10-05-2010, 09:38 AM
Quote:You're missing the point. Regular folks don't have divx files to stream off their PC. The geeky folks who do buy the geek boxes or use their game console or whatever. Or they just convert it from divx to mp4, which is ridiculously simple in of itself.
Actually pretty much all my non geeky friends of my age who know fuck all about computers know how to get video files off the internet and would buy the device to stream them.. Thats why my old roomate bought and got ripped off on the old one.. It wouldn't recognize a shared pc drive and it wouldn't play a file type that a 30 euro POS dvd player can read. Theres no excuse why I should have to convert my files from the fucking internet standard to do something basically any other media playback device can do and which there is no reason to not support out of the box unless your trying to force people into your store.
The fact that old technophobes dont do something is not going to represent the 'average user' forever.
Jakensama Wrote:MP4 is an international standard, not sure what your point is. That's like complaining that iPhones don't support Flash (a proprietary standard), only HTML5 (a, yes, international standard).
If you are marketing a streaming device that does not support the codec that the vast majority of all video is encoded with, yes - it is idiotic and nothing more than a plan to steer all content consumed through the channels that apple can best monotize, much like their idiocy of disallowing flash (regardless if the user wants the option to enable it, because steve knows best - do not question steve).
Quote:Or that wants to rent movies or TV shows.
Then get netflix which is starting to ship on new tvs, but yeah, I consider that streaming - if you haven't got a device already then its a cheap one that might be okay if you can make it watch content you already own without hacking.
Quote:I haven't used my Xbox360 to stream, since I can't comment on how straightforward it is or isn't to use for streaming or Netflix, but I'm guessing it's far less straightforward than Apple TV. Again...this thing, like the iPad, like the iPhone, is aimed at regular, non-techie people.
Its retardedly easy on my ps3, I imagine xbox ain't much harder.
Quote:And I very much doubt that all new TVs (or even a majority of them) have streaming built in. Of course, the US is generally behind Europe on this stuff anyway...
When we were at kraut best buy most of the plasma/lcds had wifi on them.
I still am bitter though as while I think the ipad is fairly useless, at least its a neat toy (that the mrs. made me buy and then still steals my kindle) - the original apple tv was among the biggest wastes of money I have seen a non techie friend buy, and this guy had monster cables for everything.