Bokks Linux Based AV Component 144
Here is an article about a new linux based AV stereo componenent. This one is from
Bokks and it has a lot going for it: Plays your MP3s, MPEGs, VOBs, and soon Divx. Has standard audio and video ports, a sleek form factor, and what looks to be a sexxy interface. Its ethernet interface can take input from NFS or Samba, or the net. The only downside I see is that it has no DVD drive for built in ripping, and it has only a 20G drive. But at $400, this is pushing the line of reasonable for this type of device.
Should be available in Feb.
Expandable hard drive? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Expandable hard drive? (Score:1)
It's about time (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:It's about time (Score:1)
That's easy... go to Radio Shack and buy a 1/8" to RCA audio cable, plug the 1/8" plug into the output of your sound card, and hook up the RCA jacks into the auxiliary input of your stereo (assuming it supports it). Switch the stereo to use the aux. input (as opposed to CD, AM/FM, etc), and you're good to go.
This is the setup I have and it works awesome.... just make sure you keep your speakers far enough away from the monitor.
- Jester
Re:It's about time (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's about time (Score:2)
Lets hope not. Some of us actually care about sound quality. As a friend of mine said, high fidelity and lossy compression can't exist in the same sentence. There's plenty of scope for lossless compression in the future, but lossless compression works by removing redundancy, which in turn narrows the scope for error correction. It's always a trade off, and IMHO, we should be aiming somewhere in the middle -- modest lossless compression, while still retaining a degree of error correction.
Re:It's about time (Score:1)
266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:1)
-jp
Re:266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:1)
Re:266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:2)
On another note, 266 mhz is probably enough to decode DivX movies fine. I was doing it in Linux on a 400 mhz Celeron 6 months ago, with about 40% cpu usage...
You -definitely- need hardware video overlay, though.
Re:266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:1)
Re:266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:1)
Re:266 Mhz + DivX? (Score:1)
P.S. My 333mhz desktop can watch divxes just fine with no lag.
Hackability (Score:1)
Take this device and throw a 120gig WD drive in there. Or why not even take the existing HD out and put one of those little ram-disk things in there (you know what I mean, like the kind in the i-opener). Then you can have it be totally silent and just play movies off the file server hiding in the basement with 500gig of space. (What? You don't have one yet? :) Of course that may require a little more hacking because the little info we have says that it will play all those formats from the HD.
Having ethernet on it sure opens lots of neato doors.
The only down side that I can see is that it dosen't support the TiVO like recording functionality. You need to record your stuff somewhere else, then this just plays it. I see that as my only reason not to buy one.
Ogg? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ogg? (Score:2, Informative)
That is the single thing that keeps vorbis from being included in various appliance devices.
Coders of the world: Write a CODEC that can decode on a 74Mhz ARM 720T using less than 30KB of data space.
Re:Ogg? (Score:1)
Re:Ogg? (Score:1)
Ogg soon...? (Score:1)
Got a screwdriver and an inadequacy complex... (Score:2, Funny)
BEGIN WHINE:
Can you replace the drive with because...
Multiple choice:
a)My mp3 collection is HUGE, I mean it's SO much bigger than yours you should be turning green with envy.
b)You can only fit hours of on this drive according to my calculations which I will now list in order to invite ridicule on my crap math skills.
c)the clever sales person told me you have to have at least 80GB of memory these days and he wouldn't lie to me he was really clevar.
END WHINE.
That should save everyone else lots of typing.
Re:Got a screwdriver and an inadequacy complex... (Score:2, Funny)
Hey, its not the size of your mp3 collection, but how you use it!
Re:not reasonable (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:not reasonable (Score:1)
Every good nerd has his wholesale friend, and the motherboard had onboard audio/lan.
Re:not reasonable (Score:2)
Re:not reasonable (Score:1)
Case: $75 [newegg.com] (needs a power supply. ~$47 shipped [antec-inc.com])
After all, one of the nicer things will be that this product is smaller and quieter than your normal PC. And you don't have to mess around with different drivers and such to make sure that it works to your satisfaction. They've (presumably) already gone to the trouble.
However, it is odd that they didn't go with a PPC of some sort, given that they're not limited by the kernel (maybe other A/V software doesn't run well on the PPCs? Nah.(?)).
Oh well, the dancing penguin [bokks.net] is nice.
Re:not reasonable (Score:2)
Your time clearly is worth nothing. Troll for the Troll.
Re:not reasonable (Score:4, Informative)
It is unreasonable if you're willing to spend the time to put something like this together--but that's how it goes for pretty much everything these days. If you do it yourself, then you're going to save cash.
The point is that not everybody has the tools (remember, Joe Average is the target audience and he's not going to know how to assemble said box or even come close to getting all the required software running--even with Ye Olde Simple MS Product) nor the time (Joe Average again--even if he had the tools to get this job done, I'd sure he'd rather spend it at his kids' T-ball game) to assemble this thing.
True--it doesn't make sense for your the "technical elite," but that's not who it's marketed to. This is a product just like a Dell computer or an internet appliance--it's got some cool technology bits but it's sold as a package so that Mr. and Mrs. Average don't have to get their hands dirty with the details. I'm sure there are a fair number of geeks that will be interested in this product based solely on its technical merits, but the intended audience is not someone who could do this on their own--that person has already done it, and for half the price.
Re:not reasonable (Score:1)
Re:not reasonable (Score:1)
and the ATI tv card has built in mpg decoding
Re:not reasonable (Score:2, Funny)
motherboard, 100$
lots of ram, 50$
40gig harddrive, 150$
duron 850 processor, 80$
Not paying heating bills because your collection of computers keep your home toasty warm
Re:not reasonable (Score:2)
PCs seem to be able to all the multimedia stuff independantly but they lack a common, simple IR-compatible way of tying it all together.
If you can make all the bits work together, that's got be worth something.
Re:not reasonable (Score:1)
Next thing you know when somebody yells at dell for over pricing a PC for nerds, they'll will be called a troll.
ATI AIW has no TV-out support under Linux (Score:1)
Re:ATI AIW has no TV-out support under Linux (Score:1)
(it generaly always is, unless in windows, use that dos program to turn it on if you will)
You just have to have the FB set to 800X resolution (standard maximum tv out, you know the drill)
and it works
this is not here say, I've done it on my friends computer.
good stuff.
mind you, the ATI capturing for the AGP models (Rage Theater) are a blast to get working. apparently they got an expirmental one, right now all I have is TV tuner support/OpenGL.
hope this helps
Re:not reasonable (Score:1)
I forgot about power supplybut I assume you'll make one anyways (30$, plus a 5$ book)
cables come with motherboard/ati card
motherboard as onboard video/sound/networking/amr (A7SVM
SiS 730s, 4pci AGP, ATA100, onboard audio + video + lan, MATX $119.00)
etc, etc..
Beowulf = price*(N) where N is the amount you wish.
First reasonable device (Score:2, Interesting)
If they added a VideoLan Client [videolan.org], it would be practically perfect. VLC by itself probably doesn't support the hardware MPEG decoder, and the CPU isn't fast enough to do DVD decoding in software.
MPEG technologies are still patented (Score:1)
This is the first reasonable digital audio/tv device I have seen. The ones before have been tied to proprietary formats
So is this one. It supports MPEG audio layer 3 (patented), VOB (MPEG 2 (patented) plus Dolby Digital (patented)), and DivX (MPEG 4 (patented)). And the royalties for such patents are
ridiculously expensive
i built something similar recently... (Score:2, Informative)
RCA/S-video out
normal audio out
ethernet
4 usb ports
2 firewire
etc... (standard mobo parts, ps2 ports etc etc)
put together a nice multimedia system for only $490 some, plus it's actually useable as a computer!
i mean, that's a nifty box and all, but you can build a better one for not that much more. it does everything that the unit above does, and much more besides.
The link (Score:1)
Re:i built something similar recently... (Score:2)
Data permanence (Score:1)
Re:Data permanence (Score:3, Insightful)
A scratch does not damage the information on a piece of optical media, only the clear plastic that is protcting the information; that is why the plastic is there, you can get a scratch kit to fix it. If you need to record something for extremely long term archival, you can get silver, gold, or platinum CDs. Most commercial DVDs are burned on silver or gold, so unlike your VHSs, they should be usable many generations from now.
When he says hard drives are not a permanent medium he is referring more to the fact that they have moving parts and are prone to data corruption than their archival value. Overall, I think we should be glad we are moving from extremely short lived products, i.e. magnetic tape, and short lived products, i.e. film, to store our multimedia art on.
Where to get an 8-track player (Score:1)
Can you get a drive to read 8 track music today?
Yes! Start here [8trackheaven.com].
Or how about a tape recorder/player which works with spools of soft iron wire (used in the 1940s).
Museums such as the Smithsonian Institution [si.edu] maintain equipment that can still read old formats.
The only data sure to last thru time is that which can be read by humans directly: Text
And what happens in 802701, when nobody knows the English language anymore?
and Photos on film/paper.
Film rots; paper rots unless it's acid-free. What are the oldest pieces of visual art that survive? Cave paintings.
Re:Short lived products? I think not. (Score:1)
The data will not be staying on the old digital data storage mediums, it will be moved to the latest digital storage medium. That's why digital is so great. It's easy to copy and manipulate.
At the rate data storage has improved, each time I upgrade to a new larger system I have copied ALL of my legacy data into a (now) small portion of my new system. My data moves to the latest data storage medium. All of my old Apple II programs which used to be on 300 floppies are now using 42 Megabytes in a directory on my hard drive. My Apple II emulator runs much faster than the old Apple II. I expect this to continue at least until I am very old.
Re:Short lived products? I think not. (Score:2)
http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/empire/
Those images were not taken on film! Please read the site. Film begins getting discolored after a decade or so and must be stored in a room with excellent climate control to prevent degradation; Universal stores all it's negatives in a stone vault carved into Mount Weather, and they still need massive restoration when brought out.
The others who replied already dealt with your other points.
Pushing which way? (Score:1)
If you feel this is a good buy, please say so.
If not, then why post it?
Why a hard drive? (Score:3, Insightful)
This would be perfect without the hard drive. If the box has network access, why do you need it? It's just an extra component that could fail.
Re:Why a hard drive? (Score:1)
The Bokks is designed to allow you to transfer content to the hard drive, then take it with you. At the size of a few of VHS tapes, it's small enough to take anywhere, plug in and enjoy.
VOB? (Score:1)
Wouldn't it be niftier to pack some hard drives into an actual DVD player and stick an ethernet port in the back? You could have all the features of this box plus the ability to rip straight from DVD. Course the MPAA wouldn't let it see the light of day.
Re:VOB? (Score:1)
-adnans
Re:VOB? (Score:1)
Most pr0n DVDs are unencrypted and I've had a lot of fun with those.
A Start (Score:5, Insightful)
There is also less need to keep all your 1.5-3 hour movies in one device that can play them all without switching media as there is for your 2-15 minute songs; I see DIVX more as the result of the fact that most computers don't have DVD burners.
Re:A Start (Score:2)
I typically watch 700MB-1GB DIVX files, as that is about what is practical for me to store, but I have also played with short high-bitrate clips. I can honestly say that they look terrible. I think DIVX is a good technology, and yes it does have potential, but it is completely unsuitable for storing movies; it can't handle motion and you end up with too many compression artifacts. MPEG-4 will probably become a good alternative for streaming video (why the hell does anyone still use the Real and Windows Media formats?), and is great for producing very small files, but Sorenson still has the best codec when you need very clean video without artifacts, although even it doesn't do a very elegant job hadlind motion; many companies still use the original QuickTime video codec for that.
Re:A Start (Score:1)
It all depends on how good you want to make it when you're encoding.
Q: Why is the hard drive only 20 gig? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Q: Why is the hard drive only 20 gig? (Score:1)
Re:Q: Why is the hard drive only 20 gig? (Score:2)
The device is meant to play movies off your mounted LAN monster hard drive, but have enough storage to download a small selection and take the box with you for to view elsewhere, or to TRADE/copy videos on another LAN, like your office LAN or your friends LAN, or a LAN party...
Re:Q: Why is the hard drive only 20 gig? (Score:2)
Because that's the size Staples and Circuit City and such were offering on sale with a rebate last week. :-)
Taking bets (Score:1)
1 hr after release
1 day after release
2 days after release
we arelready have cheep convergence device (Score:1)
To fix DivX on TV, tweak your gamma (Score:2)
[Xbox and PS2] will make for a good convergence device, once it gets hacked and opend up.
Hacked? Yeah right. Xbox is locked up tight; apparently, all binaries must bear Microsoft's digital signature. Watch for Microsoft to use its vast re$ources to sue any modchip makers into oblivion.
for some reason divx movies look identical to the DVD on the monitor but not so identical to the DVD when played on TV out compared to DVD played on DVD player.
This may be a gamma issue. Try tweaking your TV-out device's settings.
Re:No MIDI Files? (Score:1)
Re:No MIDI Files? (Score:1)
The last time I paid attention to the formats,
The only problem is that players often have some bug that messes up your favorite track.
Re:No MIDI Files? (Score:1)
DVD for "ripping" ? (Score:1)
Legality (Score:5, Insightful)
But the marketing/advertising they are receiving, at least from that review, aims directly towards illegal uses. Take the following examples:
This implies you will TRADE the movies, not just watch them for your own personal fair use. Here it suggests hooking up external equipment to your companies LAN and use their bandwidth for your own (likely) illegal use. Not good either.If this product hopes to succeed, it must be presented in fair use. The Rio almost got nailed by the RIAA, but the Rio presented itself as legal fair use, and set a good precedent. This could set a NEGATIVE precedent if done incorrectly. They need to improve their image quick.
Re:Legality (Score:3)
The company itself unfortunately agrees with the tone of that review:
I don't want one for a variety of reasons. Part is that I don't want moving components, part is that I don't want an electrically noisy PC (face it, that's what this is) with unknown sound output doing the conversion; part is that I'm not going to use something like this for copyright infringement and I don't care to have the seller saying "nudge nudge, wink wink" when I say that.
There is a legitimate market for archiving libraries of music and movies; there is a legitimate market for wanting to easily listen to a CD you own in the car, at your computer, and at your stereo.
Re:Legality (Score:2)
That's not what I'm saying. First, the Bokks is just a tool, and I don't think there is anything illegal with it (or should be illegal, if we assume the DMCA is a load of crap and doesn't apply).
Second, I think it is unethical to emphasize copyright infringement use, which - be honest - is what they are emphasizing. Like I said, it has nothing to do with how it could be used perfectly legally - I don't care to have the manufacturer nudging and winking as I buy it. They are a crock if they think that is ethical.
Software & Codecs? (Score:2)
Re:Software & Codecs? (Score:1)
Great (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure, you can build a PC with MPEG2 playback, networking etc. cheaper or for about the same price. But thats not what this device tries to replace, at least I would not buy it for doing this. When I saw the older TV Bokks (you can see it on their web page) I thought this would be great as an STB to stream files and live DVB streams from a server in the basement to other TVs here at home. But, although we have one of those at work to play with, I never saw it being offered for sale anywhere.
The old Bokks has a Geode chip as processor/graphics chip/etc. and a Sigma Designs EM8400 for decoding. I guess the new Bokks is based on the same design. They only added some hardware (like the hard drive) and changed the shape to a brick. The EM8400 is a nice decoder chip. We developed our own driver which is API compatible to our DVB drivers. So, I would not mind playing with one of those Bokkses. Also, if you consider the price of an EM8400 card (e.g. the Netstream 2000), the Bokks does not seem that expensive anymore.
Sure, I would also not mind if the Bokks were a little cheaper. With VAT (AFAIK 25% in Sweden which I guess I will have to pay when ordering from Germany) its over 1100 German Marks + shipping. Maybe they decide to also sell the old version for a lower price. I at least would be interested in it. On the other hand, the disk and nice brick shape makes the new system really portable. And I think the specs mention only 10W power usage. No noise, little heat, sounds good.
Now please everybody buy it so that the price goes down and I can get one
I've got something better (Score:4, Interesting)
1) 1.2 Ghz athlon with 512 megs of memory
2) ATI all in wonder radeon that provides not only a TV tuner but svideo/composite A/V inputs and outputs and the ability to do audio/video capture at 720x384 at 30 fps on any of the inputs
3) Sound blaster Live platinum 5.1 for surround sound playback of DVD's etc.
4) four 100 gig hard drives on an IDE raid controller. Total capacity of 400 gigs
5) DVD-R burner, preferably SCSI
6) CD burner, preferably SCSI
7) It will be connected to the internet via a switched 100base-T network connected to a NAT gateway that is itself connected through DSL.
This is the system I'm building right now. Its purpose is much the same as the Bokks device. With it I will be able to play DVD's, vobs, mp3, avi's, mpegs, vcd, divx, etc all on my TV thanks to the all in wonder. Additionally I'll be able to do tivo style recording thanks to that all in wonder. I can rip all my DVD's, encode them to divx, and store them on the raid array or burn them to CD. Or I can just rip them and burn them back to DVD in regionless format with no macrovision. I've got friends overseas that might appreciate that.
By the time this Bokks device becomes available I'll have this system up and running. I haven't decided whether to use Linux or Windows2000 yet. Which one I use will greatly depend upon device support for the all in wonder and SB Live. We've got an HK A/V reciever with dolby surround sound support. If the SB Live drivers for linux support all the features, and the support for the All in wonder is there, then I'd rather use Linux. But if this is not the case I'll use windows instead.
Unfortunately this system is going to cost me a fair bit more than $400. I've already got the MB, CPU, and memory. All I'll need is a good case/PS, the hard drives, the video card, the sound card, and of course the SCSI adapter and burners. Total cost will be upwards of $2000 dollars US.
Lee
Re:I've got something better (Score:1)
Dunno 'bout the All-In-Wonder, though I vaguely remember hearing/reading that it is supported, at least wrt some of its functionality.
Btw, in response to your sig: The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. - F. Scott Fitzgerald. Some of us can keep both our religion and our brains.
Thanks! (Score:1)
Re:I've got something better (Score:1)
I actually use the machine mainly for timeshifting, though the capture software that comes with the AIW Radeon pretty much sucks ass. It either generates MPEG-1 files which lose audio sync after an hour or so, or huge MPEG-2 files which limit me to a couple hours of recording time due to FAT32, and which I can't edit using Virtualdub. You can select AVI if you want to record directly to DivX4, but then it seems to encode in MPEG anyway and transcode to AVI, creating the same sync problem. There is a patched version of VirtualDub out there that does time shifting but I can't get it to record, and I've yet to try any of the commercial DVR programs. Ironically, assuming the capture support is there, it may be easier to redo the thing in Linux using OpenDIVX assuming my Athlon 900 is fast enough.
I see a lot of complaining about using DivX to archive videos. Here's the thing. Not all of us aren't trying to burn our own DVD's at home or be l33t h4x0r p1r4t3z. Some of us are just trying to replace old VHS VCR's. I got all 13 episodes of B5-Crusade on two CDR's (the 9 episodes I like at 300Kbps, the four I don't like at 200) and the quality was A LOT better than if I had used two VHS T-160's. That will hold me until I can buy the whole series on DVD like I'm doing with The Prisoner, and since I'm not spreading them across the internet I really don't care what anyone else thinks about the quality.
Slashdot lameness (Score:1)
theres slashdot for ya.
Re:Slashdot lameness (Score:1)
get a life
(i guess I should as well)
Re:How your comment got modded up is beyond me... (Score:1)
btw, for some reason, pointing out what I say about myself just doesn't seem like a useful contribution.
but then, neither was this.
20gb - no storage problem. (Score:1)
A few notes:
It has an 266mhz x86 processor (perhaps a pII?), this doesn't really sound like a processor that's fast enough for decoding divx, does it?
But fast enough to do some decent retro mame gaming.
I wonder what kind of 20gb drive is in this device. They better put in a quiet one, since people will leech their stuff 24/7 with this thing. Currently my cable decoder even has a 4gb harddrive the noise makes me crazy enough to disconnect it when I don't use it.
Re:20gb - no storage problem. (Score:2)
They probably got a quantity deal on a bunch of old PII laptop chips from the same place they picked up those closeout 20 G drives.
No ripping DVD drive? (Score:2)
It's not to surprising, considering that they wanted to sell the device, rather then just getting lawyered the fuck out of
Once they're successful they might be able to do things like throw in a DVD burner a-la recent Macs, but don't except a home DeCSS machine on store shelves anytime soon
Video output not compatible for North America? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Video output not compatible for North America? (Score:1)
Re:Video output not compatible for North America? (Score:1)
PAL S-video is still incompatible with NTSC S-video. The only difference between composite (CVBS) and S-video (Y/C) is that S-video has seperated the luminance and chrominance signals. This doesn't change the fact that the signal itself is PAL as opposed to NTSC scanrate.
Re:Video output not compatible for North America? (Score:2)
Ugh, "composite audio out"? (Score:2)
Come on, for the love of christ somebody had to have a decent stereo on the team that developed this! Nobody in their right mind uses analog anymore for anything other than vinyl or magnetic tape, it is impossible to clean the signal even over the three feet between components. And when your signal is already digital (as it is before the cheap DAC on the sound card gets ahold of it and messes it up), why the hell not supply it as digital, so that $300 DAC in the sherwood isn't just twiddling it's thumbs. Coaxial outputs are basically free, and even optical out is hardly prohibitive anymore.
Keep it digital, folks, analog is the useless buzzing child of the past.
Re:Ugh, "composite audio out"? (Score:2)