[opendtv] Re: New Sony COO bullish on Blu-ray
- From: Ron Economos <k6mpg@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 16 May 2006 15:33:49 -0700
I'm not really trying to defend 1394. Just pointing out
that Kilroy's alternatives don't exist in the cable STB
world (at least not yet).
As a 1394 developer, I'm well aware of the politics
and sentiment towards 1394. It's amazing how an
inanimate object can generate so much animosity.
Even my co-workers often ask the question "When
will 1394 die?". Reminds me of the Neil Young
lyric "it's better to burn out than to fade away".
However, in my mind, the real question is "Are home
networks even viable?". I was given a nice demo last
night of the I-O Data Avel LinkPlayer home networked
device. It's capabilities are pretty impressive and quite
numerous. But at least to me (and I admit that I'm
not much of a CE consumer even though I work in
the industry), that it only had geek appeal and was
way over the head of the average consumer.
My current thought is that the critical mass for home
networks (using any transport) is quite far in the future,
if ever. Even DLNA (which everyone seems to like)
would seem to have a difficult road ahead. But I
may be wrong.
Ron
Craig Birkmaier wrote:
>At 1:45 AM -0700 5/16/06, Ron Economos wrote:
>
>
>>Except that the reality of current cable STB's
>>is that they all have ethernet and USB ports,
>>yet none of these interfaces are actually enabled
>>by cable providers.
>>
>>BTW, I'm the designer (along with my JVC cohorts)
>>of the 1394 interface for the HM-DH40000U,
>>HM-DH5U and HM-DT100 D-VHS decks.
>>
>>
>>
>
>You're not going to make any progress with this discussion Ron.
>Kilroy is simply parroting the MS company line with respect to
>Firewire. They never liked it, never will.
>
>Most of the FUD about 1394 as a display interconnect came out of
>Redmond. !394 was never intended as a display interconnect, nor was
>it designed for the transport of uncompressed bitstreams, although it
>can do this with SD video in a pinch.
>
>The whole idea behind 1394 with HDCP was as a device interconnect for
>compressed isochronous streams. in a more perfect world, you could
>use the 1394 port on that cable box to add more hard drives to
>increase the total storage capacity of the system. But this would
>also mean that you could take digital content from the cable moguls
>and put it on a hard drive that you could connect to any other
>machine and play.
>
>Once again we are getting hung up on what is possible in a technical
>sense, versus what is ALLOWED in the REAL techno-political world.
>1394 with DTCP was supposed to be the political solution that would
>allow us to share media across an in-home network. DTCP provides the
>content management layer to support handshaking between devices and
>the keys that would make sharing content practical in the home, and
>profitable for the members of the DTCP royalty pool.
>
>It is ironic that Kilroy points out that 1394 has been a success as a
>professional interconnect for digital camcorders and the world of
>professional digital media content authoring; a world that Microsoft
>does not dominate. In that world you can buy a wide range of devices
>from a wide range of vendors, plug them together and do your job.
>This is what SHOULD be expected in the digital world we are trying to
>create. There are no political barriers to raising the bar; thus we
>have seen the growth of digital media authoring platforms for SD to
>HD, and the ability to output your content in whatever format/codec
>you want/need. Even Sony and Avid have been forced to open up their
>systems and codecs, due to the reality that this involves nothing
>more than some simple blocks of plug-in code that can be used across
>the diverse devices that are used to author content today.
>
>Unfortunately, the same capabilities do not exist for digital media
>consumers today. Rather than a vibrant marketplace where you can buy
>components from any vendor and plug them together to create your
>in-home digital media entertainment configuration, we have a world
>filled with roadblocks, and connectors on the backs of boxes that
>simply do nothing, because the companies that reluctantly put those
>connectors on the boxes will not enable them.
>
>The CE guys keep building components that only work together if you
>buy everything from them. Microsoft keeps designing Media Centers
>that support only the "Open Technologies" they wish to support, and
>only then with layers of Microsoft proprietary code to keep you
>inside THEIR walled garden. By the way, although I appreciate the way
>the products i buy from Apple work together, they are no better than
>Microsoft in terms of being "open."
>
>As I told Bert when I first responded to this thread, we are not
>discussion technical issues here. We are talking about a handful of
>oligopolists trying desperately to hold onto archaic business models
>that would already have been blown away, were it not for their
>ability to impede technical innovation while seeking protection from
>the politicians, who are cannibalizing our constitutional rights with
>respect to its original intent to proliferate intellectual property
>to the masses.
>
>And the beat goes on and on and on...
>
>Regards
>Craig
>
>
----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at
FreeLists.org
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word
unsubscribe in the subject line.
Other related posts: