Mediaholic

Apple has done it again, the new Mac Mini just announced has Front Row with a remote control and DVI/Analog out so that it can be connected to a TV and controlled with the nice Apple remote. Moreover Front Row has been updated to take advantage of Bonjour (formerly Rendezvous) to automatically discover computers on the network and access their music and photos (probably also videos) this makes the Mac Mini an ideal wireless media player for anyone whose home network is comprised mainly of Apple computers.

What about the rest of the world, i.e. the 98% of the market that is not using a Mac? Can they use the cool Mac Mini as a wireless media player? Will the Mac Mini be able to handle WMV, or Divx? These are just some questions we have for Apple, and if we may we would also like to make a suggestion; If they wish to focus more in the living room and seriously promote the concept of the Mac Mini as the perfect wireless media player (and later on also a DVR) then they need to make it interoperate with Windows based media servers as well, and more specifically with UPnP media servers since this is the de-facto standard for media servers on Windows.

Of-course we in TVersity, are not counting on any such move by Apple, so maybe we should just add support for Bonjour and for the network services used by Apple to expose music/photo/video libraries (probably DAAP) on the network and this way make TVersity interoperate with Front Row. What do you think? Be sure to let us know.

You just got to love Yahoo Music chief Dave Goldberg for speaking out his mind at the Music 2.0 conference in Los Angeles, despite unfavorable reactions from the music industry tycoons.

Rights management restrictions have created a barrier for consumers, he said, making it a hurdle to transfer music to portable devices, and creating incompatibility between music services and MP3 players.

We agree and we think it is time for other executives at large digital music services to stand up for what they believe in and help the record labels understand it is in the best interest of everyone to discard DRM. To date there is only one company that is winning thanks to DRM and this is Apple. Why on earth would the record labels insist on doing something that perpetuates Apple's monopoly and does nothing for them? Maybe because the likes of Apple, Microsoft and Sony have brainwashed them about DRM pitching it as the only solution for piracy, while in fact we know it is a load of crap.

It is refreshing to see someone like Yahoo taking a stand in this matter and although the company officials were somewhat apologetic afterwards we still want to congratulate them for this bold move. It just makes you wonder where is the "do no evil" company in this debate... Oh yes they just announced a new DRM scheme in CES, speaking of evil doing...

We are happy to announce that from now on our domain name is mediaholic.tv, which is undoubtedly more appropriate than .org. TVersity is also available now at tversity.tv as well as at tversity.com.

You've got to love David Berlind, executive editor at ZDNet for taking a stand in the DRM debate, publicly declaring that CRAP (Content, Restriction, Annulment, and Protection) is a better name than DRM, and telling people to stop buying CRAP related products. Catch the video at http://news.zdnet.com/2036-2_22-6035707.html and spread the word!

Recent research conducted by Points North Group confirms that most consumers would rather watch downloaded shows from the Internet on their TVs. Here is a quote from their press release:

"According to new survey research from Points North Group and Horowitz Associates, Inc., while 25% of Internet users are interested in watching downloaded TV shows and movies on their PCs, 38% -- 50% more -- are interested in watching that video on their TVs."

While this is all kind of obvious, the thing that is missing in this research is some sort of a description of what kind of content people are looking to get on their TV. It makes sense that purchased movies and TV shows would be accessible from TV, but what about other audiovisual content that is available on the Net? Should consumers be costrained to watching stuff from the iTunes store or from AOL? What if they want to watch NASA TV or other niche content, don't they deserve the means to do that?

So while most companies try a top down appraoch in the sense that they wish to get on board the high profile names to deliver content via the Internet to TV sets, and in the process they try to promote expensive new hardware and a locked down software environment (Intel Viiv, AMD Live, Microsoft MCE, etc.), we in TVersity think that this is kind of boring. The real opportunity here is to make ANY content from the Internet accessible from ANY device and let consumers build their own personal entertainment guide (PEG) from it. We call this the bottom up approach, in the sense that the high profile names will initially stay away from this new and open media world, and get on board only later on when they realize what they stand to loose (as they did with Podcasts). Sure our approach may be slower to appear on the surface, but it is also disruptive and as such it is bound to eventually surpass the more traditional one.

This beauty, the BR-NX8, is the latest from Onkyo, with a 80GB HDD, a CD and MD player and a LAN and USB port it is full of potential. It is also DLNA compliant, so it can act as an audio server and probably also as a player of music from other servers on the home network. This brings us back to our eariler analysis regarding UPnP AV (or DLNA) in 2006. We said that standalone devices will gradualy become a rarity and instead the UPnP functionality will find its way into all sorts of devices, and this one is a great example. Another good example is the Nokia N80 which can serve the music stored on it to other network devices, or play the music stored on other device. It can even be used as a remote control of other UPnP compliant devices. So far we have UPnP complaint Hifi systems, and cellphones, yet the best example to illustrate our point is the new breed of LCD and Plasma TVs with built in UPnP AV support. Many companies announced such TVs in CES including names like Sony, Toshiba, LG, Samsung, and others. Sony even showcased in CES the PSP acting as a UPnP control point and initiating playback of a video coming from a Sony network storage device (which acted as a UPnP media server) to a Sony Bravia TV which acted as a UPnP media player (or in technical terms media renderer). The PSP could even play the video on its small screen through its location free TV capabilities while the TV could act as an independent control point, initiating the playback even without the PSP. It seems like a few years from now every audio, video or photo related device (mobile and stationary) will have UPnP AV functionality built in, so who needs a digital media adapter anyway? (yes we know, it is for guinea pigs that got to get a taste of the future right now and therefore are willing to pay a premium for products that barely work - no offense, I belong to this group as well).

The real question is, if every device in the home can act both as a server of content and as a client that can access content provided by other servers, isn't it going to be chaotic to try and figure out where is that song I am looking for. Is it on my iPod, my PSP, my Stereo, my mini system, my car hard drive, or maybe on one of my laptops, macs, or PCs? I sense an opportunity here, and yet I don't see any large company that can rise to the challenge because they are all too busy taking open standards and breaking them so that their products will not work with the competition. It is, in my opinion, one of those case where a small company with no hidden agenda can actually make a difference by bridging those islands of incompatibility and enabling a new type of ecosystem to emerge. This is what TVersity is all about and this is why I started it, will it be able to make a real difference? Only time will tell. In the meantime, let me know what you think about all this and how it will play out in your opinion.

Portalplayer, whose providing the chips for Apple iPod, has recently made two interesting press releases with regard to new chips for wireless connectivity of portable media player devices. The first is related to WiFi and Bluetooth, and the second to cellular broadband connectivity. According to CNBC, 95% of Portalplayer sales come from Apple, which is to say, chances are that a WiFi/Bluetooth enabled iPod and an iPod cell phone are both on the way and may even be released in 2006. This confirms our earlier predictions about the iPod and about mobile entertainment devices in general. The real question is what kind of new services Apple is planning to introduce in order to take advantage of these new capabilities and how long will it take them to get it done. We have already toyed around in the past with some ideas about the ways these kind of features can benefit the iPod, however Apple intentions are yet to be revealed. The obvious candidates are an iTunes store that is accessible directly from the iPod and the ability to synchronize your media collection over a wireless Internet connection. While we agree that these features make a lot of sense, we are more interested in the truly innovative stuff such as the ability to listen to a radio station and make a spontaneous purchase of an airing song, or like location free TV. The range of innovative features that wireless Internet connectivity enables is so immense that it is simply mind blowing. All the iPod competitors out there, if they wish to make some strides against the iPod, must focus in these kind of innovations or else the iPod will become even more dominant (yes it is possible, check this article).

We would like to hear from you, what kind of features would you like to see added to the iPod and similar devices when wireless Internet connectiviy becomes available for them?