Exclusive Insider News - iBox

Arden said:
That remote control doesn't look very complicated, which this kind of device would probably necessitate. Of course, if it's simply an artistic rendering, it wouldn't make a hoot of difference.

What would the pricing be on a device like this? If it's anything more than about $500, it'll never. But if it cost $150 and worked without need for a Mac, it could go like hotcakes.
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I thought the same thing when I saw that pic of the remote. But as you say, it's just an artist's impression.

Regarding cost, such would never sell for less than $350 and considering that an iPod that only plays mp3s goes for as much as $500, i wouldn't be surprised if an iBox (if these rumours turned out to be true which I don't think they will unfortunately) would sell for that much as well. I would still buy though.

If it's true i'm pretty sure they wouldn't call it iBox, it's too close to xbox and that's actually what I thought at first when I saw a post about on another forum.
 
Maybe they'll rename it to iTV or eyeBox ... :D

We are getting a lot of press with this one though ... even if it is an iWalk 2, there are links all over the macnet: in the Mac Achaia on Ars, on MacRumors page 2, etc.
 
I have the Tivo Series 2 with Home Media Option as well. I can access around 9,000 MP3s via iTunes and OSX on my G5 (as well as a ton of photos via iPhoto.) What I would love to be able to do is archive Tivo-recorded shows on DVDs. I was thinking about purchasing a Formac Studio DV device and feeding the recorded video from the Tivo into that. But, that's digital to analog and back to digital again. The Formac device is $200. If I can get burning capability and possibly analog VHS to digital conversion for $350 or so, then I think it's a good deal even though I already have the Tivo.
 
I don't know anything about these TiVo home media devices. Sounds cool. I don't suppose you can see the raw files that TiVo creates for its captured video, can you? And if so, what kind of files are they? Are they MPEG-2s or something?

Cuz if you can see those files somehow, problem solved of course.

You've got to believe TiVo 3 will have a built-in DVD burner. That's got to be a fairly common demand.
 
Fryke, Microsoft came out with an XBox that had only a 733 Pentium III, and it is the best performing game system around, as far as graphics are concerned, because it offloads to a GPU. TV needs are not as high those for a computer. If it is ran by a remote control, then it won't be doing the real time resizing that iPhoto does. If Apple put a 500MHz G3, a great video card, with a great GPU, and 128Mb of ram, they should be fine. The current video cards can do MPEG encoding on their own. My iBook does all of it's DVD playing through the Radeon 9200, and it plays flawlessly. There are several things that have to be understood about this type of device. First of all, it may havae lots of things that OSX has, but it won't be a full version. Second, it will be a TV device, and thusly, it will be single-tasking. Meaning, don't expect a Dock on your TV, to shuffle through iTunes, and iPhoto. Also, TV's are significantly lower resolution then even the first generation iBook (800x600). Quartz Extreme won't be working nearly as hard as it would be for the typical Mac display. A lot of what is said to be in there sounds very feasible, because Tivo runs off of Linux.
 
The only thing that gives this rumor a thread of believability is that all the other rumors have leaked only upgrdes to iLife, FCE, mini ipods, etc...The tech & business world tunes into S. Jobs each January and Apple uses the MWSF platform to jawdrop with the "next big thing". From what I have read, the other expected announcements (mini ipods, etc..) amount to "nice" but little things. If u look back at the last few January product announcements, Apple's most innovative stuff has come from MWSF. Speed bumps, upgrades.., that isn't Apple on gameday. Remember, S. jobs has scheduled a 2 hour Keynote.

Cory
 
fryke said:
iBox. *cough*... 500 MHz G3? Naaaaah. 900 MHz G3? Hmm... With MPEG encoding? Naaah. Not with 128 MB RAM, either. That box would definitely need a G4 (AltiVec is good for MPEG) of at least 800 MHz (and why not?) and a bit more RAM, too. I think that someone's just written up what he or she would _like_ Apple to release.
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Series 1 Tivo's ran a 50mhz PowerPC chip plus hardware encoding. Surely hardware encoding is the route to go for *any* embedded system? A simple Sigma Designs or similar encoder/decoder is pennies to a company like Apple. A 500mhz G3 ought to be plenty for what will be a relatively simple version of the OS (after all my g/f's G3 500 iMac runs iPhoto and iTunes quite happily)

Patrick
 
To be honest, I only really expect Apple to be introducing a handful of welcome improvements and expansions to their services, more so than their products. For instance, the iTunes music store is likely to open to new markets outside the USA, and since Apple are on very good terms with AOL now, it's likely that AOL messenger and iChat AV will be working together so that we can vid-chat with PC users. We might see the iPhoto print service extended to other countries. An update to the XServe seems reasonable too.
Cory has a point, though, that it would be hard to imagine filling a 2-hour keynote only with expansions of Apple's services. Maybe there is something special.

Oh, yeah, by the way ...
:p How do you tell if it's a good MacWorld Keynote?
:D With an hour to go, Steve says "Well, that's about it, but there is just one more thing ..."
 
Maybe he'll just be half an hour late and stop half an hour early. ;-)

Yes, MKPatrick, hardware encoding would be a must (as I've mentioned on macnews.net.tc about this rumour). And yes, then the 500 MHz G3 would even be enough.

Another thought... Would we be able to play a DVD, take the video output, put it into the video input and record live and digitally to the harddrive? ;-) Would make a nice 'archiving' system. And 90 minutes for 90 minutes of film sounds okay to me, too. ;-)
 
Nice promotion! LOL :D

If the iTMS would be accessible through the box ... it would be a real killer. You could spend less than $1000,- and get an iPod and "iBox" and never use any other Mac at all. It would just be a cool Sony-like multimedia classy thing.

Would be nice -- could be true?
 
i can't remember exactly, but about one year ago there was an apple (uk?) executive on tech-tv who was asked about a set-top-/tivo-box and he answered "no comment, BUT apple has been working on something like that for quite a long time."
hmmm... rendezvous was announced 1.5 years and even a philips executive was on an apple keynote promoting rendezvous at this time - until now there was no big announcement with this technology. even one year ago, i waited for the apple keynote announcing a cool tv product at mwsf ... nothing ... nada ... niente ... nix ...
now would be the perfect time to announce this thing - whatever it is - now that the ipod is in everybodys mouth (or better: ears:) apple would do great!
.a
 
The Apple Media Player circa 1998:

ampa.gif


This is from a project called "Columbus" that was revealed in an C/Net article dated March 13, 1998:

Apple's Columbus - a bold bet

I think the time has come for Apple to provide this missing spoke to their digital hub.
 
I've never seen the Columbus before, all the prototypes I've seen on eBay (and AppleFritter *if thats how you spell that sites name*) are nice and square, and are just a modified black LC...Hmm...

*searching google for Apple Columbus*

Columbus products may be keystone of Apple's tow-cost strategy, sources and retailers said. Units are said to involve combining CD or DVD player with Internet access device that would hook up to servers of Internet service providers (ISPs) and connect any operating system (OS). That would be departure from WebTV technology, which requires special server software.
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- http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m3169/n12_v38/20540736/p1/article.jhtml
 
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