What Mark Cuban is missing about HDTV

The image you see won’t be 1080i… More like 480p or less…

I just bought another HDTV on Thanksgiving and currently have my Mac mini hooked up to it via VGA, along with my Xbox 360 via component. I’m enjoying quite a bit of content that was “trapped” on my computers on a 52 inch screen now.

I just bought another HDTV on Thanksgiving and currently have my Mac mini hooked up to it via VGA, along with my Xbox 360 via component. I’m enjoying quite a bit of content that was “trapped” on my computers on a 52 inch screen now.

I’ve heard that the XBox 360 is really noisy though. Is this true? If so, it would be better to get a silent running media center pc.

Hi Robert,
Nice setup!
Tell me though, can you use your Media Center Keyboard and remote control from your living room, and if so, how does that work?

Kind regards,
Scott Ferguson
New Zealand

Alternatively, you could use a mac mini, and use frontrow + itunes to stream your HD content from your linux* server in your (mom’s) basement. Itunes doesn’t mind using folders over a network.

The 360 is a slightly better choice if you get the external HD-dvd drive, since netflix rents those. (They do, don’t they?) Plus, you get next gen gaming now, instead of waiting for Sony to get their poop in a group. It is a sightly worse choice, because you are locked into the media center OS. Presumably it will be possible to spoof that later, but later is still later. By the time later arrives, you could replace the mini with Apple’s already-shown-but-not-available media extender device. I advocate for the linux server solution because you don’t have to do as much maintainance, deal with WGA, nor pay licensing fees/pirate the OS. Even though linux isn’t desktop-ready, it’s been ready for this kind of server use for a decade.

*Yes you could probably use xp plus samba. At least with regular xp, you can replace it with linux someday. And wired is less finicky than wireless, but its been shown you can use wireless.

It’s all about content, the web will always produce more content. The quality of the digital file is secondary.The future of your TV, meaning the screen is the web.

All you have to do is buy the right computer.

My computer is 3 years old and has the right connections. I have a 17″Mac Powerbook and conect with a built in DVI port. My only problem is the 3 year old graphics card which gets bogged down a bit by HD content.

Katie: MacMini doesn’t work. When I connect it to the HD screen directly it displays within a small screen.

Kevin: there is no DVI connection on my Sony HD screen.

Stuart: I can’t hear my Xbox’s fan. It’s at least as quiet as my wife’s MacBookPro.

Scott: I have a Media Center keyboard, but I haven’t tried that yet. Won’t be able to until I get home from Europe.

Alexander: huh? I’m using Vista as the driver and I’m pretty sure I’m getting 1080i throughput (my screen can only do 1080i, newer screens do 1080p with the Xbox 360 and Vista). I also have a HD-DVD, so I’ll do some tests to see how close we can get to that.

Loren: you haven’t gotten an HD screen yet, have you? It’s hard to watch non-HD content once you have. Everyone I know who has an HD screen says they watch stupid things like the Discovery Channel.

Hell, I’d even watch your stupid show if you had HD.

Did you say “that’s Poppycock”?

Oh man, I need to send you a hamburger and a pizza slice!

Robert,

Sorry, I still have to disagree. Mark is right on this one. I think the blogosphere continues to have this misconception that the “normal” people of the world think and act the same way we do. Most people, even the ones who have HDTVs, don’t even know what Ethernet is. I would be absolutely floored if I went to someone’s house that wasn’t a “geek” and they had their PC hooked up to their HDTV. Geeks are still the minority.

I’m wondering if you think the XBOX setup is easier than the coming iTV (albeit unproven).

With built in wifi iTV already takes our one step…

hey robert:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061204ta_talk_surowiecki

so much for “losing $300 a unit is Just How The Console Industry Works.”

>I think the blogosphere continues to have this misconception that the “normal” people of the world think and act the same way we do.

You can’t have this both ways. Here in Wales I interviewed several “normal, non geek” people. They DEFINITELY knew what 802.11 and ethernet were. Far smarter than you give them credit for.

And someone is buying those hundreds of thousands of Wifi access points that are now showing up, even in Montana, which is about the last place I’d expect to see them.

But, you are right for now.

Seriously, though, someone is buying these Xbox’s. 15,000 are sold every day. That’s not just Silicon Valley geeks buying them.

And my Best Buy buds tell me HDTVs are flying off the shelves.

It’s only a matter of time before they figure out that they can play movies off of the Internet.

Just watch.

>>I’m wondering if you think the XBOX setup is easier than the coming iTV (albeit unproven).

We’ll see what Apple’s strategy is to get its logo connected to my HD screen.

Microsoft’s is a bit hard to visualize, although once you see it in action you want it, and want it bad (we had “normal people” over our house for Thanksgiving and they wanted it for their own homes) but it isn’t hard to hook up, and once it’s setup it’s easy to operate and use from within Xbox. If you have enough skills to turn on an Xbox game you have enough skills to get Media Center extender to work.

Warren: yeah, yeah, yeah. Nintendo is more profitable THIS YEAR and probably next. But it was so dominant for so long in this game that it is just cruising off of old success (everyone I talk to who bought a Wii is buying it for their young children who like to play simple games — these are not folks who are looking to play Gears of War).

Now, you wanna bet how good that strategy will be five years from now when a good chunk of the market has moved to HDTV? I think it’ll smell like the London sewer system, that’s what.

Sony and Microsoft are losing money for a reason: they know the real prize will come in 2010.

Well great – it’s good to see that my fanless mini-itx machine is going to be the perfect set-top box to put in all of your living rooms – the only noise is a typical DVD sound when playing movies, but heck you can always import the movie to the harddrive and hear nothing.

So your PC is NOT CONNECTED DIRECTLY to your HDTV. You’ve proven Cuban’s point! He didn’t say you couldn’t do it via routing it through an XBOX 360, did he? He’s also referring to the majority of the population that likely have a PC that’s anywhere from 2-5 years old, not geeks, or pseudo-geeks. Did you even read ALL his post, or just the headline?

LayZ: pedantic. His goal is to display video on his HDTV that’s on his PC. My way does just that.

How Windows and Microsoft centric your solution is.

iTV purports to do that much better than an xbox 360 does, and has the added bonus of working on Mac OS X and Windows.

Bob: it’s ironic that now I get to be the one that says “when that ships, give me a call!” Sorry, I had to take that cheap shot, I heard it so often when talking about stuff coming out from Microsoft.

Anyway, we’ll see about iTV. I’ll probably be first in line to get one of those, too. You didn’t miss that we have three Macs in our house, right? I’d love to be able to share stuff from those onto my HD screen.

and you forgot to mention the newly available xbox live service …. you can now download HD movies and TV shows directly to your xbox 360….who needs the PC???

Jeff: that’s true, but so far I can’t use Xbox Live to download ScobleShow or Rocketboom or any of the others.

>>But it was so dominant for so long in this game that >>it is just cruising off of old success (everyone I >>talk to who bought a Wii is buying it for their young >>children who like to play simple games — these are >>not folks who are looking to play Gears of War).

Having stood in line at Fred Meyer most of the night to get my hands on a Wii I have to disagree with you. There was a good mix of young and old, men and women in line to get a Wii. Many of those I spoke with in line had a 360 and some even had a PS3. All were very excited about the Wii and not just for their kids. The Zelda games are amazing and the new controllers are a lot of fun. I like the review MSNBC did of all 3 consoles and mentioned by the end of the night, everyone was gathered around the Wii, even the hard core gamers. For some of us, just glitzy graphics don’t make a good game. Nintendo understand this and I appreciate the fact they are not trying to take over my living room. If you have young kids, the Wii is a no brainer.