April 21, 2006 07:35 AM Philippe Normand urn:md5:11329 Alinea phil http://base-art.net/Comments/201/ April 21, 2006 07:35 AM <p>About Rage, yeah it can <em>only</em> manage and play videos, but geez, it seems to do it very nicely and the eye candy way. That's the main reason of this post.</p> <p>About media-centers apps popping out every there and here, i agree there's clearly a big need on the market, and we're working on that particular field at Fluendo Embedded :)</p> Jkx http://base-art.net/Comments/200/ April 21, 2006 02:32 AM <p>There is a bunch of this kind-o-stuff today. But most of them (perhaps all) loose one step. In fact you can do a lot of more stuff w/ a computer and a TV set. So just playing movies is a great stuff but not the killer-app.</p> <p>I think Microsoft has the biggest view with there media-center, mainly because anybody can provide apps for this &quot;home&quot; computer, and there is a market for that.</p> <p>Right now there is several options: - You have some geeky neurons, so you can go in the DIY way. Look at MythTV, or others..</p> <ul class="simple"> <li>You aren't geek enought, if you only want to play DVD, and DivX you can use small UPnP players (I doesn't recall the name, but I used one 3 weeks ago. It doesn't cost a lot $200 ?)</li> <li>You want the most advanced TV stuff.. hum .. right now (here in France), the only way to have HD is throught the net. Most providers rent some custom decoder / recorder that are DRM compliant (I hope) and doesn't cost a dollar (or a Euro), since you pay for it in your global service. check out the latest FreeBox ;)</li> </ul> <p>On the other side, there is a market for a open system which provide the customer all the stuff, that computer should do.. but never achieve too. Mainly because they are to unfriendly. I'm talking about:</p> <ul class="simple"> <li>TV Recording</li> <li>House stuffs.. heater, audio..</li> <li>Chat</li> <li>Calendar</li> <li>Personnal sharing ..</li> </ul> <p>There is a lot of work to do here, but once again for me Yet Another Tv Player is simply unuseful. We use too much small power out of a CPU, we can do a lot of more without too much craps (right now), and I really think that as usuable in the Yet Another World most developpers are looking in the bad direction.</p> <p>Bye .. Bye ..</p>