Google TV

[The_Lillard_King]

My frined is trying to sell me on it. Say intel is giving deals to employees and asked if I want in.

So anyone ever hear of google TV . . . apparently it is the wave of the future.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Just like how Google Wave was the future of communication and collaboration?

I'd probably get a google TV as a secondary feature but other things like the TV itself are more important. There are some licensing snafus at the current time and until it gets more ubuiquitus, its not going to be ragingly popular.

nice to be able to surf the web on your TV i guess but you can do it on your laptop.

 

[mook]

I like the idea of an open source app-rich environment for your DVR. I've always wondered why my DirecTv system doesn't do obvious shit like automatically record all 3 star or better films, Best Picture films, films Roger Ebert likes, the most popular program on tv that night, etc.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I might get a sony one for my room though. we'll see. I really wish I could get rid of my direct TV.....just gotta find ESPN online.

 

[Denny Crane]

I like the idea of an open source app-rich environment for your DVR. I've always wondered why my DirecTv system doesn't do obvious shit like automatically record all 3 star or better films, Best Picture films, films Roger Ebert likes, the most popular program on tv that night, etc.

The set top boxes are severely limited in what they can do by the hardware inside.

The CPUs inside are like 0.2GHz (at best), and they don't put a lot of RAM inside either (128M). I find it really frustrating when the DVR is recording something which makes the menus respond really slow.

The lack of CPU power means the system would be crunching a lot of data for a long time to figure out stuff. Say you want it to record 3 star or better. How about if it records one you've already seen at the expense of another you haven't? Tracking that takes memory, as do the decoders. The software is going to have to move stuff to and from disk just to do that little bit of work alone.

The 128M RAM limitation is severe as well. Google Chrome is using up 128M on my laptop, and firefox showing nothing but the firefox home page takes 128M as well.

It would be really hot if they'd make higher end set top boxes with dual or quad core CPUs and 2G of RAM and hot pluggable disk drives. This is likely where the google thing is going.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

I'm really happy with my apple TV, the new version. playing vacation videos, streaming from my laptop. good shit.

 

[andalusian]

Just like how Google Wave was the future of communication and collaboration?

Google Wave was awesome. The ignorant brain washed masses could never comprehend a non-linear communication medium. A shame really.

The brainstorming sessions our worldwide distributed team had with Wave were the most productive we ever had...

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

google really flubbed that one by just releasing invites in stages. pretty useless if no one else you know is on wave to use it. give up quickly afterwards. no one cares.

 

[andalusian]

google really flubbed that one by just releasing invites in stages. pretty useless if no one else you know is on wave to use it. give up quickly afterwards. no one cares.

This is exactly what they did with GMail - and it worked fine. It was not the limited "adoption cycle" that put an end to this thing. It just did not have a big enough market for daily use. Most people do not work in free-flowing groups concurrently in a way that Wave really shines.

This would probably be a very successful product targeted specifically at the collaboration market, sort of like a light-weight, easy to use Lotus Notes.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Email isn't a closed loop like Wave was. You can communicate with others with or without gmail, but not in wave if there aren't others you know using it.

I tried it out, didn't work out really well.

 

[mook]

The set top boxes are severely limited in what they can do by the hardware inside.

The CPUs inside are like 0.2GHz (at best), and they don't put a lot of RAM inside either (128M). I find it really frustrating when the DVR is recording something which makes the menus respond really slow.

The lack of CPU power means the system would be crunching a lot of data for a long time to figure out stuff. Say you want it to record 3 star or better. How about if it records one you've already seen at the expense of another you haven't? Tracking that takes memory, as do the decoders. The software is going to have to move stuff to and from disk just to do that little bit of work alone.

The 128M RAM limitation is severe as well. Google Chrome is using up 128M on my laptop, and firefox showing nothing but the firefox home page takes 128M as well.

It would be really hot if they'd make higher end set top boxes with dual or quad core CPUs and 2G of RAM and hot pluggable disk drives. This is likely where the google thing is going.

I hadn't realized how limited those boxes are. Jeez. That's like a PC from 1999.

I'd definitely be all over spending a few hundred bucks more on a decent DVR if they just gave me the option.

Maintaining a database that remembers all videos I've watched is not really that intensive. We're talking a table with (at most) a few thousand records and two or three fields. A PC built in 1994 could do that.

Comparing that table to the current available schedule is a bit more processor intensive, but it's nothing that overwhelming. And really, if it was synched on the internet you wouldn't even have to do that comparing locally--it could easily be done in the cloud. Hell, all of it could be done in the cloud.

Personally, I wouldn't even care if I'd already seen the film. Just always record 3.5 and 4 star films. I'll pick the ones I actually want to watch and leave the rest on there to automatically delete. I do that all the time right now with South Park episodes.

 

[Run BJM]

You have to think it won't be long before these things get their specs up to snuff. Shit when I got my Droid 1 in Feb it was top of the line and had a 550 mhz processor. By the end of the month the standard had doubled up to 1 Ghz and I believe its about doubled since then.

Google TV and its competitors are still in their infancy. Its unestablished. I'm sure the hardware will get much better very fast but even so it seems like google TV and these things should be more integrated into other devices. You know they're going to start throwing blu-ray players in them and the next playstation and xbox's will have them plus what can these things do that you really can't do by just hooking up a computer to your TV? Hell why wouldn't TVs just have wifi and a hard drive built right in soon?

 

[Denny Crane]

I hadn't realized how limited those boxes are. Jeez. That's like a PC from 1999.

I'd definitely be all over spending a few hundred bucks more on a decent DVR if they just gave me the option.

Maintaining a database that remembers all videos I've watched is not really that intensive. We're talking a table with (at most) a few thousand records and two or three fields. A PC built in 1994 could do that.

Comparing that table to the current available schedule is a bit more processor intensive, but it's nothing that overwhelming. And really, if it was synched on the internet you wouldn't even have to do that comparing locally--it could easily be done in the cloud. Hell, all of it could be done in the cloud.

Personally, I wouldn't even care if I'd already seen the film. Just always record 3.5 and 4 star films. I'll pick the ones I actually want to watch and leave the rest on there to automatically delete. I do that all the time right now with South Park episodes.

IMDB has 500,000 movies in their database. 50 bytes per movie would take up 25MB. We're not even talking about TV shows, I think. Anyhow, they have to trace a lot more than 50 bytes per movie - 50 bytes is just the title. They would have to track things like director, actors, etc., too, so you could get all 3 star movies with Sylvester Stallone in them.

 

[mook]

IMDB has 500,000 movies in their database. 50 bytes per movie would take up 25MB. We're not even talking about TV shows, I think. Anyhow, they have to trace a lot more than 50 bytes per movie - 50 bytes is just the title. They would have to track things like director, actors, etc., too, so you could get all 3 star movies with Sylvester Stallone in them.

Say what? You're saying you'd have to store and process that data all on your local PC? That's nuts. That's like saying my PC stores all the movie records available on Netflix because I can access any page on Netflix at any time on my PC.

All you'd need to have on your local PC is a table that tracks the primary keys of movies you've already watched. DirecTv in their centralized database already tracks directors/actors/star ratings/etc. A table on the DirecTv's server that tracks customer accounts has a binary field labeled, "Record for mook all 3 star films?" If it's yes, any time a 3 star film comes up it checks against my local table of all films I've seen. It might also check for exclusions (I never want to see a film with Gilbert Godfreit in it, no matter the rating.)

This kind of processing happens all the time on Netflix with their recommendations. In fact, there is no local table storing your preferences--it's all in the cloud. If you have a computer that's powerful enough to run even a crude browser, you can access Netflix and it's sophisticated algorithms that recommend films for you.

How come DirecTv can't build that level of sophistication into their own services, pushing films you'll probably like onto your drive without you even asking? I suspect they just aren't smart enough, and just don't want to devote the bandwidth to drastically expand how much stuff consumers download. But Google will have absolutely no problem with that.

 

[Denny Crane]

Say what? You're saying you'd have to store and process that data all on your local PC? That's nuts. That's like saying my PC stores all the movie records available on Netflix because I can access any page on Netflix at any time on my PC.

All you'd need to have on your local PC is a table that tracks the primary keys of movies you've already watched. DirecTv in their centralized database already tracks directors/actors/star ratings/etc. A table on the DirecTv's server that tracks customer accounts has a binary field labeled, "Record for mook all 3 star films?" If it's yes, any time a 3 star film comes up it checks against my local table of all films I've seen. It might also check for exclusions (I never want to see a film with Gilbert Godfreit in it, no matter the rating.)

This kind of processing happens all the time on Netflix with their recommendations. In fact, there is no local table storing your preferences--it's all in the cloud. If you have a computer that's powerful enough to run even a crude browser, you can access Netflix and it's sophisticated algorithms that recommend films for you.

How come DirecTv can't build that level of sophistication into their own services, pushing films you'll probably like onto your drive without you even asking? I suspect they just aren't smart enough, and just don't want to devote the bandwidth to drastically expand how much stuff consumers download. But Google will have absolutely no problem with that.

The box has to work if not connected to the internet. That's why all those things like computing in the cloud haven't been done a long time ago.

I mean, the box literally has to work if not connected to the internet. The programming guide is trivial to send one way over satellite to the set top box. And even then, they only keep 14 days of guide information around because of the size...

 

[mook]

The box has to work if not connected to the internet.

Why? That's the part I don't get. Seems a no-brainer to give it the same wireless access the PS3 or Wii has. If you look at the PS3, it's not expensive to make because of the wireless card--it's the processing power. Adding wireless network access to a DirecTv box should've been done years ago. In fact, the option is right there for anyone to see in their software, but for some reason they've never built it into the hardware. At least on my box.

I wonder if there's some patent owned by Tivo or something....

 

[Denny Crane]

Why? That's the part I don't get. Seems a no-brainer to give it the same wireless access the PS3 or Wii has. If you look at the PS3, it's not expensive to make because of the wireless card--it's the processing power. Adding wireless network access to a DirecTv box should've been done years ago. In fact, the option is right there for anyone to see in their software, but for some reason they've never built it into the hardware. At least on my box.

I wonder if there's some patent owned by Tivo or something....

They have ethernet ports on the directv boxes. They use it for download on demand. Very little actual HD programming, and it is basically downloaded rather slowly to the hard disk and becomes available like any recorded show.

The point is, though, it has to be an option. The box has to work if not connected to the Internet. I have 3 set top boxes and only 1 is connected and I don't care to wire up the other two. I'm certainly not alone....