DaveBaumann said:
The Baron said:
I like the Wi-Fi idea, but Wi-Fi alone doesn't make it a Killer Thing.
No, it makes it very useful for numerous applications that I would want to put it to.
Hm. Now that I think about it, I can think of a few incredibly good uses for Wi-Fi that would require a computer (or maybe just cheap computers near the TVs and a server with 400 gigs of HD space). Having TiVo-like devices that automatically shared shows would be the sexiest thing imaginable. However, Wi-Fi's just not fast enough yet. G is definitely a step in the right direction, but we probably need actual (read: not theoretical) speeds of around 50Mbps before having a Wi-Fi HTPC really becomes a great thing. That would change everything, honestly...
Dave Baumann said:
The Baron said:
Now, if there were a wireless spec that allowed ultrafast communication over short distances, so you could replace some digital connections,
Well, there's always Bluetooth - many wireless keyboards and mice are bluetooth these days.
I think Bluetooth is between 300 and 400kbps max. So, that'd work for MP3s, but it wouldn't be fast enough to even transfer the sound from a CD (~1170 kbps, I think). So, if you could use something analogous to the wireless Firewire that some company demoed, that too would do a lot to make the HTPC more useful, as it would provide a realistic way to connect all devices to the HTPC, which would then connect to an amp/preamp and TV. Only problem with this is that it will never happen--corporations would be too worried about copying DVD-Audio or whatever. Still, that's the direction that we need to go in order to really make the HTPC into something that's not just a cooler-looking VCR with better video quality.
Dave Baumann said:
The Baron said:
that's be one thing, but at the end of the day, you'll be hard pressed to replicate the sound of high-end audio stuff from a computer. A shame, really. If I could magically combine a TiVo, an Xbox, an SACD player, and a DVD-Audio player without making any compromises, I'd do it in a second.
There's a gap opening between "real" high end audio and and consumer high end audio and that because real high end audio is analogue, whereas many sources these days are moving to digital. All the the sources you list (which can be done on the PC now, or will soon) are digital sources and if you pas the digital signal out then you are free to decode that as you please. Your main concern as far as the PC is concerned is probably the transport quality, but then thats not too important in comparison to th quality of your DAC which is external anyway.
I was under the impression that there were no drives that could play DVD-Audio or SACD on the computer. If some are on the horizon, HTPC looks a lot better than it does now (since it really would combine several different higher-end devices, rather than only replacing lower-end devices and requiring the use of higher-end devices with a lot of overlapping functionality). And yeah, I know about analog high end, but for the purposes of this argument, I'm only referring to high end as consumer high end--I'd be worried that the electromagnetic field put out by the computer would cause the cables-with-six-inches-of-shielding-all-the-way-around to not conduct as well.
HTPC seems like one of those things that's getting there hardware-wise, since it requires a lot of additional functionality as opposed to your normal desktop PCs. Software-wise, I don't really know--people are always working on it, and the Linux stuff is always improving, but we'll see what happens.
edit:
MuFu said:
Nebula just released a beta driver (3.10) that allows a PC with a DigiTV card to act as a LAN freeview server. It's pretty neat - you install the software on client machines and they can receive a single channel or an entire transport stream, P2P or multicasted to all clients simultaneously. There are a few teething problems (e.g. multicasting currently impedes almost all TCP connectivity!) but it works and works well.
That's the kind of thing that makes me want an HTPC.... jeez. That'd be nice.
