Technology Review’s Daniel Turner takes a look at the speculation running up to next week’s Macworld Expo and covers the usual rumors: Intel-based iBooks, Intel-based PowerBooks, new iPod shuffle; you know, the usual rumors. But, one of Turner’s notions is interesting (they’ve got quite an eclectic mix of writers over there, it seems):
Last fall, Apple refreshed its all-in-one iMac line and debuted Front Row, a piece of software that hijacks the usual Mac UI and replaces it with a simple interface — easily visible on a TV screen from the couch — allowing for presentation of photo slideshows, home movies, music, purchased TV show downloads, and movie trailers. The last item is the most interesting: if Front Row can stream movie trailers from Apple’s website, why not whole movies?
“If Front Row can stream movie trailers from Apple’s website, why not whole movies?”
We just tried, for the heck of it, running Front Row on an old 450 MHz Power Mac G4 via a cable modem (approximately 1.5Mbps). We chose a random movie trailer and it streamed very nicely. Very watchable on a rather large LCD. Imagine if Apple somehow jacked up the encoding a bit? Anyway, backing away from the monitor a few feet (like you probably would at least be positioned to relax while watching a movie) helped even more. (Close up, things like a yellow #2 pencil in a medium shot of an actor registered pretty high on the pixelation scale. But, from only a few feet away, it was more than acceptable. Can you guess which trailer we watched?)
Full article here.
What do you think? If Front Row can stream movie trailers from Apple’s website, why not whole movies – after you buy them of course, or – dare we say – subscribe to Apple’s service? Could Apple manage the bandwidth demands and deliver as perfectly smooth an experience as we just had with the trailer we tested? It’s fairly obvious that Front Row 1.0 is a test; a test of many things, but is one of its most important tests for Apple to see how well streaming content works?
[UPDATE: 8:49am ET: See related article: Apple Computer sues Burst after negotiations over iTunes, iPod licenses breakdown – January 06, 2006]
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The name of the software should be a clue by now..
Who needs to be in the Front Row to look at their own photos? or play music…Front Row is about MOVIES….it always was…(though to be honest…nobody sits in the front row of a movie theater!)…Maybe it should have been called
Middle 10 Rows Back….
It’s definitely a novel idea. Imagine paying just $9.99 per month to be able to stream a predetermined amount of movies per month. It’s the ultimate on-demand system. Apple just needs to make sure that the streaming/caching of the movie will not cause choppy playback because the last thing a service like that would need would be consumer backlash.
All I know is this, that new iMac looks real good in any living room and being able to patch out HD video content to a HDTV from the iMac (Mac Mini or otherwise) would be paradigm shifting.
Curiouser and curiouser.
Gotta stop reading rumors the week before MWSF!
I know that Apple likes to be a decade ahead of everybody else, but what about people like me who are still on dial-up? Obviously this setup isn’t going to work.
Just a quick-n-dirty poll: Who here still has a dial-up connection?
Patience, my young padawan.
The day come it will.
I think a perfect demonstration of streaming is the Apple Keynotes, the quality of them is perfectly watchable for longer periods. TV Shows would be perfect and we know they’ve already got something going on with them.
The Dark Side of the Moon–
Just a quick-n-dirty poll: Who here still has a dial-up connection?
I’m sorry, dialwhat?
MW: Word.
My Granny manages on a dial-up connection.
TDSOTM said “I know that Apple likes to be a decade ahead of everybody else, but what about people like me who are still on dial-up?”
My friend, it is not Apple who are ahead, but you that are behind.
How can it stream movies when it can’t even handle trailers?
I have 1meg broadband and it still keeps telling me ‘Movie trailer server not responding’.
Lot of work still to be done on FR
I just posted a link to the Contact form:
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=105456
That’s a press release that Apple has sued Burst. A little company with some key patents on streaming media tech. This means that what Cringely said was true, if Apple wants to open a streaming movie store, it needs to license from Burst, and apparently it has been in negotiation.
As for streaming movie trailers, FR doesn’t show what bitrate they’re using but it’s clear that they are below DVD quality. If you go to their movie trailer website:
http://www.apple.com/trailers/
You’ll see they have about 30 HD trailers. This is a much better indication of whether Apple can stream movies. I’ve looked and 480p movies will need a streaming rate of 2Mbps. This is doable on a stable moderately quick cable modem. Add some buffering time, perhaps 15mins, while you pop the popcorn, and you should have no trouble with a 480p movie stream.
Oh, you can get rid of the FR server messages if you go to your QT prefs, and movie your buffer all the way to the right to your largest setting.
Dave H,
Many people in this country don’t have a choice of their internet connection. People who live in large cities or towns to not realize that many people living in the country have no access to high speed internet because no cable company will run cable out that far! It may not be his fault.
front row movie trailers use some form of peer-to-peer technology… when i watch a number of trailers in a row i get a threatning message from my university administrator to stop using peer to peer… it seems we might be streaming from a collection of servers the same time to get the speeds we do…
I usuallly like to sit in the front row of a movie theatre…
subscribe to movies.. YES.. you don’t need to watch them 5 times .. most movies are worth 2.5 hrs of my time, if not less.
Could this explain Apple’s recent bandwith increase?
HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY, OS X!!
Once Wimax hits, all this bandwidth stuff will be history. As will the ‘i can’t get broadband in my neighborhood’ thing. It will be a great day for everyone.
jb
I’m sure people back in 1882 didn’t think Edison should wire up the entire USA before turning on the lights in New York. Apple is doing the same thing here, only with video.
People outside of towns and cities will get this when their infrastructure supports it. In the meantime, they have bigger houses and less pollution to worry about.
Call it a trade off.
Apple will need to both stream and set up a subscription or pay-and-play type model for movies. The average movie watcher doesn’t have the same need to own the product as do music listeners. A good song can be listened to a 1000 times, but even a good movie has its watching limits.
Mike: Isn’t it the fifth birthday?
(Or the sixth since Steve announced it as vaporware)
Well, a small note of dissent! Those keynote addresses end up being choppy, starting and stopping in a herky-jerky fashion, losing connections, etc.–even on cable modem hook ups!
Let’s hope that’s not the model of how movie streaming would work!
Dark side of the moon,
I’m in the middle of the northern woods in the Canadian oil patch downloading from a geo-stationary satellite parked over the equator. I get my HDTV from a second satellite a little to the left of the internet satellite. I send encrypted phone messages over a satellite phone that uses 20 some odd satellites in low earth, polar orbits.
Man, get out of the dark ages and find a better way to get information. Next you’ll tell me you have newspapers delivered in hardcopy.
And you wonder why gasoline costs so much.
MacJack,
I know I’ve been using OS X exclusively since November of 1999 so it has been at least 6 years.
So I not only have to subscribe to get the video stream, I have to sign up & pay for a .Mac membership too just to play it? And what exactly do I get for spending my money (literally hundreds of dollars a year can be expected) that I actually own? I can buy a ‘DVD quality’ movie for less than $10 a pop these days, and it’s mine forever. Why is it that, according to Jobs, owning your own music is a huge advantage over subscription-based services (I agree), but subscribing is the better – or at least equally viable – way to go for video?
Could this be Indicator #1 that the hollywood studios’ DRM talons are in Apple as deep as for any other company?
If this is they way Apple’s going, I’d hope they allow the option of a download service of some type, with videos of equal quality, to go along with it. Call me old school, but I still believe in the benefits of ownership – real ownership – over a lifetime of renting, no matter what the product.