*Sub-Thread* Consoles as the Ultimate Media Hub
- Thread starter Diamond.G
- Start date
500GB can be had for under $110. That's enough for over 50 complete DVD rips at your fingertips whenever you want to watch them and you can put the originals anywhere instead of having to have a storage rack near the viewing device. And the media server does all the work of organizing. If you have a lot of movies it makes sense, trust me.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I dont think price is so much of a problem. I'm actually looking into buying a new htpc/home storage server and you can get a c2d, case, psu, gpu with HD acceleration, 500gb disk and mainbord with 6 sata ports and I got something like 350 euro. Now you wont have a BR/HD player for that money but in a couple of years im sure pc players will be down to something like 50 dollars or less, along with the lower HW cost by that time im pretty sure you can get a 500 - 1000gb htpc for around 300 euro's. That would probably be 100 to 150 more than a console by that time but as a media hub 300 euro's isnt alot of money at all. Even these days good DVD players can cost 200 euro's or more.
For it to work in the mass-market, you have to have DVR functions and 500 GB storage for no more than $300. And it can't be something people have to assemble. It has to come prebuilt and work with cablecard and/or satellite channels.
The $300 DVRs come for half that price now and certainly won't have a beefy CPU like a C2D or any kind of decent GPU.
A lot of tinkerers will put together the box you describe but it won't be the mass market, or millions (or tens of millions).
The $300 DVRs come for half that price now and certainly won't have a beefy CPU like a C2D or any kind of decent GPU.
A lot of tinkerers will put together the box you describe but it won't be the mass market, or millions (or tens of millions).
I think you guys vastly overestimate the importance of ripping DVDs. The average consumer will watch a DVD once. The average consumer probably prefers to rent movies and TV shows rather than own them. As far as the media hub and storage goes, music will get replayed; DVDs probably will not. Therefore, I think video-on-demand is a far more important capability than DVD ripping, and it makes sense to me that this is the direction being taken by the Xbox 360 and its competition.
Now we just need ISPs to provide 10Mbit as their lowest offering.
Mine does.....
The highest bandwidth offerings in the UK don't even reach 10 Mbit...
Also I agree DVD ripping won't be too important going forwards. VoD is the ideal solution, and one I've been looking forwards to such that I have a tiddly DVD collection. Rather than buy disks to throw away when they're outdated, I'm waiting for every film and TV series I could ever want on one big server that I can dial into and watch. The need for playing media would then only be for my created media, photos and vids. Clearly different folk will have different positions here, and some people have invested in large collections and it'll annoy them to have to buy the same content again. Such people would probably be best off with full PC solutions anyway though, if they want to run their own mammoth movie server. For the masses, a built in disc player and VoD would probably be as much as they want in a living room media hub.
Also I agree DVD ripping won't be too important going forwards. VoD is the ideal solution, and one I've been looking forwards to such that I have a tiddly DVD collection. Rather than buy disks to throw away when they're outdated, I'm waiting for every film and TV series I could ever want on one big server that I can dial into and watch. The need for playing media would then only be for my created media, photos and vids. Clearly different folk will have different positions here, and some people have invested in large collections and it'll annoy them to have to buy the same content again. Such people would probably be best off with full PC solutions anyway though, if they want to run their own mammoth movie server. For the masses, a built in disc player and VoD would probably be as much as they want in a living room media hub.
Sky does a 16Mbit service.
I bought a 3DO for $700 back in the day, it was supposed to be the "one box" to rule them all, so to speak. That obviously didnt happen. I also had a CDi, which didnt make it either.
I do use my PS3, in conjunction with my PC (streaming) for virtually everything in my living room. I could just manually put my files on the PS3, as there is plenty of space. But streaming is easier. I have a seperate DVR, if they do add that, it would be complete. There is one coming in the UK, yes?
Three keys for me where the PS3 outshines the 360 in the media dept is, a high def drive already in it, the PS3 is much, much quieter which is key for watching movies, tv (I stream downloaded tv shows), or listening to music, and you can replace the HD very easily. You can have much more space than the 360 offers, and for much cheaper.
So for me, it is close to one box doing everything, but its not there yet. I dont know if a console will ever do everything, I think a DVR is ahead right now. But obviously you can only play PC games on it, and not console games. Other than emulators. Same for the consoles, cant play PC games, other than cross platform games.
And yes buying the same movies over and over sucks. We have a ton of old Disney VHS tapes when our daughter was little, and a lot for us as well. We've bought many of them again on DVD, since they look and sound so much better. And some of the VHS tapes got too old, played too much, and were really bad quality. I have since bought a lot of bluray movies.. some in which we had on VHS, and even a few on DVD. I dont buy but a few that I had on DVD, since when upscaled they do look pretty good already. Not worth the cash to get a bluray version to me, unless its pretty cheap. I hate buying the same movie over and over. Which Im sure will happen 10 years from now, or whenever a far superior format comes out again, and TV's advance enough to tell the difference.
I do use my PS3, in conjunction with my PC (streaming) for virtually everything in my living room. I could just manually put my files on the PS3, as there is plenty of space. But streaming is easier. I have a seperate DVR, if they do add that, it would be complete. There is one coming in the UK, yes?
Three keys for me where the PS3 outshines the 360 in the media dept is, a high def drive already in it, the PS3 is much, much quieter which is key for watching movies, tv (I stream downloaded tv shows), or listening to music, and you can replace the HD very easily. You can have much more space than the 360 offers, and for much cheaper.
So for me, it is close to one box doing everything, but its not there yet. I dont know if a console will ever do everything, I think a DVR is ahead right now. But obviously you can only play PC games on it, and not console games. Other than emulators. Same for the consoles, cant play PC games, other than cross platform games.
And yes buying the same movies over and over sucks. We have a ton of old Disney VHS tapes when our daughter was little, and a lot for us as well. We've bought many of them again on DVD, since they look and sound so much better. And some of the VHS tapes got too old, played too much, and were really bad quality. I have since bought a lot of bluray movies.. some in which we had on VHS, and even a few on DVD. I dont buy but a few that I had on DVD, since when upscaled they do look pretty good already. Not worth the cash to get a bluray version to me, unless its pretty cheap. I hate buying the same movie over and over. Which Im sure will happen 10 years from now, or whenever a far superior format comes out again, and TV's advance enough to tell the difference.
To be fair, BT apparently have a 24 Mb service. But availability is laughable. I live 25 miles from the centre of London in one of the most densely populated parts of the world (not counting cities). Our exchange was upgraded a few years ago to 2 Mb, and when I checked some months ago, it wasn't going to be updated for another few years. We have no cable options, even though a few miles down the road people do. It's such useless infrastructure that's holding VoD back. It's only going to grow if people can start using it, but if the companies wait until people start using it before they'll install the infrastructure, they'll be waiting a long time!
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Here in Holland you can easily get 20mbit connections in most places. Will cost you about 25euro's a month with free phone services. My mate who lives in the ''ghetto'' of his city even has a 24/24 glassfibre connection for 50 euro's a month or so with ''free'' tv cable.
True, I had the 16Mbit service from Sky for a while, couldn't get better than 1.5Mbit out of it!
No reason why not. A market is a market, and it's no different to Sony et al selling on iTunes, or non-Sony movie studios selling stuff on Sony's BRD format, or non-Sony studios selling movies on UMD, or Toshiba selling Sony components for the PS3 which is in direct competition to their own HD-DVD players and format.
Dont be so blind.
Sony controls what content is going to be put up, its not free for anybody to put stuff on, and while they probably will allow other developers to put games up and such, they will certainly moderate the content, titles which are in direct competition with their own titles, will most likely get cut.
"A market is a market??!?!?!?!?"
What the hell?!?
Anybody with a remote interest in economics or finance understands that there are many different types of markets and they all behave differently,they are all influnced differently and they all have different rules. In this particar case, Sony is God, and they decide what gets up there and not, others are not at liberty to upload new downloadable content at their own will, everything has to be approved by Sony.
Its completely different to the situations your describing, its comparable at all, Apple doesn't have any interest in what music gets sold so iTunes is essentially an "open" market, Sony doesn't own the BRD format, nor can they pervent studios from releasing movies on it, thats an open market, Toshiba selling Sony compents isn't comparable either, thats just outsourcing by Sony and money for Toshiba, Toshiba producing HD-DVD players is completely irrelevant.
The only comparison that is remotely close here is your UMD comparison (allthought not really, as Sony has completely different motives than in this case)
Last edited by a moderator:
Is it safe to assume that ninzel's original quote was aimed at the media download service? I guess so as PSN is already up and running...
I don't see why you'd assume the typical internet view of Sony here (you know the one: proprietary formats or, at a push, pushing their own content at all costs)?
I'm assuming an awful lot here. But, IMO, Shifty's point seems fairly logical and straightforward. I take your point that content is not free to put up but the very fact that they are setting up a service would suggest that they'd be keen to offer something to download - I've had a quick look at the Sony Connect site (and it's awful trying to work out which parent record label actually "owns" an artist!) and that certainly doesn't appear to be limited to Sony BMG.
Sorry, I may well have missed your point so please do clarify.
I thought this was about PSN, im rather tired.
Still, my comments regarding everything shifty said about markets, still stands, regardless if this is PSN or whatever, there is certainly a tremendous difference in the "market's" that shifty used in his examples and this content download thingy, with the possible exception of UMD
Similar threads
