I believe the main issue preventing the do-all video boxes from being developed has more to do with restrictions put in place by the content owners (studios) than with technology or broadcasting companies. In the US there are "some" restrictions put in placed by the broadcasting companies (content distributors/aggregators), but the most annoying restrictions are there in order to honor their contract with the content owners. Also remember that in the US or anywhere both will be in the mix to make money and not to facilitate free content or for unlicensed content to be recorded. Video content is a lot more expensive to produce than music. Having unauthorized copies of the content compromises returns on large investments which can easily become multi-million dollar loses. Some of the restriction have to do with timing of the release of studio owned content, restrictions on time allowed for "rented" content, restrictions related to having some content being easily displayed on TV and hardware restrictions as to where the content can be stored (recorded) and played.
Studios have a strict schedule and "exclusive" timed deals for the release of movies to theaters, DVDs/Blu-ray, cable companies, on-demand online/Cable services and to regular TV stations. You will rarely, if ever, see HBO having the same movie(s) as Showtime at around the same time. Studios stipulate where, how and for how long their content can be stored to be distributed for rental by any particular rental/on-demand service and for how long it can be available for play by the end users (usually 24-48 hours). If laws of some foreign countries prevent them from enforcing their licensing restriction... studios might opt to walk away rather than giving up the goose that lays the golden eggs. Television studio's content (produced by them or licensed from other studios) is mostly paid by "TV" commercials and by Cable re-broadcasting fees so the TV stations (broadcasters) do not want to cannibalize their advertisement and cable revenue by having their content available commercial-free on TV via 3rd parties unless strict rules of use are in effect. Remember what happened to Hulu on Boxee? Hulu has contracts with TV studios that allow Hulu subscribers to use their content on end user computers, but not "directly" on a TV. The Boxee box connects "directly" to the TV. When it comes to recording content the cable DVR boxes have an chip with a unique id to encrypt the content and "rarely" do these boxes have their USB or SATA ports enabled. Technically these boxes are capable of having external storage attached to them locally and remotely, but the studios stipulate that such connections be disabled unless the content recorded to the external storage is also encrypted. In other words, you can not take the hard drive of cable owned DVR and played in a different DVR even if it is the same model DVR and from the same cable company. I own a Vudu box which I believe provides the best video quality (near-blu-ray quality with HDX) and Vudu does not require a subscription. It is a pay-as-you-go service. It has a fairly large video library available for rent and/or purchase at different price levels depending on resolution quality (HDX, HD or SD). Setting up the box was a breeze. Even my older sister was able to setup her box without my help. The Vudu box guides you with voice and/or video with the setup of the box. If the sound output is not connected correctly you get graphic video instruction if the video is not connected right... you get voice instructions. If both are connected road... you get a big pull out with graphical instructions. Vudu no longer makes the Vudu box and it's now concentrating on having their software embedded in other systems (Blu-ray players and TVs). Others should learn from their video setup example. The original Vudu concept was to deliver content based on the P2P model. About 15-30 minutes of each movie in their catalog is always store in the end user box. So you get the movie to start instantly even if you have low bandwidth. When you first set it up it will take about 48 hours to get the beginning of all the movies of their catalog stored in your box. You also get other aggregated services like Pandora, myplay, youtube, on demand TV, flickr, picasa and some games from the box. But like any other box that plays studio licensed video content... they're restrictions. You do not get all the movies in HDX quality, you only have 24 hours to finish watching a rental and they don't have licensing agreements with all the studios. Now the Vudu service is moving away from the P2P model to direct streams which requires more bandwidth and they were recently acquired by Walmart... which I hate. Because of family-values and bible pushing policies WalMart has already removed the Adult content from Vudu... Not important to me... but I don't need anyone telling me what I can or can not watch. Oh yeah, they fear that your kids at home might get a peek at some indecent adult content that might affect them, but they have no issues with a kid getting a hole in the head with one of the guns they sell over the counter... Topic for another forum Back to the Logitech box... from what I can see from the video demo I posted in this thread http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79006 The Logitech box besides having Google TV (A Google Experience that allows search for media content with a customized browser for TV), the Logitech box will also incorporate the Harmony remote engine that can be controlled via a Smarphone or any mobile device using Android and WiFi. The Logitech box is also IR Blaster which will allow you to send IR commands to the rest of your AV System components. In essence giving you the Harmony activity-centric way of controlling your AV components. Google's approach appears more open to other content sources like Apple TV because of its search engine and browser, but believe me, Google TV will prioritize Gooogle's content so that it generates revenue for Google. The one thing that "might" become attractive about the Google TV solution is the strong possibility of Google TV for mobile devices. Google is all about cloud-computing and the content that it owns is already in the cloud. In the US making deals with studios that will allow their content be use via Google Youtube Private and Secured Channels does not sound that far out. Porting SBS to Android and making it a component of the Logitech box along with Google TV might be a little farther out. I also believe that Google has pockets deep enough to make something positive/negative happen. Small and independent companies like Vudu that can only license content, do not own internet content (youtube) or have the influence that only $oo$le has. -- tamanaco ------------------------------------------------------------------------ tamanaco's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=4620 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=79007 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
