My usual morning trawl of headlines has been surprisingly consistent with the subject of news this morning. It appears that either yesterday or today pretty much everybody got into bed with everybody else, offered their services through somebody elses services and ultimately it's all beginning to congeal into some big media mess where we'll all get confused about where we go to get our digital services from.. and you just know that's going to be irritating. Apple are busy working on a true Media Center to possibly compete either with Windows Media Center or even the soon to be released Windows Media Home Server.
One of the biggest is the CBS anouncement to offer it's services through Joost, MSN and AOL, full article is provided here. So, soon you'll be able to use your Windows Live (MSN) logon to watch tv, get your shows from CBS etc.
Larry Dignan, over at ZDNet's blogs gives some views and opinions on Google's own acquisition strategy as focussing more towards mobile services and small media services, which is interesting, but with Microsoft already going after TV wouldnt that rather leave Google in the shadow of a much bigger media empire? Look at Comcast for example, they just swallowed up Fandango and plan to offer all of Fandango's media and services through a new special service called Fancast.
So.. it's all congealing and converging. I think we're approaching the point where hopefully I won't need my multiple media devices in my home (psychotically my excuse is laziness and convenience). Right now I have a Comcast box, coupled to my TV, with my X360 as my media extender, which gets it's content from the PC, but the PC has to republish the iTunes library every morning at 1am so that I can get my iTunes content through Windows Media Center, and ultimately have it appear on TV. The whole thing is like the first Enterprise in Star Trek, very clever, very useful, but ultimately held together with spit and twigs with a fat scottish person screaming "it cant be done.. the Codec cant take it!" every time I try and get a HD movie in iTunes to play through the X360!
So this messy future, after all the companies have finished consuming each other and agreeing to deliver services and messing about, it's all going to be much more straightforward for me.. will it be fair? Nope. Will it work properly? Nope - you just know there'll be this massive split down the middle with Apple, Google and YouTube on one side, and Microsoft, Joost and various TV networks on the other. As long as they can share content and talk I'm happy, anything to stop me having to put yet another media device in my lounge!
Ideally I'd like my Windows Media Center as the portal to everything, YouTube, Joost, whatever. I know, Apple addicts going to be screaming at how much better the Apple Media Center will be. It won't - it'll be another tiny white/silver/black shiny box with a teeny remote which I'll keep losing and with a click heavy interface which treats me like I'm a 4yr old. Sorry that AppleTV interface by Fisher Price is hell when you have thousands of artists to choose from, and I dont want a keyboard in the lounge. I'm not anti Mac, I like the G5, the iPod is now part of my life and the MacMini works just great as my kitchen media and browser.
So.. my world = Windows Media Center + Google + TV & Radio
You may scoff, but I want a simple world with access to all of my media, web or otherwise, in an easy way, from one place. so, all this convergence might be a good thing.
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3 comments:
I've found that the best way to get media from iTunes to go through the Xbox 360 is to use a reverse plasma coupler on the BFHD (Big Fraking HiDef) port on the back of the 360. Just be careful to monitor the phase frequency between the two. They have a tendency to resonate from time to time and that's no good.
That and you have to focus a very narrow beam of gravitons through a big rotating magnetic field and warp space and time to get to a point before media rights were applied to a music file so you can avoid the copyright warning problems on WMC - even though I own the bloody CD.
Or... you could just use MCE tunes!
Personally i find using a cosmic string a decent shortcut to the whole shebang. Or big bang. Not everyone has a portable dimensional phase moderator at their home office, you know.
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