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Patton76 · 04:02 PM

I'm a long time Mac user, and I really like the digital hub idea. Since some time now I have a digital camera and DV cam. I use iphoto, itunes and imovie a lot. It's very easy to connect all kind of devices to your mac. Gsm's, camera's, DV, etc... But still two are missing: home stereo and TV.

It would be great to play your movies on your TV, mp3's on your home stereo, project jpeg's on your TV, etc.

If there was some kind of box that did all that, it would be great and so easy!

Now you have to connect your camera to your mac, upload the movie, edit the movie, upload it back to your camera, connect your camera to the TV. This can be easier.

So I propose a well designed box, airport and rendezvous enabled. With a USB, firewire, SCART and digital out port.

So if you start up your mac it sees the box over airport and rendezvous. From within iphoto, imovie and itunes, you can sent your photo's, movies and mp3's to your TV and home stereo.

Would be a great way to look and hear your mp3's, movies and photo's.

itunes and mp3's speak for themselves. But if you show your photo's and movies to friends on your TV that would be great!

The usb and firewire port are for the case you want to look at your movies or photo's immediatly after tou shot them. Would be convenient, but isn't neccessary as such.

The SCART port is for easy connection with TV and home stereo.

The digital out of course is for the digital connection with your home stereo with DTS and Dolby Digital decoders.

In short, it would be a great idea, and is in my humble opinion is the missing link in the digital hub.

And I want it before Christmas, because I have no idea what to ask for Christmas

OwlBoy · Nov 27, 2002, 03:36 PM

I know I would love to hook my mac up to my TV and play videos on it.

(I mean many macs can do this now but its not the best quality and is not the cleanest way)

An Airport enabled Set-top box would rock all!

-Owl

euphras · Nov 27, 2002, 03:40 PM

The well designed box is almost present and ready-to-buy! It�s called Powerbook G4 (aka "Titanium" or short "Ti"). It features S-video out, DVI out, Stereo out and i�ve had no prob�s connecting it to my DUAL 500 Watts amplifier and my TV set

Pat

C.J. Moof · Nov 27, 2002, 03:47 PM

Everything but 5.1 audio ready to rock right out of the box.....

Patton76 · Nov 27, 2002, 03:55 PM

Originally posted by euphras:
The well designed box is almost present and ready-to-buy! It�s called Powerbook G4 (aka "Titanium" or short "Ti"). It features S-video out, DVI out, Stereo out and i�ve had no prob�s connecting it to my DUAL 500 Watts amplifier and my TV set

Pat

A bit expensive don't you think. People won't buy a Ti for that use

I allready have a G4 and an ibook, I can use my ibook to connect to my home stereo, but it's not convenient.

In my proposition, all iapps would have an option play on rendezvous or something. So from within iphoto, imovie or itunes, you just click one button and your music, movies, and jpeg are on your TV or home stereo.

The Tibook is not an option for that kind of use. Further more you have to connect your Ti to the TV or stereo each time.

And when it's connected, you can't use it for other work.

In fact the Ti is just a hack, not the solution.

mishap · Nov 28, 2002, 02:21 AM

Originally posted by Patton76:

A bit expensive don't you think. People won't buy a Ti for that use

I allready have a G4 and an ibook, I can use my ibook to connect to my home stereo, but it's not convenient.

In my proposition, all iapps would have an option play on rendezvous or something. So from within iphoto, imovie or itunes, you just click one button and your music, movies, and jpeg are on your TV or home stereo.

The Tibook is not an option for that kind of use. Further more you have to connect your Ti to the TV or stereo each time.

And when it's connected, you can't use it for other work.

In fact the Ti is just a hack, not the solution.

For me using my Ti and 2 wires is easier than using rendezvous or airport to send a signal into the other room(in my case).

You know what? i can still do other work when i'm playing movies! I have a dual display setup (or i can switch from mirroring to dual). it is pretty handy. I just drag my stuff onto the TV screen and i can do work on my laptop screen

but if you cant afford a Ti, i dont know. wait until apple comes out with some type of box like the one you are describing which i cant see appealing to a large audience (unless it is pc based too).

mitchell_pgh · Nov 28, 2002, 03:29 AM

Perhaps it's just me, but I think we are missing a few things (I don't mean as Mac users, but rather as computer users).

1) A movie format that does what MP3 did to music. MPEG4 and DivX have proven to be "almost there" but I still feel it's WAY to complex to edit and share movies (I know the MPAA is freaking out, but some people really do make hour long videos that they would like to share over the net). A nice and clean format that is 100% PC/Mac compatible would be nice.

2) A set top box device would be cool, but you really need the first application to make it worth anything. I see it as something a little different. I know a Airport set top box is what everyone is talking about, but I would simply like svideo out standard on all systems or something.

I would like to see a Mac sub notebook (to go up against Windows Tablet PC). Similar in idea to the eMac of long ago (but something that runs a scaled down version of OS X)

Specks-------------------------------
600 MHz G3 (no fan)
40 GB Hard drive
512 RAM (standard)
VGA Out
800 x 600 monitor
(No Optical Drive)
LOW LOW LOW end graphics
10/100 ethernet
modem
1 USB 1 Firewire
-------------------------------------

make the thing about 3/4 the footprint of the smaller iBook, and as thin as possible, and under $500 (I know, I know... impossible)

I just think there is a market for a system for people that already have a G4 system at home, but want something portable. (I'm sure Apple would just say [Well, we have that, it's called the iBook]

jcontonio · Nov 28, 2002, 10:43 PM

I am also waiting for something of this sort. I would love to be sitting downstairs in my living room and have a remote to an Apple Settop box and be able to play my music from iTunes through my stereo system. It could have some kind of small LCD screen on it that could show your iTunes Library or something.

Another feature for movies would be to display a playlist of movies in ~/Movies/

then output that to TV...All wireless, a simple remote, Rendevouz so there is no fiddling with anything, and the LCD screen so you can choose what to watch instead of having to go to the computer and hitting send.

This would be incredible and just make that new MS Media Center PC look like a joke.

The day I sit on the couch with my iBook, working on websites that are hosted on my G4, and with one click of a remote can play a movie or my playlist through my home entertainment center is the day I never leave the house.

mitchell_pgh · Nov 29, 2002, 12:36 AM

Originally posted by jcontonio:
It could have some kind of small LCD screen on it that could show your iTunes Library or something.

Why not just project your computer screen on your TV screen (in a MUCH lower res. naturally)

I think this is coming, but we need another movie Application... iTunes MAKES music (from CDs) --AND-- organizes them...

iMovie doesn't do that... Hmmmm....

jcontonio · Nov 29, 2002, 04:57 AM

Originally posted by mitchell_pgh:

Why not just project your computer screen on your TV screen (in a MUCH lower res. naturally)

I think this is coming, but we need another movie Application... iTunes MAKES music (from CDs) --AND-- organizes them...

iMovie doesn't do that... Hmmmm....

Because you can't work and project a full screen movie if you want to have it on your TV. Having something seperate that streams your music to your stereo and movies to your TV is far better.

Macs right now can project onto a TV...but you still can't use them.

I don't think we need another app for this. Just have the set top box recognize whats in the Movies folder and display the names in an LCD screen as a list...then you select it and hit play.

sadie · Nov 29, 2002, 08:53 AM

Er... hate to break up the Party, but isn't this what the PlayStation 2 / 3 is supposed to become?

TC · Nov 29, 2002, 10:23 AM

You can't imagine how painful it is for me to say they had a good idea, but I would like my mac to do this:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/m...er/default.asp

But I don't think you should be forced to have your mac near your tv and stereo to do this. It would be nice to have a set top box which interfaces to your TV + stereo using cables and communicates with your mac via wireless, it would also pick up your commands via a remote control.

Rendezvous could help with this but what kind of bandwidth would you need to get DVD playing across it?

At worst they could make a set top box which connects to your mac via an ethernet cable, relatively cheap to set up.

Mediaman_12 · Nov 29, 2002, 12:30 PM

FireWire should be able to do this sort of thing. And it would be a real simple solution, no extra boxes just cables.
A firewire home stereo should be able to be connected to the Firewire on the mac and just start playing the Audio.
A Firewire TV/VCR/DVD should be able to be connected to the Mac's Firewire port and start miroring the Video (or QT should have an option to 'send to Firewire')

This is the intention of Firewire, why do you think Sony is so interested. All your home entertainmant gear should have FW ports. The idea being that instead of the nest of cables that people usually have to deal with you would just use FW to dasychain evrything up.

jcontonio · Nov 29, 2002, 01:13 PM

Originally posted by TC:
You can't imagine how painful it is for me to say they had a good idea, but I would like my mac to do this:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/m...er/default.asp

But I don't think you should be forced to have your mac near your tv and stereo to do this. It would be nice to have a set top box which interfaces to your TV + stereo using cables and communicates with your mac via wireless, it would also pick up your commands via a remote control.

Rendezvous could help with this but what kind of bandwidth would you need to get DVD playing across it?

At worst they could make a set top box which connects to your mac via an ethernet cable, relatively cheap to set up.

Exactly. This is what I've been saying. A set-top box with airport is the way to go.