Mac and TV convergence

dr wrote:

> A re-occurring theme in this discussion about the mini and in other
> discussions about home computers is "TiVo" like features on the computer.

I'm not sure I see where having the TiVo functionality in your computer
takes away these capabilities. Just 'cause TiVo is in your computer
doesn't necessarily change how you have to use it. The reason a lot of
people enjoy having TiVo "in the computer" is that it's cheaper and
easier to have access to more storage space, to beam around
shows/movies/music/whatever and most importantly to integrate in other
features that TiVo doesn't have. Wouldn't it be easier to know what is
being watched if you had a log of all viewing activity? Wouldn't it be
nice to be able to switch from a TV news channel that is delivering news
when it wants to, to an RSS feed that that delivers the news when you it
to? How about having an integrated weather or traffic report so you
don't have to watch the TV like a hawk until your local news kicks in?
How about having the name or number of who's calling you pop up on the
screen when you're watching TV and someone calls, so you can decide
whether to stop what you're doing and answer without having to grab your
phone and check the caller ID display?

--Chris

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 07:04:31 -0800, dr <drdavidrossconsultant.com> wrote:
> A re-occurring theme in this discussion about the mini and in other
> discussions about home computers is "TiVo" like features on the computer.

I think you're missing the point. the point is not to "watch TV on
your computer" put rather to "watch TV on your TV, with the computer
controlling what is available to watch". Much in the same way that
the TiVo displays the programs on your TV, while it is, in fact, a
Linux box.

What I would like to see is a port of MythTV to Mac OS X. The mini,
with its DVI output and composite/svideo option, would be a perfect
platform for this, the only thing that is needed is a firwire breakout
box like a Dazzzle Hollywood Bridge to take video input and convert it
to Firewire.

<http://mythtv.org>
<http://www.omegamultimedia.com/products/dazzle_multimedia/hollywooddv.htm>

The trouble with the Dazzle is the price... I was fortuneate enough to
get one a few years ago relatively cheaply (under $200), but the
device is not cheap.

--
<http://2blog.kreme.com/blog/2944/Twas_the_Night_Before_Christmas>

On 20-01-2005 16:04:31, drdavidrossconsultant.com wrote:

>A re-occurring theme in this discussion about the mini and in other
>discussions about home computers is "TiVo" like features on the computer.
>
>I've been mulling this over for several years and have a question to
>ask. Is this something that's wanted by folks with families? I don't
>want to watch "my TV" on my computer. While it can be (and many times
>is) a passive activity, I want TV watching to be a public event in my
>house.

For me at least, this isn't about having TV on your computer, it's about using a computer
instead of TiVo: adding a computer to your stack of AV equipment, and using it mainly/only
for recording and watching TV.
There's quite a bit of interest in "Home Theatre PC" (HTPC) solutions. Several open-source
software packages (like MythTV) exist, and you can get Intel PCs in cases that are meant
to look like a hifi component.

This has several reasons. One of them is that TiVo or similar solutions are not available
in most of the world. Another is that some people want a solution that's more open than
TiVo: with most HTPC solutions, you can save recordings to DVD and/or share them over your
network, and you don't have to rely on a single supplier for programming data. Also, with
an HTPC you can use a single device to play video, and host your MP3s.

I've been looking for a good HTPC for years now, and the Mac mini looks like the ideal
starting point.

Harro de Jong

On Thursday, January 20, 2005, at 10:04 AM, dr wrote:

> A re-occurring theme in this discussion about the mini and in other
> discussions about home computers is "TiVo" like features on the
> computer.
>
> I've been mulling this over for several years and have a question to
> ask. Is this something that's wanted by folks with families? I don't
> want to watch "my TV" on my computer. While it can be (and many times
> is) a passive activity, I want TV watching to be a public event in my
> house. I want to know what my kids are watching and them what I'm
> watching. And there are some shows I enjoy watching with my wife just
> so
> we can talk about it. And with TiVo we can even back up and see it
> again
> for a better look. And I want TV watching to be something I "decide" to
> do, not something I fool myself into thinking it doesn't take away from
> what I'm doing on the computer.
>
> In my pre-family days I might have wanted "TivoInTheComputer" (but that
> was a fantasy way back then) but now I just don't see it.
>
> Am I all wet or is there something to my thoughts?

I think you're to be congratulated on being a more responsible and concerned
family member than average, and one that also thinks different.

  When I was a kid, my family couldn't wait to gather around the TV in
the evening - which included my aunt, uncle and cousins who lived in
another apartment upstairs, and if they were talking to the other aunt
and uncle and cousins down the hall (which wasn't that often), them too
- to watch shows like "The Twilight Zone," "You Bet Your Life," "21,"
"The $64,000 Question," "Topper," etc. One episode of a particular
favorite, "Alfred Hitchcock Presents - The Nurses" not only scared me
(a tough cookie who prided herself on not being phased by anything
scary) and my sister, but the next day in school, all the girls were
buzzing about how they couldn't sleep and were afraid to walk into
empty rooms alone."

I don't know what the median number is now, but for many years, most
households have multiple TV sets, and the amount of time time families
with kids watch the same programs at the same time has been on the
decline for years. The amount of content available, and particularly
content developed to very niche audiences, and programming and viewing
options have exploded.

The amount of programming geared to, and available for, kids has
particularly mushroomed, but now that Kraft has yanked its cereal
advertising budget of hundreds of millions of dollars off of children's
programming and other companies are likely to follow suit, kids program
and channel development is likely to slow, though not tremendously or
long term. Children's programming is unique in that it can build many
highly profitable revenue streams - in addition to offering advertising
opportunities, the money generated from branded merchandise linked to
programming is often more lucrative. The Cartoon Network has long been
more profitable for Time/Warner than CNN.

In the majority of US households, the computer is used to send e-mail,
play games and surf the web, and the % of households that has more than
one computer is growing. Although the number of people who play online
multiplayer games on Playstation, etc., is relatively small, I think
the number surpassed that of TiVo owners a while ago.

When TiVo was introduced in 1999, it was supposed to revolutionize the
way people watched TV and the way advertisers would buy media. But this
hasn't come close to happening. John & Jane Doe have trouble
understanding what DVRs do and that they do it easily, and they also
don't want to buy/rent another box when they have so many already, or
understand why they should shell out another $10+ a month for the
services. Though the emphasis has shifted to selling DVR services via
cable or satellite providers, current subscribers aren't exactly
adapting it en mass.

And John and Jane Q. Doe would rather let the kids watch the shows they
like in their rooms than watch another episode of "Bleeposaurus", or
deal with nagging, or turn off whatever is not appropriate for a
younger audience.

But if they could record TV shows to a hard drive they already own,
without paying an additional fee, I think it would probably be a
different story.

Marilyn

-----Original Message-----
From: dr [mailto:drdavidrossconsultant.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2005 10:05 AM
To: tidbits-talktidbits.com
Subject: Mac and TV convergence

A re-occurring theme in this discussion about the mini and in other
discussions about home computers is "TiVo" like features on the computer.

I've been mulling this over for several years and have a question to
ask. Is this something that's wanted by folks with families? I don't
want to watch "my TV" on my computer.  

 While it can be (and many times
is) a passive activity, I want TV watching to be a public event in my
house. I want to know what my kids are watching and them what I'm
watching. And there are some shows I enjoy watching with my wife just so
we can talk about it. And with TiVo we can even back up and see it again
for a better look. And I want TV watching to be something I "decide" to
do, not something I fool myself into thinking it doesn't take away from
what I'm doing on the computer.  

 
In my pre-family days I might have wanted "TivoInTheComputer" (but that
was a fantasy way back then) but now I just don't see it.

Am I all wet or is there something to my thoughts? 

At 14.11 -0800 05-01-21, Google Kreme wrote:
>What I would like to see is a port of MythTV to Mac OS X.

Today I found this forum:
http://www.hometheatermac.com/

It's rather empty so far but the topics are spot on...

--
     Johan Sölve [FSA Partner, Lasso Partner]
     Web Application/Lasso/FileMaker Developer
     MONTANIA SOFTWARE & SOLUTIONS
http://www.montania.se mailto:joh-nmontania.se
 (spam-safe email address, replace '-' with 'a')

All those interested in using a Mac mini as a HTPC, note that it may
not have the CPU to render high def MPEGs. My experience with the
Elgato EyeTV 500 (an HDTV PVR solution for Mac hooked via firewire)
suggests that you need a dual G5 for smooth HDTV playback.

That being said, there are and will be an increasing number of cheap
networked playback devices (see, e.g., the newly-announced LaCie
Silverscreen external hard drive/media player) to handle playback. But
just keep in mind the Mac mini may not be able to handle it unassisted.

Fred

The main reason for having video on your HD is that video tapes are very cumbersome!  Let's see, that show I taped last week is on which tape?  Hmmm, I think there is an hour of free space on this one here after hour two....

I have maybe a half dozen tapes with sticky notes stuck on them and it's a pain in the neck.  To be able to point & click and record without worrying about what's where and what's been watched would be a godsend.  I think Apple's missing the boat on this one.

I am a bit late to this discussion. However, I don't think that the Mac mini can be a substitute for DVR's due mainly to entry barriers such as a cable company's own DVR. What I would like to know is; how can I stream video, slide shows and music from my wireless Mac to my TV without spending $600 on a Mac mini? Maybe apple should team up with the DVR suppliers to intergate a wireless interface. Any thoughts?

Fred von Lohmann wrote:
> All those interested in using a Mac mini as a HTPC, note that it may not
> have the CPU to render high def MPEGs. My experience with the Elgato
> EyeTV 500 (an HDTV PVR solution for Mac hooked via firewire) suggests
> that you need a dual G5 for smooth HDTV playback.

Hmm... that'd be surprising. I'm getting pretty smooth HDTV 1080i
playback on a dirty old 2.4GHz P4, doing it all in software. If I get a
small bit of hardware assist using my NVidia card's support for motion
compensation I get a completely smooth display. I think even the Radeon
9200 in the Mac-Mini supports both accelerated motion compensation as
well as accelerated IDCT, which should make things even easier for the
G4. The HDTV tuner I'm using on this machine recommends a 1.2GHz or
faster processor, which suggests you could at least get by with 1.2GHz
provided you had some hardware assist. I'd like to think the G4's
Altivec instruction set give it a distinct advantage in this area. Does
anyone have a Mac mini setup? I can send a small sample of an HDTV
signal to test this theory.

Looking at the specs for EyeTV 500 I think I can see a possible cause of
your problems. If the program was transcoding the signal into a
different compression format from the native HDTV encoding, that would
dramatically increase the CPU consumption. Were you perhaps using
something other than lossless ATSC recording?

--Chris

I've recently become very interested in the whole computer-TV-home
entertainment convergence issue because between Christmas and the end
of the year I pieced together a Linux machine running MythTV [1] and
plunked it down in the family room for the kids to abuse. In just a few
weeks, it has turned into _the_ way TV is watched in our house.
Although I've been playing with computers for many years, this is the
first project that has a definite WAF [2]. In fact, she's already
pushed me into putting a second front end in the bedroom so she doesn't
have to fight with the kids to watch her recorded shows.

My first thought when I heard of the mini was that it might make a
perfect--albeit expensive--Myth front end, but now I'm not so sure.
There are several pages with instructions for installing MythTV under
Panther. I chose one [3] and tried out the front end on my Powerbook
[4]. The front end seems to set up and run just fine, but its
performance is downright awful. Playing standard 720x480 video from the
remote backend uses up most of the processor and still tears and jerks.
  The mini is a weaker machine than my Powerbook. The same video plays
remotely without a hitch on a 1.7 GHz Athlon and doesn't use up more
than 25% of the processor.

I suspect this has a lot to do with optimization. The people writing
the code for MythTV and its numerous ancillary programs are writing for
Pentium-type processors, and the code is no doubt tweaked for them.
Some AltiVec wizard could probably work wonders with the code, but
right now it's nowhere near acceptable on a machine like the mini.

[1] http://www.mythtv.org/
[2] Wife Appreciation Factor
[3] http://www.mythtv.info/moin.cgi/MythOnMacOsx
[4] 12 inch 1 GHz G4 AlBook

On Jan 25, 2005, at 2:57 PM, Christopher Smith wrote:

>
> Looking at the specs for EyeTV 500 I think I can see a possible cause
> of your problems. If the program was transcoding the signal into a
> different compression format from the native HDTV encoding, that would
> dramatically increase the CPU consumption. Were you perhaps using
> something other than lossless ATSC recording?
>
> --Chris
>

My understanding from Elgato is that they cannot use any hardware
assist, due to Apple's failure to document the relevant API for
developers. Some have questioned that -- I'm just telling you what they
told me.

The problem is not transcoding related. The Elgato EyeTV 500 tuner does
not transcode when recording -- it is just capturing the mpeg2
transport stream. On playback, I've found that the Elgato EyeTV
software is actually *better* at playback than the other OS X apps
capable of playing mpeg2 transport streams (mplayer and VLC), which
suggests that it is not transcoding on playback, either.

To clarify my original post, a G4 will successfully play back 1080i
HDTV, it just won't do it without frame drop artifacts. It's certainly
watchable, but probably not what a HT enthusiast would tolerate. For
example, it is quite noticeable when you have a scene with a slow pan
over landscape, or a flag in the breeze (tests I ran from an EyeTV
recording of the HD broadcast of _Saving Private Ryan_). Even a
single-processor PowerMac G5 1.6ghz showed some of these artifacts.

Thanks for sharing your experience with MythTV. It's definitely very
interesting project and it's good to hear from a Mac savvy person about it.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Lee Larson [mailto:leelarsonmac.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 9:55 AM
> To: tidbits-talktidbits.com
> Subject: Re: Mac and TV convergence

> My first thought when I heard of the mini was that it might make a
> perfect--albeit expensive--Myth front end, but now I'm not so sure.
> There are several pages with instructions for installing MythTV under
> Panther. I chose one [3] and tried out the front end on my Powerbook
> [4]. The front end seems to set up and run just fine, but its
> performance is downright awful. Playing standard 720x480
> video from the
> remote backend uses up most of the processor and still tears
> and jerks.
> The mini is a weaker machine than my Powerbook.

Actually, the Mini should be a more capable machine than your 1GHz
PowerBook. It's a faster processor, faster system bus, faster RAM and, I
think, a faster video card. Networking and hard drive performance should be
the same (maybe a bit better in the Mini if it has the 80GB drive).

PowerBook G4 (12-inch DVI): Technical Specifications
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86458
Mac Mini
http://www.apple.com/macmini/specs.html

The same
> video plays
> remotely without a hitch on a 1.7 GHz Athlon and doesn't use up more
> than 25% of the processor.
>
> I suspect this has a lot to do with optimization. The people writing
> the code for MythTV and its numerous ancillary programs are
> writing for
> Pentium-type processors, and the code is no doubt tweaked for them.
> Some AltiVec wizard could probably work wonders with the code, but
> right now it's nowhere near acceptable on a machine like the mini.

Yes, it may not be MythTV itself but something like Qt which is responsible
for the poor performance. I see QuickTime is used for the video, the problem
could be in interfacing with that code. The problem could even be with
QuickTime itself, it may be that QuickTime's code isn't too efficient when
doing whatever MythTV has it doing. What is it doing, is the front-end
responsible for decoding the video data or is that done on the backend? If
the frontend is doing the decoding, what's the format? It must not be MPEG2
because you'd need to buy something for QuickTime to decode that.

On Jan 26, 2005, at 3:41 PM, Wilcox, Curtis wrote:

> Actually, the Mini should be a more capable machine than your 1GHz
> PowerBook. It's a faster processor, faster system bus, faster RAM and,
> I
> think, a faster video card. Networking and hard drive performance
> should be
> the same (maybe a bit better in the Mini if it has the 80GB drive).

Yeah, I realized that ten seconds after I clicked send. I was thinking
RAM rather than CPU because the mini comes with far too little RAM and
my PowerBook is loaded up. Myth is really RAM hungry.

> If the frontend is doing the decoding, what's the format? It must not
> be MPEG2
> because you'd need to buy something for QuickTime to decode that.

MythTV uses its own variation of a format called Nuppel video. My
limited understanding is that Nuppel is some sort of hybrid between
MJPEG and MPEG1 that was invented to be used with the cheaper BT878
tuner cards. I am capturing off a PVR-350 and a PVR-250, and Myth can
be told to keep the MPEG2 streams from those cards even though the
files still have the nuv extension. That's what I do because I can then
play back through the s-video out on the PVR-350 with no loss of
quality and almost zero CPU usage.

When I was setting the system up, I used the VGA output on the
motherboard to view the video captured from the PVR-350, and it looked
great. This was with Myth converting the MPEG2 from the PVR-350 to
Nuppel on the fly. I can also stream the files to another
Intel-architecture front end over the network, and they play with
almost the same quality as the original. This is where the PowerBook
dies.

Myth can be told to automatically convert the files to other formats.
I've converted some to MPEG4 format. These are much smaller and work
well with QuickTime.