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Google and Apple Finally Teaming Up?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Sep 18, 2006 10:43 AM
from the peanut-butter-in-the-chocolate dept.
Media Television Businesses Google The Internet Apple
nieske writes "Rumors are spreading about Google and Apple teaming up to form a video alliance. Google might provide streaming video content for Apple's upcoming iTV, which was revealed in last week's Apple event. The only thing that seemed to be missing in the iTV preview was streaming video, and with Google's Eric Schmidt on the Apple board of directors, this alliance might actually not be so far-fetched."
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[+] Apple's Moment — Consumers Want To Download To TV 295 comments
ack154 writes, "With so much recent news surrounding Apple's upcoming iTV system, their timing may be nearly perfect. Ars Technica gives the rundown on a recent report, released from Accenture, stating that about half of users surveyed across the globe are now looking to get downloadable videos, movies and other content onto their TV. Based on the article, if Apple can get the right combination in features, price, and usability, many consumers may be ready to eat it up. Macworld has more speculation on Apple's potential living room dominance."
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  • Poo Pooing ITV (Score:5, Interesting)

    by esconsult1 (203878) on Monday September 18 2006, @10:47AM (#16130534) Homepage Journal

    Lots of people dismiss this product, but the kicker for me is that its priced so I can put one in each room with a TV, instead of a PC beside each TV.

    Imagine watching Youtube on your bigscreen... (on the other hand, with that crappy video, perhaps not).

    • the "only thing missing" in my mind.. is a god damn tunner.. if for that price it had a TV tunner card on it i would be first in line no doubt about it.. - that is why i havn't picked up a mini yet.. i can't seem to find a good tunner..
      • Here you go. [elgato.com]

        Even the original Mac Minis are fast enough to handle MPEG2 decoding required for the EyeTV 500 (in software, since the Minis don't have a good video card). Pair it with a projector for a "cheap" HDTV (only $2000 for as-big-as-your-wall vs. $2500 for a wussy little 42").

        • First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).

          Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).

          • Re:Poo Pooing ITV (Score:4, Informative)

            by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF (813746) on Monday September 18 2006, @12:37PM (#16131565)

            First of all, that's a really horrible design considering how stiff coaxial cables are -- I can easily imagine that thing either pulling out or snapping off it's USB port, especially if you use it with a laptop (as pictured).

            Does that happen? I've never, ever broken any of my USB ports, even though I routinely plug and unplug peripherals, especially for my laptop.

            Second, what I'm surprised nobody has made is a TV tuner designed to stack under the Mini (like all those external hard drives, etc.).

            If you go back to the Elgato Web site, you'll see they offer a half a dozen different PVRs, including several designed to stack under a mac mini. I bought one of these years ago and it has happily been storing my TV shows since, including easy archiving to DVD. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty darn good.

            • Unfortunately, I looked at Elgato's site after I posted the link, and the "old style" breakout boxes are all gone in favor of that crappy USB dongle one.

              It looks like another good vendor has decided to commit suicide by ridding themselves of a decent product line. I was just about to buy one of their EyeTV 200's (I already have the 500) so I could use analog sources into my Mac Mini. Oh well.

              • Unfortunately, I looked at Elgato's site after I posted the link, and the "old style" breakout boxes are all gone in favor of that crappy USB dongle one.

                Perhaps you're having difficulty with their odd Web site design? They seem to be selling 250, 310, 410, 610, as well as the USB dongles. The 250 is available directly from their store if that is what you're interested in. Here is a link [elgato.com].

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Firehed (942385)
        Let's not forget a DVD player. Yeah, they're cheap, but the fewer devices I need hooked up to my TV, the better. And not only for space purposes - I don't want eight sets of cables and need two strip outlets just to hook everything up. As far as I could tell, it didn't have one - which I understand for space purposes, but I really think that it could end up as a fatal flaw (or at least not making it available on a slightly taller $349 model).

        Seeing that it's not a DVR, there's really no purpose to have a

    • Re:Poo Pooing ITV (Score:4, Informative)

      by stubear (130454) on Monday September 18 2006, @11:41AM (#16131027)
      The iTV is nothing more than a Media CP extender. You still need to have the main system that captures the audio/video or handles the DVDs. The iTV lacks a tuner card and DVD player. While you can put one of these in every room of your house that has a TV, you wouldn't get the same functionality as a Media PC in every room of your house with a TV.

  • What exactly is an iTV? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by acb (2797) on Monday September 18 2006, @10:54AM (#16130603) Homepage
    Does anybody know what exactly the iTV is based on? Is it based on a special edition of OSX (akin to Windows MCE), a new real-time OS based on Darwin/xnu, Quartz, Cocoa and QuickTime (though lacking large chunks of OSX which are irrelevant), the iPod RTOS, or something else?
    • My guess is that it is a stripped-down version of OS X. It uses some portions of the kernel, is heavy into Quartz, Cocoa, and Quicktime (as you said), but could not (out of the box) run OS X programs arbitrarily. You'll note that there hasn't yet been a mention of an internal hard drive or other mass media storage, nor an optical drive. From that I would argue that the internal software has a relatively small footprint (less than 1 GB) and isn't meant to be frequently upgraded. This would make it akin i

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by enjar (249223)
      The iTV is based on equal parts marketing, product mock-ups, and Reality Distortion Field :)

  • Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by cca93014 (466820) on Monday September 18 2006, @10:59AM (#16130657) Homepage
    Back of napkin maths...

    My MythTV box in the UK consumes about 1.4 GB of data per hour of programme. That equates to about a 400kbit/second bandwidth requirement to be able to stream broadcast quality standard definition video (I think? Can anyone confirm that?). So basically I'd need at least a 4Mbit ADSL/Cable connection to stream video in real time and that's without enough of an overhead to ensure a 99.9% free picture.

    What resolution did they say the iTV was running at? If I download a film from iTunes, what resolution is it? 640x480? That's a fair bit less than PAL. Maybe they could use a different codec to squeeze some more performance out of it, but it seems that the bandwidth requirements are pretty high right now...

    The problem is that my dad, for example, expects the TV to work, when he turns it on, all the time. If he turns on his TV and gets some "buffering" messages up, he's going to take the thing back to the shop and tell the guy that sold it to him that "it doesn't work properly"...

    Anyone else think that streaming TV is just not ready yet? I'd say we need another couple of years at least...
    • To hell with "Streaming TV." If the iTV does a good job of getting DVDs, music videos, and maybe some tunes with visualization on my plasma TV from my Windows or Ubuntu boxes, I'm going to be first in line to buy one.

    • Re:Bandwidth? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Siberwulf (921893) on Monday September 18 2006, @11:18AM (#16130814)
      Anyone else think that streaming TV is just not ready yet? I'd say we need another couple of years at least...

      Honestly, I think _quality_ streaming TV is just a pipe dream. As we introduce new TV standards, such as HD, we increase the size and standard of "Normal". With Normal going higher and higher, is it feasible to think that the web will catch up? Will Normal even plateau? I'm not sure, but I venture to say "No"
      • Once people actually get high-speed Internet access at home (fibre, not cable/DSL) it could work. As it stands, Comcast serves HDTV movies on demand to its cable boxes. The quality is good and it takes 20-30 seconds from the time you hit "play" to where it's buffered up enough to play reliably. That can only improve but it's a great start.

        When you consider that most home Internet connections became fast enough for streaming good quality music just a few years ago, I'd say that we have a ways to go before

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by stunt_penguin (906223)
        Honestly, I think _quality_ streaming TV is just a pipe dream.

        Exactly, exactly, exactly! TV over t'internet needs to learn to crawl first- technology writers talk about IPTV and TV over the web as though it's something that can be deployed in the next few years, or as if it's something that isn't going to cost trillions of dollars to roll out. We don't have the means to deploy that kind of network yet, nor do we need to.

        We currently have a way of deploying streaming video to hundreds of millions of T

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mrchaotica (681592) *

          Oh, and if 6 differnet people want to watch 6 different programmes, well then that's okay, since all you need is 6 different receivers, not 6x as much bandwidth on your cable connection.

          Not really; the only reason cable doesn't need "extra" bandwidth is that you're already sending all the possible data. The better comparison would be that you'd be sending all those 6 different programs all the time, and if 6 people didn't want to watch then the bits would just be piped to /dev/null.

      • What do you think digital cable is? It's streaming a digital feed over a network. Now, I don't know exactly what protocols and compression they use, and I'm sure they must be doing some QoS stuff behind the scenes so my neighbor's bittorrent doesn't keep me from ordering a movie, but it demonstrates the capability of high-quality streaming. I can get OnDemand HDTV movies over the same line that I could order a theoretical 30Mbps downstream-- don't tell me that video streaming isn't possible.

        Plus, HDTV i

    • Well that would be easy to fix. Just require a Macintosh. You schedule what you want to see and the Mac downloads it. Then when you go to watch it off your iTV it gets streamed from the Mac in your house. Or a little hard drive in the iTV would work too.

      It's a reasonable solution, and they can let you watch it directly over the net as soon as your connection is fast enough.

    • A friend was marveling over the weekend about how unbelievably fast the downloads from the iTunes Store were. He said he was getting TV shows at a much higher rate than data (not just video) from most other servers. And you can start watching while the download is taking place (streaming). So Apple's already got a lot of the pieces in place, at both the server and the client. I wonder if they're using the Google shipping containers [pbs.org] Cringely talked about...

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by xoyoyo (949672)
      I think you've fallen for the bit/byte conversion there.

      1.4Gb of data equals 400kbytes a second, or 3200kbits a second. Your calculations are right though. The 3-4Mbits speed is the sweet spot for MPEGII: judging by the crap on the screen I'd say Sky runs some of its channels way below that, but yes you'll need a fast connection to make broadcast streaming work, for very low values of broadcast.

      As to iTunes movies being 640x480 - Apple has only rolled the service out in the US so far and 640x480 is NTSC. I
    • An obvious response to your post is to say "download instead of stream." So say you try to download a HD stream on a 5 Mbit link (cable speed)...25 GBytes at 5 Mbit/sec works out to a 136 hour download - almost a full week day and night. 680 hours if you're on DSL.

      Run fiber instead of copper and you get 100 Mbit/sec or a tad under 7 hour downloads. So for those lucky folks who have fiber, downloading HD is feasible today if you're willing to download overnight or while you're at work. The rest of us will h
    • Bah. I meant 4000 kbit/second.

    • The problem is that my dad, for example, expects the TV to work, when he turns it on, all the time. If he turns on his TV and gets some "buffering" messages up, he's going to take the thing back to the shop and tell the guy that sold it to him that "it doesn't work properly"...

      i don't think this is going to replace TV, your dad will still have that to watch if he doesn't have things queued up on iTV. besides, devices like TiVo are acclimating people to watching previously arranged things at a later date

    • My MythTV box in the UK consumes about 1.4 GB of data per hour of programme.

      Using an MPEG4 variant can easily halve that bandwidth requirement at nearly the same quality. You can get quality comparable to VHS much much lower--300-500kbits is not unreasonable, but might look crummy on a larger screen (then again, so would VHS).

  • While this item is pure speculation it is at least interesting. I'm unclear why Apple needs Google to stream video though. I don't see the win-win scenario for either. A more interesting idea is presented by Bob Cringley (http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20060914 .html [pbs.org]). And yes an Apple TV with iTV built in is a great idea and will happen.

  • Huh? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by diesel66 (254283)
    From TFA:
    "It's not hard to imagine a Gapple iTV that that would not only allow you to consume media files on your home theater system, but also stream television content and display relevant advertisements from Google..."

    Let's see, iTV plays movies, TV shows and music I buy from the iTunes music store, why do I need Google? To show me targeted ads? No thanks.

    "...especially since this device requires a network to do anything useful."

    Yeeeaaahhh.... I have broadband just like all the other people the iTV wil
      • I couldn't finish TFA because that verbiage is so awful: "not only allow you to consume media files on your home theater system, but also stream television content and display relevant advertisements from Google". For a more cluetrain-ish idea of what can be done with media, see getdemocracy. I am so sick of the "content industry" treating users like hamsters that run around the wheel and occasionally suck on the bottle of content they lovingly provide... Sorry, I'm in a bad mood now.

  • So is this... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Morrigu (29432) on Monday September 18 2006, @11:07AM (#16130724) Homepage Journal
    meaningful or YAGAAR (Yet Another Google-Apple Alliance Rumor)?
    • In response to a YAGAAR you just need to ask yourself WWSJD? (What would Steve Jobs do?) I think you get a free bracelet with the purchase of an ipod now.
  • Another slashdot story about a team-up that is not beyond the realm of feasible possibility.

    Hooray.

    -stormin

  • Dumb, dumb, dumb rumor... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by donnacha (161610) on Monday September 18 2006, @11:23AM (#16130861) Homepage
    This is a particularly dumb example of classic "slap-2-big-names-together" rumor production. All Apple really has going for it in it's negotiations with the studios is that they, Apple, are the experts when it comes to online distribution. Why in the name of God would they blow that by being seen to defer to Google?
  • I'm not sure if the name ITV is already trademarked, as there's a long established TV station in the UK called ITV [itv.com], which stands for Independent TeleVision.
    • Yeah they can't use that name probably (definately not in the UK). Although ITV isn't a single entity (it's a group of regional companies providing the commercial side of terrestrial TV) they do trade in that name when selling programmes to places like the US - so it's an internationally known name... and being video related is close enough to cause confusion.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by n2art2 (945661)
      In the Keynote, Jobs stated that iTV was just the code name, and that before distribution, another name would take it's place. It's a code name. It's a name that will generate buzz, and that is, afterall, why they showed the box at the media event to begin with.
  • This might be true, but it sounds like more fake Apple rumors. Keeping in mind the fact that 90% of Apple rumors are completely unbased, look at the holes in this rumor.

    First, Google Video is great, but its video quality is nothing special. The video is very highly compressed and encoded in to a Macromedia Flash container. The result is a very very lossy conversion prosses. Herein lies the problem. Google video's quality is perfect for free PC content, but for TV?? The trend lately is heavily towards H
  • I'll safely call this rumor until further notice. The addition of Eric Schmidt to the Apple board is strategic, but not necessarily linked to iTV. After all, iTV has probably been in development for a year or more, Schmidt's only been on the board a few weeks. Perhaps his appointment was quid pro quo for an ongoing (and heretofore secret) development alliance between the two companies, but I don't think so.
  • I'll believe it when...

    I read about it on the Fake Steve Jobs Blog. [blogspot.com]

  • A Small Spat (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nom du Keyboard (633989) on Monday September 18 2006, @12:36PM (#16131552)
    But will it be iTV or gTV at that point?

    Or just split the difference and call it hTV

  • The true question is if the Earth is a large enough mass to contain the resulting Fanboy pride. Two perfect entities, merging together into something better than perfection? The mind cannot retain its sanity in the fact of such truth, anymore than it can gaze upon the face of God.

    Whole religions were started for less my mortal brethren.
    • He didn't say anything about it being HDTV. It was DVD Quality but DVDs are not HD. That is why there is the big Fuss about BluRay and HD-DVD.

      • Re:no streaming content? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by thefinite (563510) on Monday September 18 2006, @11:39AM (#16131016)
        The iTunes movies are DVD quality. The trailer Jobs showed *was* HD streaming, apparently, from their trailers website. I doubt many normal broadband connections will get the same speed as Jobs' demo setup, however.

        • The iTunes movies are DVD quality.

          DVD is 720x480 for both fullscreen and widescreen. The iTunes movies are 640x480 for fullscreen, and for widescreen the number of vertical pixels is decreased to keep the same pixel shape (around 640x270 depending on the aspect ratio of the movie). The end result is that widescreen movies have half as many pixels as DVD.

          You may or may not notice the difference on an interlaced fullscreen display, but you will definatly notice the difference on a progressive-scan widescreen

    • But Apple will have to change its product's name: ITV...

      Apple announced the iTV device as a preview of things to come. iTV is a product code name, not what it will be shipped/marketed as. This was practically the first thing they said about it.

    • With net neutrality, cable companies pretty much HAVE to allow it. The reason they don't want net neutrality is so that they can tax the providers using their services (i.e: Bell South can tax Vonage, Comcast can tax Apple, etc). It is a threat, and the threat is real. Vote YES to net neutrality.

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