大象传媒

A one-size fits all solution for videos and music is sorely needed. I just purchased a portable media player with a large screen, planning on watching at least some of my recorded TV on my daily commute.

But guess what? I need to convert my TV to the correct format before it will play. Even on a fast computer conversion is much slower than real-time, with every minute of TV taking almost 5 minutes to convert. I may still convert films, to watch on long journeys, but I'll have to leave the computer grinding away overnight and will probably only do so if I am going on a substantial journey. Converting last night's TV to watch on the way to work is a complete non-starter.

Absolutely. I too have a 360 which is currently connecting via a Media Center machine which is only required because Media Center will play back non native formats on the 360.

The 360 has plenty of power to play videos - all it needs is a native version of media player. Frustratingly, the last dashoard upgrade for the 360 introduced the ability to play video content without requiring media center, BUT as you say only .wmv format.

MS and Apple both need to stop protecting their formats and let their cutomers do what *they* want to - this isn't about piracy, it's them trying to win the market....

Now I'm pretty sure that Windows Media Player used to support the playing of Quicktime up to QT v2.0 until a certain company pulled the plug on Microsoft using their proprietry codecs. And can you imagine the fall out if Microsoft added Real Media support to WMP so that you didn't have to download and install Real Player after the recent EU shenanigans.

The real culprits for this mess, are our legislators who prefer to champion "competition" over consumer benefit.

Sometimes (only sometimes mind you!) it's not Microsoft's fault.

The third party developers have already saved the day ! There are several programs already available that allow DivX and others to be transmitted and played through a 360 !

Also Microsoft are adding a pay per view service on the 360 which i believe has already been rolled out in the states, allowing high definition content such as Lost and 24 to be downloaded and viewed at a later date.

Why would anyone want to control the entire house from a pc console? Why would I want to turn my bathroom light on when I am in the kitchen unless I intend to go to the bathroom in which case I can switch it on when I get there? Why would I want to control my washing machine from my pc? I still have to go to my washing machine and put the clothes in, so whilst I'm there I might as well switch the thing on. Why would I want my cupboard or fridge to do an inventory based on microchips in every packet? Nobody is going to tell me this will be an easier system than looking in my fridge or cupboard. Even companies with electronically controlled stores systems still do manual checks of what is on their shelves.
Surely this is computer companies trying to sell us something which is completely irrelevant. There is no need for it, no demand for it, it's just a gimmick. And what happens when the computer crashes? Or when I change my computer every 18 months - do I have to reprogram the whole house again? It sounds like a load of hassle for no gain. The only beneficiaries I can see for such a system would be the disabled.
Remember, mobile phones took off because of kids demand for texting which was completely unexpected by technology experts.
This computer controlled home is too much technology for no benefit and so I can't see it catching on. An example to compare it to might be electonic doors, first seen in 1960's or earlier sci fi and now finally in a lot of shops and offices. But how many homes have them?
If I was a city investor I wouldn't put a penny into any company investing in computer controlled homes; it's a non starter unless someone can come up with a genuinly useful use for it.

I am absolutely *FED-UP* with computer format issues.

I was thinking about getting an ipod for xmas, but then realised that half of my digitised stuff on my (few years old) pc just will not be compatible with the bloody thing! All due to this intermiable bore that we call "The Format War" between MS & Apple.

Why should we have to convert stuff to their format ANYWAY?
Answer: we shouldn't.

I'm not alone here, as half my friends still buy vinyl for our music (it's more reliable and actually has more enjoyable, often beautiful, artwork), and try as much as possible to buy DVD's in region-free status.

We all refuse to properly make any change until format isses as well as reliability factors become very much more straightened-out in the industry as a whole.

Sod the companies if they don't get the basics they keep promising working correct (without having to have a PhD in IT to work them)!

It's a shame that Microsoft and Apple won't support open formats which are well documented and not encumbered by patents which restrict their use to only those who can afford to do so. Why not support the various .ogg formats, such as Vorbis for audio or Theora for video? They give better sound quality for a given file size and they're well documented, and free (in cost and in Freedom) allowing any one who wants to implement them to do so.

Infact, it's a shame major media companies - including the 大象传媒 - don't support this format. We'd have an open standard, which is already supperior to proprietary alternatives, everyone could agree to use on their systems, no matter what that system is.

WHat I would like to know is

1) How fast a broadband link do I need to stream video to my TV? Realplayer breaks on my current connection and thats only a small window so are they streaming DivX/xVid/MP4 ?

2) If they are downloading to a PC how fast a link do I need will wifi 54Mbps be enough, what if more than one or I want to do other stuff.

2) How many boxs do I need to stack next to my TV? VHS for legacy, Freeview, DVD, HD DVD, DVR, iTV. Me I do not have the room and I think it won't look living room cool.

Microsoft are teaming up with Ford to put Windows into your Car. Initially, it will only do the entertainment side of things, which is just as well. If my car starts crashing as often as Windows still does, then I would have a real problem. My outlook, is that Windows is already the bain of my life. Why would I wish to make things so much worse than they already are?

I bought the XBox 360 specifically because I was running Media Centre and thought it would be the answer to how to successfully stream media wirelessly.
How wrong I was. The 360 is a great games machine but, as a Media Hub, it is defeated by the limitations imposed by its creator (as mentioned above).

Whenever something new comes on the market, I rise like an expectant child as a possible answer may have arrived but then let down when I realise that Uncle DRM has cast his shadow over how it functions.

As an attempt at curbing piracy, it's poor. It just strengthens the resolve of people determined to crack the machines to make them do what they should be doing in the first place. And, this increases the likelihood of them finding other things under the bonnet like how to chip machines to play imported games, etc.

Just make it do what it purports to do on the tin and maybe we'll finally get a solution. Oh, and then we'll have HD DVD or Blu-Ray to consider next!

I've just installed a Mac Mini as a media centre in my living room.

Admittedly, you won't want to play games on it, but that's what the PlayStation is for.

Every other aspect of it is perfect. DVD and music playback is flawless (especially the sound through a set of Harmon-Kardon soundsticks) and NTL is converted by a Miglia TVMax (chosen in preference to other TV solutions because it has its own compression hardware).

At a stroke, the major components of our home entertainment needs have been concentrated into two tiny boxes under the TV. The wireless keyboard and mouse sit on the coffee table.

A broadband connection is imminent, at which point we intend to do all our shopping from the sofa in the living room.

The arguements don't stack up. They claim DivX is used for piracy, but it's merely the video equivalent of Mp3 (which is supported on the vast majority of platforms).
As a media centre, the XBox 360 falls at nearly every hurdle. It's just not fit for purpose with the system currently inplace.
People need to be able to run their own applications on the "box under the TV", so we can get quality applications like XBMC, not this nonsense from MS. It a prime advert for why the machine *needs* to be hacked.. so the software can be replaced with something good.

You should have just got your xbox chipped. Then you can play all those formats and more through Xbox Media Center.

Job done. ;oP

I have both a Mac and PC(s) running on a simple home network. I have a mac for my wife, because it is more intuitive and keep the PCs because I've learnt to use many windows programmes at work (and the machines are cheaper). I have now ditched Word and Excel for OpenOffice which works on both machines and use Firefox instead of Explorer (because it is better) and safari (for consistency). I therefore support the idea of Open Source file formats as this separates the designers of operating systems (necessarily tied to hardware) from designers of the elements that I wish to work with. I shouldn't have to care which operating system is behind by ability to write a text, make an engineering drawing, play a tune or make a copy of the mona lisa.
However, the world is run by money, not ideals.

Hi Iain, folks,

Working in the industry for an established set of 'tweakers' I can assure you the connected vision is very much a part of our approach to innovation and strategy.
There are evolutions set for the coming year that will effectively join the dots and allow continuity.
My company works in the space of mobile devices, In Car Intelligence, STBs, games consoles and more. In short, we're well placed to facilitate the covergence that has been muted all this time.
I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year and believe that the year 2007 will be an exciting one that sees the consumer's best interests further stamp their authority on the market - as opposed to the historic 'status quo' that has often been inflicted on consumers through a lack of choice and interest offered by companies more interested in maintaining their monopolies and position in the food chain.

I too was disapointed by the fact that i was unable to play XVID and such on my xbox360. However i believe there are programs available which will transcode and then stream the xvid as a wmv file. Bit of a waste of time really. It's something that Microsoft should have implemented from the outset.

However i might point out that the latest update does allow support for the Apple Ipod for the music player. I believe you can also plug in your PSP.

I hope they also update the Xbox360 to use portable hard drives formatted in NTFS format (currently only allows FAT32 formatted drives). Ihave a 320GB Hard Drive full of Music and Videos that can't be recognised!!

you can play xbox 360 transcode video video file through an XBox 360, provided you have the codec on your PC by using a third party bit of software.

A simple search of "xbox 360 transcode video" on a popular search engine will provide you with what you need. I use it and it works a charm, and integrates very well with the Media Center Extender.

Hope this helps!

Hearing words about access to movies, music, photos from the maker of Vista, loaded up to the neck with DRMs, "trusted" computing and all sorts of user rights infringements, is at best entertaining.

Computers can currently provide very easy access to content if it wouldn't be for the content owners. Vista will make it more and more difficult. Mr Gates is plainly economical with the truth here.

There are mostly no technical difficulties in converting between formats today. The only difficulties there are created intentionally by the content owners in order to generate multiple revenues for the same product per customer. So that you could eventually have the privilege of paying them every time you watch or listen anything instead of just once, or at least buy the same content for every device you use.

That's the only revolution that is going on here.

We really need to wake up and say "enough" to these people.

The third-party guys have already come to the rescue and developed complete, open and interoperable systems which are still improving all the time. They might be a bit more hassle to set up, but you know that they're not going to leave you with a pile of obsolete DRM-ed files which you can no longer use in a few years' time. As for reliability, the only time my home server has gone down is when I've switched it off to add new hardware.

As for the full home automation, I don't really see it as being worth the trouble and cost, but it might be handy occasionally:
- Oops, left the light/oven/tap on. Wait a minute, I can connect to my home server and turn it off from here.
- I'm going away on holiday - let's set a semi-random sequence of lights to come on so it looks like there's someone around.
- I'm at the supermarket and forgot to check if I'd run out of bread etc. Hang on, I can ask my cupboards with my phone.

Hearing words about access to movies, music, photos from the maker of Vista, loaded up to the neck with DRMs, "trusted" computing and all sorts of user rights infringements, is at best entertaining.

Computers can currently provide very easy access to content if it wouldn't be for the content owners. Vista will make it more and more difficult. Mr Gates is plainly economical with the truth here.

There are mostly no technical difficulties in converting between formats today. The only difficulties there are created intentionally by the content owners in order to generate multiple revenues for the same product per customer. So that you could eventually have the privilege of paying them every time you watch or listen anything instead of just once, or at least buy the same content for every device you use.

That's the only revolution that is going on here.

We really need to wake up and say "enough" to these people.

The wired home is a great idea, certainly as far as media distribution is concerned.

With a bit of tweaking and the use of free software written by enthusiasts, I have my original Xbox linked to my PC and the internet. This allows the streaming of *any* media (pictures, videos, music) from the PC and the Net direct to my TV.

Once operational, it's a fantastically powerful system. I can control some things on the PC and xbox from anywhere via the net, and it really shows how the home could be integrated if not for all the restrictions and blocks put upon us.

I couldn't be without it now.

Video files are next to useless on the 360 as wmvhd is not widely supported. QuickTime codecs would be great.
I thought the 360 did a good job of playing music files. I plugged in a mac formatted drive (HFS+) which contained a mixture of aac and mp3 music and it played everything. I never worry about drm protected stuff as you can make an audio cd of the file and re-encode to ac3 (unprotected) if you really wish with negligible quality drop.
Sometimes it is good to read the instructions.

There are some very interesting comments on here and some people I'd like to salute (commentor 14, Brian Boyes, for one).

The simple message here is that the more locked down a format or product becomes, the more favourable piracy begins to look. If only the big players could see this, we'd all be laughing.

For now, Open Source has to be the way to go. MPlayer has so far played everything I've thrown at it. Running on an old PC I acquired for nothing, it will even play High Definition content, such is the efficiency of Linux.

Vista actually disables any output capable of displaying HD as soon as you try to play a Blu-Ray disc. How is that a home entertainment hub?

Come on guys - catch on here. You're losing market share to people whose primary goal is something other than proffit.

Tom has exactly the right point.

Why suffer the proprietary formats and restrictions of using Microsoft products? Bill Gates has a vision where HE controls everthing in the home, not you.

Like Tom, I use a mythtv server (www.mythtv.org) running on Linux for all my home entertainment. It allows ME complete control of TV watching and recording, DVD playing, and Hifi sound, with a wirelessly connected laptop and cheap projector as the display. The projector beats any monstrous TV for films and I don't have half the living room eaten up as it packs away into a small cupboard. I also don't need a DVD player, CD player, or a video/DVD recorder.

The reason it works well is because the software is written by volunteers who use it and know what they want, not by someone restricted by the large producers. It is available for free and you can modify it as you want.

The technology is available, its just the mainstream producers don't want you to have it.

For those of you wanting to stream video from your PC to your 360 - download a little program called TRANSCODE 360. It works fantasticly well, encoding quicker-than-realtime so you can fastforward/skip through as required. I don't have the full compatability list, but I haven't come across a video format/codec that it can't play properly as yet. HTH....

Again I agree with Tom (19).
He should add

to his list of excellent third party media centre solutions that are capable of playing DRM free multi format media on a cheap devices around the home.
The likes of Microsoft and Apple are too intent on protecting their own locked down content. They have missed the point that all sorts of formats exist and people will want to play all of them, and if sellers system wont play the consumers content, it just looks bad on the system sellers.

Stick to the independent systems like Myth and GBPVR, they are a bit more hassle to set up, but BOY THEY ARE WORTH IT.

Perhaps the legislators should make all proprietary formats illegal.

I am surprised at the fuss because I thought the networked home was already here. I have ditched my TV, DVD player, freeview box with HDD and hifi in favour of a mac mini - which does all of this and more, and even with fantastic monitor is 拢200 cheaper than all the other stuff. Its also alot smaller. It works brilliantly, the piture/sound is excellent and I can access the files from networked PCs anywhere in the home (or potentially set up recording or access files outside it for that matter).

I know, it sucks doesn't it - the fact that stuff doesn't 'just work...'!! I have spent ages trying to get stuff off Sky+, onto DVD-RAM, drag to my PC, edit and either burn or encode to XviD -and quite frankly, WHO has the time - especially when you have to wait overnight to see the results and then work out where you went wrong and try again...

BUT I have discovered something which does help me out a little. The Sandisk V-Mate which is a bit like a VCR, except it records MP4 to SD cards.

After a bit of tweaking, I've been able to set it to do a regular recording from Ch4 each evening and then I can watch it on my (now revived) Ipaq pocket PC, using a piece of software called BetaPlayer (which seems to be a little like VLC in that it plays pretty much everything - including DAB MP2 streams) I know if ISN'T perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. AS I don't have a video capable iPod - which those who do, could use the Miglia EyeTV software to record their content.

Another post from me complaining about the content. TW used to be such a positivly outlooking program but from this blog, all I hear is moaning. No wonder our kids are growing up without any inspiration to be constructive.

"It's a shame that Microsoft and Apple won't support open formats which are well documented and not encumbered by patents which restrict their use to only those who can afford to do so."

I remain unsure how this idea that you are somehow "locked in" to proprietary Apple file formats with an iPod took hold.

The iPod will happily play MP3, WAV and AIFF files.

Yes, any tracks you buy from iTunes will be in Apple's proprietary DRM format. In case you've been asleep for the last few years, that was the price they had to pay in order to persuade the music industry that there was any mileage at all in legal downloading.

However, this is the simplest piece of DRM to work around in the world. You are allowed to burn these files to audio CD. You can then re-import them as unprotected MP3s.

Hardly rocket science.

Its all good progress as far as I am concerned, the more the objects around us interact with each other the easier it will become for us to be notified of good things to come.

Windows Media Center 2005 PC and an XBox360 hooked to a 40" HD LCD and a wireless Internet connection along with 500 Watt Logitech 5.1 speakers. I use an Archos Gmini 402 to carry my Media Centre recorded films, music, photos, videos etc. Media Player 11 converts the recorded television to the correct format for the Gmini so that takes a while but it does involve minimal input from me. I accept the XBox360 streaming only wmv files as most of my media is MS based. It really is a wonderful environment that impresses all my friends.

The only thing I truly hate is DRM. The world is a worse place for it and I have stopped buying download media. How can I pay the same price for digital media as for physical media and then not own it? Can someone explain this to me?

I think this is great, Bill Gates, regardless of what has brought to us, his vision is brilliant, and one I share and so do a lot of people. I also see it being cheaper or there will be no vision, as we need to get rid of this over cost goods, if not...then lets go back to the horse and cart and get rid of large corporations and businesses.
N lets live more peaceful relaxing lifes...

This is such a valid point. The thing I have always found puzzling is why one of the leading brand firms like Apple or Microsoft wont just make a media player that plays all formats. Why not bundle all those endless additional codecs with Windows Media Player? Surely the player that offers this is going to be the most preferable, so the firm to realise this first would benefit from a sudden rush of dedicated users.

Ladies, Gentlement,
Tell Microsoft and Apple what you want with your feet. In order to circumvent this exact problem (having an Xbox 360, and apple iPod with a Windows Computer, and a Linux Computer) the sensible option for me was to build a linux server. I now stream music wirelessly to my Netgear MP101 device and xbox (uPnp, Microsoft) and to my itunes shares (mt-daap, apple). I use the server to store my files on a samba share (samba, Microsoft) which can also be accessed by my linux machine. I have also started using some fairly decent linux-based web applications - because as long as you have a browser and don't use something silly like flash, you can actually write some fairly useful applications that need nothing other than a web-broswer to run at all (Jinzora - a free web-based music server) - no additional software is needed on the client PC at all!

I think it's a brilliant idea, that of bringing a sort of universal player or group of codec used across all hardware. Brilliant idea but non of the big companies are going to implement it simply because of the people you are thankful for. 3rd party developers NEED a first party to develop for and 1st party developers need somebody to complete the jigsaw that is interoperability. Why should microsoft worry that your Real Media files won't play on the 360? If you want to watch the video you will find a way of using 3rd party to convert it.

I dont ever expect the major players to come up with industry standard file formats, its letting go of too much as far as IP and market share is concerned.
Look what happened to IBM's PC business when it released the standard to the rest of the world.
The consumers definately benefited but IBM lost in it's quest to dominate the PC industry.

Opensource, third party plugin writers, hackers and other software will be the future we will live, if only we had listened to Richard Stallman's warnings.

Yes for a stupid reason the 360 will not play divx etc, my guess it must be some license thing to keep the cost down may be.
However, you can install Transcode 360 on your Media center pc and then watch divx etc on your 360, easy.
Alternatively you can use TVersity as a media streamer from your pc. It has all the functions of a slingshot box but uses your pc, 360, phones, psp, pocketc pc all supported.

To all the people mentioning Transcode, you're missing the point. I do use that, but it is slow on some formats - Xvid, Divx etc. The issue is that I have to have a Windows PC running purely to stream the content to a very powerful device (360) when that ought to be enough on it's own. Aside from anything else, the 360 boots quickly enough to be "on demand" but a PC has to be left on...

I need to see whether Mac Minis can play mpg, divx etc apart from their awful QT stuff....

Personally I think everyone is missing the point here. The products you have described are all very popular mainstream products which offer little versatility and do not allow many different devices to communicate with each other.

Smart homes and home automation is expensive there is no doubt about this but prices and technologies are progressing so fast that we are now seeing a huge influx of easy to install and configure products.

Microsoft is in no way even on a comparable standing with other smart home and automation products. Today there are many products which can communicate with any device in the home through serial, IR, I/O and Ethernet. We design and install many types of control but for the end user they have a simple means of communicating with every device they wish to control. Through intelligent interfaces such as touch screens, remote controls and keypads. Of course all these have to be programmed but if you're going to invest in home control it is better to spend the money and pay someone who is experienced and can fulfill all your requirements without the headache. Thinking of smart homes or any kind of home automation through products such as Microsoft Media Centre is purely child play and something that a true home automation company would never support. The error lies not only in main stream development but between keyboard and chair!

I feel you cannot have a knowledgeable discussion about home automation and device control if you're thinking of just using rudimentary products such as Microsoft.

If you speak with any smart home installer you will be quite amazed at how far the technology has progressed and right now it is only a matter of price. These services are still not for the middle to lower classes but this will certainly shift within the next 10 years.

So the revolution is here, indeed my media centre solution can play back any format and I can use my laptop as a remote control for it, and even my Sony PSP. The possibilities are already endless but you have to forgive companies such as Microsoft because even if they try to make something suitable for every user there are always some who cannot quite grasp the technology or the skills needed to configure systems, advanced or basic.