Posted on 02/19/2007 11:11:52 AM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Home Theater PCs (HTPCs) were poised to be the next must-have toy for technophiles. The idea was to have a single component to store and play your entire digital library of music, movies, and photos. The concept was nothing new. For several years, computers have been edging out TVs, stereos, and DVD players as the entertainment appliance of choice for college students confined to cramped dorm rooms. But the plummeting cost of high capacity hard drives and TV tuner cards, along with the ever-shrinking form factor size, led many average consumers to consider moving their PC from their desk to the den or living room.
Those consumers who made the leap soon realized that the reality didn’t quite live up to the fantasy. Users with vast MP3 collections, for example, quickly noticed that compressed music doesn’t sound so hot coming through full-size speakers. Getting it to sound right would mean countless hours of re-ripping CD’s (assuming they owned them in the first place) to their hard drive using a lossless audio codec (such as FLAC or Apple Lossless), which in turn made for significantly larger file sizes. An album’s worth of material now took up 500MB instead of 50MB.
DVD content, on the other hand, could be compressed down to about 1GB/hour of material using a codec like DIVX and would still look fine on most televisions. The prospect of having a video jukebox similar to what music lovers had been enjoying for years was very enticing.
Enter: High Definition Television (HDTV). Consumers who sprang for the big-screen experience encountered their own version of the MP3 phenomenon. Plagued with fuzzy image quality, compression artifacts, and washed-out colors, the DVD media’s inherent limitations suddenly materialized when blown up on a 40-inch+ screen.
Using an HTPC as a personal video recorder (PVR) also lost much of its allure. Once consumers had their first taste of HD programming, standard definition TV looked appalling by comparison. Users could install expensive HDTV tuner cards, but the massive storage requirements HD demands would quickly clog even the largest of hard drives. Furthermore, users that had to go through a set-top box (STB) to receive HD or even SD programming found themselves limited to viewing and recording only one program at a time.
Has the death knell of HTPC begun to sound even before the concept has taken off? Hardly. It’s just starting to look a bit different. Two distinct trends are currently emerging, each heralded by a new class of device.
First is the new generation of set-top box/PVR combinations being rolled out by cable and satellite companies. Scientific-Atlanta’s Explorer 8000HD Home Entertainment Server, available in many markets from Time-Warner Cable, includes either an 80 or 160 gigabyte hard drive, as well as a pair of tuners to simultaneously record two programs at once. The 8000HD also features an external SATA (eSATA) port for adding an additional hard drive (this port is sometimes deactivated, however). Beyond expanded recording capacity, this also provides a method for exporting recorded content to another device (e.g. a computer) and for importing content to a home theater. Granted, current copy protection schemes prevent users from enjoying this capability right out of the gate, but recent history has shown us that it is only a matter of time before some enterprising individual(s) figures out a work-around.
These STB/PVR combos often carry one or more USB ports, although generally they are not enabled. Once they are, however, the potential capabilities of the device begin to open up even further. As the 8000HD Home Entertainment Server’s name suggests, the potential to store and view other entertainment media, such as music and photos, might not be too far away. Taking all the features together, these STB/PVR combos begin to look a lot like stripped-down HTPCs.
Even only taking into consideration the present capabilities of STB/PVR’s, these devices offer significant advantages for recording and watching HDTV and SDTV programming over stand-alone HTPC’s. First, they are incredibly easy to use. With interactive programming guides, dual HD tuner capabilities, and a simple user interface, even the most extreme technophobe can get the hang of it with minimal difficulty. The second advantage that STB/PVR’s have over HTPC’s is the significantly lower financial investment required. Cable providers and some satellite providers rent the boxes for as little as $8-20 per month. Compared with HTPC’s that cost anywhere from $800-$2000 on up, STB/PVR’s are exponentially more attractive to consumers on a limited budget. Also, content providers that do rent boxes will generally let users upgrade for free when new capabilities and technologies are introduced.
As always, there are trade-offs. As mentioned above, current models are significantly less versatile than HTPC’s, but they do a substantially better job of handling HD content, particularly for consumers interested in receiving HD content beyond what is available from over-the-air (OTA) broadcast. However, I’m willing to bet that consumers will see a marked increase in the functionality of STB/PVR’s in the near future.
Devices with the ability to stream content over a home network comprise the second category of devices. They basically come in two flavors: dedicated media streamers, such as D-Link’s MediaLounge series and Netgear’s Digital Entertainer HD, and multi-function devices with the ability to stream, such as Microsoft’s XBOX 360. Rather than eliminating the need for a computer all together, these boxes act as a bridge between the PC and the entertainment system. Often, manufacturers design them to take advantage of special features available through technologies such as Intel’s Viiv and Microsoft’s Media Center OS.
These streamers present several benefits over a dedicated HTPC. Since it operates over a network (either Wireless G or Ethernet), owners no longer need to keep their PC in close proximity to the viewing area. Leaving the computer in another room, where it is out of earshot and out of sight, eliminates concerns over chassis noise and increases the all-important “Spousal Acceptance Factor.”
Media streamers also allow users to utilize their existing PCs as a media server instead of buying a new one to serve as a dedicated HTPC. Entertainment buffs can further extend their media server’s capabilities by adding additional streamers to TVs and stereos elsewhere in the dwelling.
Manufacturers currently recommend using a wired connection for streaming HD programs, but once the IEEE finally agrees on a standard for 802.11n, the increased bandwidth should be adequate for streaming such content wirelessly.
Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle standing in the way of media streamers and STB/PVR’s replacing traditional HTPCs is, was, and continues to be digital piracy. Hardware and software manufacturers tend to refer to it as Digital Rights Management (or DRM, which generally involves individual license keys), while manufacturers of home theater components generally refer to it (somewhat less ambiguously) as High-bandwidth Digital Copy Protection (or HDCP, which relies on embedded software and hardware protocols). Whatever the nomenclature, manufacturers take it very seriously, either because of direct financial interest in deterring piracy (as is the case with Sony, who owns Columbia Pictures and MGM, and Microsoft, who has a partnership with NBC, which shares the same corporate parent as Universal Pictures and Bravo), or because of the threat of lawsuits from those who do.
This would seem to tilt the balance in favor of HTPC’s, due to their ability to handle multiple file formats without interference by a third party program or hardware protocol. However, I predict that the future of content protection will evolve in one of two ways. Either media conglomerates and manufacturers will settle on some as-yet-undisclosed universal anti-piracy scheme (don’t hold your breath), or the interested parties will consistently, yet gradually, by technological means, tighten the restrictions on digital content transfer protocols. The day may come where content purchased from a subsidiary of Sony can only be played on hardware manufactured by Sony.
Consumers won’t stand for it, you say? It’s already happened. As of February 2006, music fans had already purchased over 1 billion tracks licensed and sold through Apple’s iTunes service - tracks that can only be played without restriction on devices manufactured by Apple (although, to be fair, these restrictions come at the behest of the record companies, not Apple).
So, is digital convergence dead? No, the “one box, one wire” dream continues to entice. However, for the average consumer, several kinks still wait to be ironed out. In the meantime, STB/PVR’s and media streamers go a long way in filling some of the gaps.
XBox360+PC=the best option right now.
With the new terabyte sized hard drives coming out and with the remote access capabilities of the 360 you can hide the pc and use it as a movie/media/recording terminal while just showing the 360.
I find having my toons on my hard drive is much more convient than having to play with discs, disc drives, dvd players, vcr tapes. Much easier to access, and the random jukebox function means I have my favorite shows all the time with no comercials. and no dud shows!
slysoft.com ;)
There were people who ripped DVD-HD's months ago, but slysoft has made it easy.
I don't think 'piracy' is the right word. There are many people who just want to play HD stuff on their non-HDCP compliant equipment. Right now there is no way for me to watch HD DVD's on my equipment without ripping it to a computer first. It is not like there is even a way to copy HD material off of a component video signal. But companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars crippling down equipment. All that money to protect the HD material and now it can be easily ripped right off the disk. Makes no sense.
yep, and you get a free trial. ;)
Someday, if I ever strike it rich, this is the entertainment center I'd like to get: http://www.oldtechnology.net/ambassadortv2.JPG
Or one like it anyway.
ROFL!
In a couple of weeks, Apple TV may be the best solution.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
