Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

http://www.ajaimk.com/2010/09/04/sony-beat-the-apple-tv-without-google-tv/

by ajaimk • 16 years ago

27 43 16 years ago

ugh• 16 years ago

The funny thing about buying a TV roughly every two decades (currently a twelve year old Sony Trinitron is doing its duty) is that I just don’t know that there are TVs which can do that.

It seems that TVs have turned into twins of the bloated laptops Sony likes to sell. I’m not sure whether I like that. Is that software at least user friendly?

ajaimk3• 16 years ago

It's a pretty good piece of work. Very simple 10-foot interface.

jbuzbee2• 16 years ago

The position of the TV manufacturers reminds me a bit of the ISPs. The ISPs don't want to be just a dumb-pipe so they add on "features" that few want. And the TV manufacturers are the same way. They no longer want to be just a dumb monitor, so they're embedding these features that would be better implemented in an external box that's replaceable.

As far as user-friendly, my experience is that the interfaces look flashy on the surface, but once you dig deeper, you'll find poor integration, bugs and rarely a new release. All the better reason to rely on an upgradeable, external box for these types of features.

bbuffone• 16 years ago

My Sony TV is just a TV, and that is the way I like it, no apps, no internet; just channel buttons. Currently I am watching "Starwars II: Attack of the clones" in high def and commenting on this post at the same time.

Two screens are a far better experience than trying to both large video and interactive apps in one device. This is one of the reasons that interactive TV has never taken off. It just isn't feasible for general consumption.

ajaimk3• 16 years ago

I'm personally not a big fan of the interactive TV idea myself. What I am all for is a TV that connects to different sources of media. I have music from Pandora and movies on netflix.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

Apple has missed a trick it should have learned from the iPhone in the value of allowing controlled third party apps on to a platform. Apple TV + downloadable/purchasable iOS apps aimed solely for TV use would be awesome. Or maybe they're hoping to pull the same idea off using the iPad->Airplay->Apple TV integration coming later in the year?

derefr• 16 years ago

> Or maybe they're hoping to pull the same idea off using the iPad->Airplay->Apple TV integration coming later in the year?

Very likely. It seems Apple's strategy is that the Apple TV is a "dumb box", like a modem for your TV, that allows other devices (computers) to talk to it. They don't want to add an App store, because then it wouldn't be a "dumb box" any more.

The Apple TV is as cheap as it is now because they're targeting the market segment that doesn't care about anything other than watching movies, listening to music, and looking at pictures. These people won't comparison-shop based on the internal processor speed, or the hard disk capacity.

Apple got stuck in a spec race with the iPhone, and they don't want to have to do it again with the Apple TV, because spec races inevitably up prices—more speed, more capability, more storage—when what they want the ATV to be is a commodity that every TV has hooked up to it, so people can use their computers (specifically, their Apple computers) to stream things to them.

They want the ATV to do as little as possible, not as much as possible, just to act as a little adapter that brings your TV into your wi-fi network. It's not part of their computer or phone businesses; rather, it an extension of the "ubiquitous networking" strategy they've always had with the Airport Express (in fact, I bet the Airport Express and Apple TV teams are now merged under the "AirPlay" banner.)

refulgentis2• 16 years ago

You hit the nail on the head – if I was a betting man, I'd put as much money as I had on a 'surprise feature' of 4.2 being that you can use the Apple TV as a screen for outputting from an iOS device.

Why do I think this? http://twitter.com/lllucas - Apple employee, apparently worked on Airplay (note the "happy airplay day!" tweet) Joe Hewitt (of Facebook) tweets "If only iOS apps could use AirPlay to stream their own stuff to AppleTV." and then lllucas replies "what makes you think they can't? :-)"

Why might I be wrong? It doesn't necessarily make sense that an app could output arbitrary video data (namely, what we're all thinking of, 3D games) to an Apple TV unless there was something seriously cool going on behind the scenes, like using a H.264 encoder in hardware to compress the stream.

If that's happening, then I would think certain devices (such as the iPod touch 2G/3G, iPhone 3G) would be incompatible because there's no reason for them to have an H.264 encoder on their chipset since they don't have video cameras. This would be an odd thing for Apple/app devs to try to support, because now you have to worry about OS revisions + device capabilities, and Apple's been fairly good about coming down on the side of keeping things progressing in software even if the hardware is too slow for it in reality (see the iOS 4.0 on iPhone 3G debacle)

I think it's certain given those tweets that you'll be able to at least stream arbitrary H.264 content from your app to the Apple TV, but to be encoding whatever is on the screen in real time and also be putting load on the graphics processor...I'm not sure that would work.

petercooper3• 16 years ago

I think they already announced that, actually (?): http://www.apple.com/ipad/software-update/

jsz0• 16 years ago

Maybe OpenGL network transparency?

naelshawwa8• 16 years ago

I think that is coming. It doesn't make sense if the AppleTV isn't an iOS device nor if it can't get apps from the app store. You know, it'll be a Jobs moment next year when he says "oh btw, app store for ATV is now available. I don't think they missed any trick, they're playing it by the book with any new device, first version doesn't do everything you hope for, but just enough to get you to buy.

Ex. iPad, no camera? really? next generation for sure then!

wccrawford• 16 years ago

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.

jrockway• 16 years ago

Also, doesn't Hulu Plus have ads? I will pay $10 for a bunch of ads when hell freezes over.

(This is why I don't read magazines.)

tvon• 16 years ago

Yeah, basically you're paying to have access to a larger catalog. It's kind of nice if you want to go back and watch X-Files from the beginning, I guess, but I'll probably cancel it when the month is up...

papa• 16 years ago

Yes. I could stomach the ads during the TV programs but the commercial breaks during Hulu-streamed movies really sucked. There's definitely something to be said for the commercial-free programming available via Netflix streaming.

The Hulu Plus content was also disappointing (compared to what's offered on the free Hulu site).

jakewalker• 16 years ago

You say this, but isn't this exactly what cable is? Only instead of $10 it's $70+ a month? Maybe you won't, but lots of people will.

wwortiz• 16 years ago

I think Hulu really missed something if they named it Hulu Plus and that is what you get, it is like if movies started coming out with BluRay+ and all you got were special features.

I bet they couldn't get the broadcasting networks to agree and that is why it is just a bunch of old content not being shown...

naelshawwa8• 16 years ago

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 what happened with phones in the past couple of years, its no longer about features, its about how many developers you can bring to your platform to build all the creative applications. If Balmer got one thing right, it would have been this: Developers, Developers, Developers.

ThomPete2• 16 years ago

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.

ajaimk3• 16 years ago

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.

mikeryan• 16 years ago

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 10.1 - not so much for the flash, but so you know you have something that will be able to handle much of what's being thrown at it.

Raphael• 16 years ago

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

jasonlbaptiste• 16 years ago

There's a company called PlayOn. They use DLNA to stream things like Netflix, Hulu, and your files to DLNA capable devices. DLNA is actually built into 8,000+ devices such as XBOX,PS3, and some of these snazzy new TVs. PlayON is installed on one computer and then streams the rest. Is anyone here well versed in DLNA?

jbuzbee2• 16 years ago

I've used a lot of DLNA devices and servers over the last few years. Most are "meh". They work, but most seem to have a user-interface reminiscent of Windows 3.1 especially when dealing with video. They typically have no photo or video metadata knowledge so you're limited to browsing through directories of files and selecting what your want by filename. Have your non-techie significant other try that. No movie-poster art, IMDB synopsis, etc. When you have a library of hundreds and hundreds of ripped DVDs, good luck.

And format support is spotty as well. There's often a mismatch between what the server will serve up and what the device will play back.

I have a Sony TV with most of what was shown here and I rarely, rarely use any of the Internet features. There's DLNA support built-in, but of the 800 or so videos I have being served up on my network, it refuses to even recognize any more than a dozen or so. Everything else is either ignored or causes an error. And the user-interface is completely divorced and separate from my set-top box. if I want to use the Internet features, I have to find the TV remote vs. the cable-box remote and then deal with a different user interface. The lack of transparent integration is a deal-breaker for many people. Switching back and forth between Internet video sources and "normal" sources has to be as seamless as changing channels. Google and Echostar are working together, so they may pull it off, at least for Echostar set-top boxes. Otherwise, without tight-integration, these efforts are going to be a flop.

baby• 16 years ago

but the guy has an iPhone 4 instead of an android phone...

heresy• 16 years ago

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 this one so bad. All the codec packs for it require you hacking your standalone host system to bits to get playback working.

* DLNA on my Sony Bravia to PlayOn. PlayOn sucks, to put it kindly. Still requires a seperate standalone PC.

In 2008, XBMC streaming over SMB directly from a NAS was the answer.

It still is, if you don't want to muck around for hours fiddling trying to get stuff going by following the cargo cultish forums that exist for video playback (blind leading the blind).

ZeroGravitas• 16 years ago

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.

Towle_• 16 years ago

Apple TV is an experiment. They're trying to find a market fit, so to speak. If you're comparing anything Apple is doing to an existing product, you're looking at it the wrong way.

basicxman• 16 years ago

Agreed, and at the $99 dollar price point, you can tell they're trying to make it work. Unfortunately, I don't know anybody technical or non-technical that would enjoy it.

naelshawwa8• 16 years ago

the market is already there, every iPad, iPhone, and iTouch owner will get one. God its cheaper than an iPod nano.

tdmackey• 16 years ago

This sounds like he is the kind of guy who in less than a year will be writing about how he wished he owned one and will be first in line for the next revision later blogging about how awesome it is.

mveldthuis• 16 years ago

"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.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

Does it seem to anyone else that he has missed a few other service integrations that Apple mentioned?

Now, I'll give you that the Sony TV probably is capable of more, but I thought the Apple device was going to do YouTube and Flickr at least.

gaiusparx• 16 years ago

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.

naelshawwa8• 16 years ago

These are my thoughts on this topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1660396

Sony beat the Apple TV without Google TV

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