to be a very exited speech.
iAlan said:
Thats another story, i think its going to stay USA only for some time to come. There is no reason whatsoever to not allow the Pixar movies outside the US but they didn't, Apple kept it US only to make it clear that content will not be available in other country's in a short timeframe.
IMHO, Apple is sick of opening a store for each and every country on this planet with each having his own content, pricing and conditions. New video contend is going to be contracted to other country's on new conditions so the creators can distribute it digitally worldwide in there own name. So only new content with the new contracts in 1 online worldwide store, maybe within 1 - 3 years??
This whole topic is so interesting. Seriously. It raises so many questions.
Like for instance, if the upcoming mac mini will become a media center capable of recording tv shows like a vcr....what will that do to apples video itunes that charges $1.99 to download a show now? Who would pay for a show when they could record it off the tv for free? Just to put it on their video ipod? Does that make sense? Pay $1.99 to put a tv show on your ipod, but record it for free like a vcr?
To me having the mini act as a normal vcr would be the best choice. And then have a service where you could rent movies on a saturday night lets say by ordering it through itunes. Will movie studios give apple access to its movie library much like music studios did with their music?
I don't think apple would be as successful selling just music videos and tv shows as they were with selling songs.
So many questions.
Like for instance, if the upcoming mac mini will become a media center capable of recording tv shows like a vcr....what will that do to apples video itunes that charges $1.99 to download a show now? Who would pay for a show when they could record it off the tv for free? Just to put it on their video ipod? Does that make sense? Pay $1.99 to put a tv show on your ipod, but record it for free like a vcr?
To me having the mini act as a normal vcr would be the best choice. And then have a service where you could rent movies on a saturday night lets say by ordering it through itunes. Will movie studios give apple access to its movie library much like music studios did with their music?
I don't think apple would be as successful selling just music videos and tv shows as they were with selling songs.
So many questions.
NickCharles said:
So do you think then that Apple would offer the ability to both PAY for the tv show AND RECORD the tv show for free?
Would that make sense?
If the media mini won't be able to record tv for free like a current vcr...what kind of media center would that be?
It just poses some interesting questions. Guess we will find out in a month.
rosalindavenue said:
Right...having a Netflix-over-Front-Row type service would compete with and (possibly eventually) replace Netflix and brick & mortar Blockbusters...not the cinemaphile who loves to own his movies and rewatch them over and over. You can still buy the DVD! Nobody is taking them off the shelves when Apple starts selling movies. And if you need to take it with you on the plane you can already rip the DVD to your laptop or iPod with readily available software. Most movies watched by most people are watched once, usually rented, but I'd hazard a guess that most (not all, but most) people who buy a DVD only watch it once too.
The flames of this same (at least) 4-year old argument with regard to music (AAC 128kbps vs CDs) are just now dying down (or are they??). For the average person who can accept a virtually imperceptible degradation in sound quality, purchasing downloadable music directly from the iTMS has great advantages over buying CDs, as 500 million downloads demonstrates. Likewise, for the average person just wanting to rent the latest release for a Saturday night on the couch, clicking up their movies via Front Row would be much more appealing than waiting 3 days for Netflix or a trip (actually 2 trips) across town to Blockbuster.
I've got the same 3 DVDs from Blockbuster online sitting in my house for the last 3 weeks I haven't gotten around to watching yet. And 2 kids DVDs from the store Friday night (free coupons for being an online customer) I still have to take back. I'd much rather have chosen the 3 to watch on demand when I'm ready, and chosen the 2 on demand from my couch and not have the return hanging over me. And believe me, I do not want to own "Are We There Yet?"
But when Harry Potter 4 comes out I'll probably buy the DVD, just like I still buy the physical CDs for my favorite artists (but why?...the last several CDs I've bought I have ripped, iPodded, and stashed away, never to be seen again...hmmm...). Best of all worlds still available no matter what service Apple comes up with.
Wow. I just read on Powerpage.Org that some are predicting powerbook updates at MWSF now too.
Hmmm....lets see...
if you believe them all, then we are going to see new intel ibooks, new powerbooks, new ipods, AND a new mini media center.
Yikes! That would be some keynote. I can see Steve now... "oh one more thing"...."one MORE thing"...."really ONE more thing"...."OK...this is the last thing...HONEST!"
It would go on forever.
I'm just hoping for the ibook update. All the rest is gravy to me.
Hmmm....lets see...
if you believe them all, then we are going to see new intel ibooks, new powerbooks, new ipods, AND a new mini media center.
Yikes! That would be some keynote. I can see Steve now... "oh one more thing"...."one MORE thing"...."really ONE more thing"...."OK...this is the last thing...HONEST!"
It would go on forever.
I'm just hoping for the ibook update. All the rest is gravy to me.
Just to see what is possible, I started a bunch of streaming remote QT Videos on the desktop-- I was able to get 15 on a 23" Display.
These are shown (all stopped) in the attached pic.
I was able to get 8 of them playing concurrently-- the rest were waiting for connection to the remote server.
Even though the movies are relatively low quality, getting 8 of them going at once is pretty impressive.
None of the movies are h264 encoded.
This is done on an Airport Extreme Network over a SBC DSL connection.
The movies are available through the Archive Classic Movies Podcast.
So... it looks like a broadband connection would be able to handle 1 or more streamed dloads.
Note: The movies show a lot better than what is shown in the following image (reduced quality to meet upload size linit of 244.1 KB).
These are shown (all stopped) in the attached pic.
I was able to get 8 of them playing concurrently-- the rest were waiting for connection to the remote server.
Even though the movies are relatively low quality, getting 8 of them going at once is pretty impressive.
None of the movies are h264 encoded.
This is done on an Airport Extreme Network over a SBC DSL connection.
The movies are available through the Archive Classic Movies Podcast.
So... it looks like a broadband connection would be able to handle 1 or more streamed dloads.
Note: The movies show a lot better than what is shown in the following image (reduced quality to meet upload size linit of 244.1 KB).
With all the rumors flying around many will be let down for sure. Just sit back and wait to see. Don't get your hopes up and you won't be as let down when whatever it is that you want - isn't announced. Personally I would love to see a 13-inch widescreen laptop. I don't care if it's an iBook or a PowerBook. I just haven't bought into the PDA on the Cellphone gig, and I want something small and wireless - that runs OS Xregan said:
I'm with you Curly. "Woob-woob-woob-woob!"
A 13" widescreen ibook is on the top of my wishlist for MWSF. It was also the first big rumour that surfaced about MWSF.
My hopes are not too high...as I have learned over the years to not expect anything as far as apple rumours go.
Better to be pleasantly suprised.
Have a great holiday everyone.
A 13" widescreen ibook is on the top of my wishlist for MWSF. It was also the first big rumour that surfaced about MWSF.
My hopes are not too high...as I have learned over the years to not expect anything as far as apple rumours go.
Better to be pleasantly suprised.
Have a great holiday everyone.
I doubt apple is going to do this, more likely lots of content will be free with a .mac subscription (but it will only be streamable), but you can purchase it for between $1.99 to $9.99 even without the .mac subscription. And maybe, with a .mac account, be able to have full length music and video previews.
I have a feeling that their will be a completely new app. for Podcasting that will make it easy for .mac subscribers to post their podcasts and videocasts onto their .mac homepage (but is stored on the itunes music store servers). The podcasting all in one app. isn't really a new idea, but one that apple needs to address with ilife '06. The videocasts would be edited in imovie, which would have a new tab near the titles/audio/etc. that is called podcasting. It will act the same way as the iDVD tab that lets you divide it into chapters then it would launch the podcast app., which would let you add art, description, basic audio editing, and then give the option to place a link to the podcast on your private .mac account or/and to the public itunes music store podcast directory. Back to the distribution system though, It would be nice to have bittorrent support for the itms, but that wont happen anytime soon. I don't mean anything to do with pirating, just a controlled bittorrent type distribution system that could make video downloads faster. This will probably not all happen, but it will be interesting to see how much of it does.
I have a feeling that their will be a completely new app. for Podcasting that will make it easy for .mac subscribers to post their podcasts and videocasts onto their .mac homepage (but is stored on the itunes music store servers). The podcasting all in one app. isn't really a new idea, but one that apple needs to address with ilife '06. The videocasts would be edited in imovie, which would have a new tab near the titles/audio/etc. that is called podcasting. It will act the same way as the iDVD tab that lets you divide it into chapters then it would launch the podcast app., which would let you add art, description, basic audio editing, and then give the option to place a link to the podcast on your private .mac account or/and to the public itunes music store podcast directory. Back to the distribution system though, It would be nice to have bittorrent support for the itms, but that wont happen anytime soon. I don't mean anything to do with pirating, just a controlled bittorrent type distribution system that could make video downloads faster. This will probably not all happen, but it will be interesting to see how much of it does.
Cooknn said:With all the rumors flying around many will be let down for sure. Just sit back and wait to see. Don't get your hopes up and you won't be as let down when whatever it is that you want - isn't announced. Personally I would love to see a 13-inch widescreen laptop. I don't care if it's an iBook or a PowerBook. I just haven't bought into the PDA on the Cellphone gig, and I want something small and wireless - that runs OS X
I doubt that an ibook or powerbook will be announced at MWSF, probably just a lot of new features and content for the itms with the new distribution system. And of course the ilife '06, iwork '06 (with a new app. for podcasting) that each ship with 2 discs (dual binaries), a new shuffle that is thinner/ cheaper, talk about the success of OS X Tiger and the progress on porting the software and the infamous one more thing will be the new mac minis running intel proccessors. A demo will be given of the new mini compared to the old and how all the basic apps are ready (and that rosetta alows emulation of the ones that aren't there yet). Ending it all with the insane starting price of $399 and a little hint about the coming months.
The Rise of the Apple DRM
Let's do a "what if" for a second to see where it leads us. What if this service will only be allowed on Intel Macs?
ALL Intel Macs have a hardware-based trusted platform system in them. This assures that the Mac OSX 86 will only be able to run on Intel Macs. But that's not the only purpose it can be put to. It can also be used to insure that intellectual properties - including movies and TV shows - will only be viewable on authorized computers. That is, you can implement a pretty robust hardware Digitial Rights Management system.
Oy! Why would Apple do something like that? Same as with music. With it, all the media companies will play ball and we will have ALL the TV, ALL the movies around.
For those without an Intel Mac, a "hardware assist" board might be required. Yeah, it might have a codec assist in there, but it would really implement the DRM.
I'm not thrilled with this idea. But like music, it's not Apple's fault. You want TV and movies on Macs or not?
Let's do a "what if" for a second to see where it leads us. What if this service will only be allowed on Intel Macs?
ALL Intel Macs have a hardware-based trusted platform system in them. This assures that the Mac OSX 86 will only be able to run on Intel Macs. But that's not the only purpose it can be put to. It can also be used to insure that intellectual properties - including movies and TV shows - will only be viewable on authorized computers. That is, you can implement a pretty robust hardware Digitial Rights Management system.
Oy! Why would Apple do something like that? Same as with music. With it, all the media companies will play ball and we will have ALL the TV, ALL the movies around.
For those without an Intel Mac, a "hardware assist" board might be required. Yeah, it might have a codec assist in there, but it would really implement the DRM.
I'm not thrilled with this idea. But like music, it's not Apple's fault. You want TV and movies on Macs or not?
We can rip CD's or download mp3's so a VCR capable Mini is a possibility but i don't think thats going to be in the package, to much multi regio/country trouble and added cost. Just playback and buy.
Lynxpro said:
<hacking cough>I do this quite a bit to view shows on my Mac</hacking cough>
iAlan said:
I asked my Majik 8 ball and it said that every country but Australia would get it. Australia would have to wait a year, but be told every other week that they would be getting it, "really really soon"
I agree. Front Row 2.0 will run on Macs that can handle the decoding of the H.264. And the iTunes DRM works just fine without being hardware enforced. It prevents blatant stealing, but for those that have a CD-RW laying around you're set if you want to use it in a slideshow or something.regan said:I'm all for "what ifs"....but I seriously doubt apple would FORCE everyone to buy an intel based mac to be able to use this feature.
That would be a bit pyscho if you ask me.
As with everyone else it bothers me that they will not be letting the users keep the hardware that they purchase on their harddrive. If I go an dI buy something I want to keep it, I don't wan to tostre it on the internet. When I go out and buy a DVD, do you see me keeping it at the store and picking it up when I ready to watch it? The fact i, this is not a good idea, and those who would pay for it are ust plain silly. Someone mentioned TiVo, well I don't know how that system works, but I certainly wouldn't pay to have a TiVo system. Instead I am into something call FreeVo, which is a DVR in which you can keep your content.
Big companies are just looking for a way to make an extra buck.. and I am 100% opposed to them keeping the content you buy on the web, and not letting you physically have it.
Big companies are just looking for a way to make an extra buck.. and I am 100% opposed to them keeping the content you buy on the web, and not letting you physically have it.
maybe the system will be kept on the idisk if you watch it once (rent it) and you can pay more to keep it on your harddrive
zooniverse said:
But why should I have to pay more for content that I ALREADY purchased so I can keep it on *MY* harddrive?
Heh - looks like Apple might really be serious with this whole "Media Mac" idea.
Hey, I'm all for it.
Hey, I'm all for it.
d.f said:
I don't rent movies from blockbuster! Anyhow, I am all for buying the content, but I have no desire to "rent" the content. I want to buy it and make it mine.
Bonte said:
Pixar movies (well shorts) are available internationally. The only things missing from the international stores are television shows and some of the music videos (the US always gets more of anything).
David