Bill McEnaney
Apr 25, 12:24 AM
I don't think many atheists actually feel that a god absolutely does not exist. Atheism is simply the lack of a belief in a god but most atheists, I believe, are agnostic in the actual existence. While lacking in a belief about a god, most would keep an open mind on the issue or would say it's impossible to know either way.
Floptical cube's post sounds like an excellent description of agnosticism. But every atheist I've ever met has believed that there's no God.
I think it's important to remember that, although people can feel emotions about beliefs, beliefs aren't emotions. I don't feel that there's a God. I believe that there is one. I feel happiness, sadness, loneliness, hurt, and so forth. I believe that those feelings exist, but I don't believe that happiness, say, is either a truth or a falsehood. I don't believe that it's a conformity between my intellect and reality. My belief that there's a pine tree in my front yard is true because there is a pine tree there that causes my belief to be true. The tree will still be there 10 minutes from now, even if someone or something fools me into believing that it's gone. The truth or falsehood of my belief depends on the way things are in the world. I can't cause that tree to exist by merely believing that it does exist. I can't make it stop existing by simply believing that it doesn't exist, can I?
Floptical cube's post sounds like an excellent description of agnosticism. But every atheist I've ever met has believed that there's no God.
I think it's important to remember that, although people can feel emotions about beliefs, beliefs aren't emotions. I don't feel that there's a God. I believe that there is one. I feel happiness, sadness, loneliness, hurt, and so forth. I believe that those feelings exist, but I don't believe that happiness, say, is either a truth or a falsehood. I don't believe that it's a conformity between my intellect and reality. My belief that there's a pine tree in my front yard is true because there is a pine tree there that causes my belief to be true. The tree will still be there 10 minutes from now, even if someone or something fools me into believing that it's gone. The truth or falsehood of my belief depends on the way things are in the world. I can't cause that tree to exist by merely believing that it does exist. I can't make it stop existing by simply believing that it doesn't exist, can I?
MrMacMan
Oct 9, 06:55 PM
True that macs are overpriced but you do gain the operating system which kicks micrsoft xp sh*tless. They don't have the apps and other wounderful features.
As for performance we have lost in most catorgies due to, maybe companyies not writing code for the G4 altevic (sp?).
For many reasons Pc's have taken the lead in market share for a while now.
They have many choices, dell, gateway, and tons of other brands along with the possibality of Makeing Your Own.
Apple has: Apple for the OS
Apple for many of the Apps.
IBM/Motorola for the low clock speed processors.
Compared to the PC side:
Microsoft for the OS (mostly, linux users)
Microsoft and Many other fo apps.
Intel or AMD for nice processors...
We have the dis-advantage, for many of these factors...
Still many of us fight on for the better computer, and to fight off the world of monopoliyes.
As for performance we have lost in most catorgies due to, maybe companyies not writing code for the G4 altevic (sp?).
For many reasons Pc's have taken the lead in market share for a while now.
They have many choices, dell, gateway, and tons of other brands along with the possibality of Makeing Your Own.
Apple has: Apple for the OS
Apple for many of the Apps.
IBM/Motorola for the low clock speed processors.
Compared to the PC side:
Microsoft for the OS (mostly, linux users)
Microsoft and Many other fo apps.
Intel or AMD for nice processors...
We have the dis-advantage, for many of these factors...
Still many of us fight on for the better computer, and to fight off the world of monopoliyes.
MacsRgr8
Sep 20, 06:10 AM
Maybe the HD has a slimmed down version of Mac OS X installed on it, making it necessary to be in there, and it's very likely for caching purposes too.
Wish it did have a DVD-player in it, so that it could replace any ol' DVD player hooked up to the TV aswell. With the iTV you still need one.
That's pretty much what I did with my Mac mini Core Duo.... I have a LCD TV hooked up to the mini via DVI. I use Front Row to watch all my favorite movies I have downladed, and VLC for some HD content. And I use the mini's DVD player for wathcing these. It's great!
Wish it did have a DVD-player in it, so that it could replace any ol' DVD player hooked up to the TV aswell. With the iTV you still need one.
That's pretty much what I did with my Mac mini Core Duo.... I have a LCD TV hooked up to the mini via DVI. I use Front Row to watch all my favorite movies I have downladed, and VLC for some HD content. And I use the mini's DVD player for wathcing these. It's great!
Liquorpuki
Mar 16, 12:40 PM
Third, we do in fact have the resources to provide for our own society. Expand nuclear, expand oil, expand coal, expand natural gas, expand biofuels, keep investing in promising new alternatives (private investment, not government) and we could get to energy independence in probably 10 years or less. The only reason we're not doing it is because of burdensome government regulations and the fact that other countries can produce it cheaply. As prices rise, one of those issues becomes moot... Also, for the record, just because we could do it, doesn't necessarily mean we should. The free market should determine this. IF we're willing to pay more for American fuel, then so be it. If not, we'll continue buying from others... but don't let the government manipulate the markets and destroy common sense capitalism.
Few things
1. Oil independence and refining the electricity portfolio to become cleaner are two separate issues. Other than powering OLD stations, oil does not have a direct role in our portfolio.
2. Renewable energy is not cost effective at all. If we relied on the free market to drive renewable technology, they'd refuse to do so because they'd be losing money and we'd be stuck on coal for a long time. Then when coal runs out, we'd have no alternatives in place. This is why you need the government to subsidize and legislate. It's like putting solar panels on your roof. A capitalist is not going to spend $100K out of pocket to retrofit their house with an alternative energy source that will be generating at a loss. But with government subsidizing half of it and creating a break even point or allowing a profit through technologies like net metering (which is also subsidized), he just might.
3. Despite the fact it's not intrinsically profitable, greening the portfolio is still a worthy issue because environmentalism is an ethical issue, not a business decision. Environmentalsim doesn't care about profits like capitalism does. It cares about carbon footprints and long term sustainability of our planet.
Few things
1. Oil independence and refining the electricity portfolio to become cleaner are two separate issues. Other than powering OLD stations, oil does not have a direct role in our portfolio.
2. Renewable energy is not cost effective at all. If we relied on the free market to drive renewable technology, they'd refuse to do so because they'd be losing money and we'd be stuck on coal for a long time. Then when coal runs out, we'd have no alternatives in place. This is why you need the government to subsidize and legislate. It's like putting solar panels on your roof. A capitalist is not going to spend $100K out of pocket to retrofit their house with an alternative energy source that will be generating at a loss. But with government subsidizing half of it and creating a break even point or allowing a profit through technologies like net metering (which is also subsidized), he just might.
3. Despite the fact it's not intrinsically profitable, greening the portfolio is still a worthy issue because environmentalism is an ethical issue, not a business decision. Environmentalsim doesn't care about profits like capitalism does. It cares about carbon footprints and long term sustainability of our planet.
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nsjoker
Sep 20, 06:51 PM
either i'm missing the point of this iTV thing or people in america have ridiculous amounts of money to throw away and are willing to pay for tv shows which are free so they can stream them to their iTV box and watch them that way. it's a super efficient way to burn money, but not to watch tv shows. dvr please.
i mean.. i do understand people want frontrow on their tv's, but it seems like an inital craze thing. i'm not going to completely knock this product though, because if anything it's a starting point for apple to infiltrate your living room, and then releasing dvr functionality in the future. we'll see.
i mean.. i do understand people want frontrow on their tv's, but it seems like an inital craze thing. i'm not going to completely knock this product though, because if anything it's a starting point for apple to infiltrate your living room, and then releasing dvr functionality in the future. we'll see.
Ino
Sep 20, 01:57 AM
It sounds like it will not have HDMI or TiVo features, and it will play movies out of iTunes, which screams to me that it will only play .mp4 and .m4v files much like my 5G iPod.
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4561/picture1jq2.png
But it sure looks better than it sounds...;)
http://img246.imageshack.us/img246/4561/picture1jq2.png
But it sure looks better than it sounds...;)
Will_reed
Jul 11, 10:12 PM
I wonder if this will be good enough to cut my 4k footage off my yet to purchase red camera. How ever I think the quad g5 would be enough.
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joueboy
Apr 9, 12:14 AM
Just like everybody else!
jwdsail
Sep 21, 10:34 AM
It has HDMI output.. One way or another, it'll output HD (720p?1080p???)
Now, as to what the source quality will be...
I'd be happy as a pig in... to see true 480p/DVD w/ slightly higher bitrates from the iTS... (Ability to burn to DVD is what I'm holding out for) I think the network requirements to stream HD (hard drive or not) will rule out HD source for the short term/1.0.
Looking at the device, and the price.. I think it will behave much more like a wireless OPPO upconverting/upscaling DVD player...
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html
$199 for the highest rated up-converting DVD player...
My gut says that the Apple iPod Video Express will either have the same DCDi by Faroudja chip, or the closest ATI/NVidia/Intel equal inside.
If this device will cleanly up-convert/up-scale any video content on my Mac(s) to the native res of my TV (480, 720p, 1080p, etc) as well as the OPPO, I think it will be well worth the price Apple is talking about.
Just my $0.02US.
jwd
Now, as to what the source quality will be...
I'd be happy as a pig in... to see true 480p/DVD w/ slightly higher bitrates from the iTS... (Ability to burn to DVD is what I'm holding out for) I think the network requirements to stream HD (hard drive or not) will rule out HD source for the short term/1.0.
Looking at the device, and the price.. I think it will behave much more like a wireless OPPO upconverting/upscaling DVD player...
http://www.oppodigital.com/opdv971h.html
$199 for the highest rated up-converting DVD player...
My gut says that the Apple iPod Video Express will either have the same DCDi by Faroudja chip, or the closest ATI/NVidia/Intel equal inside.
If this device will cleanly up-convert/up-scale any video content on my Mac(s) to the native res of my TV (480, 720p, 1080p, etc) as well as the OPPO, I think it will be well worth the price Apple is talking about.
Just my $0.02US.
jwd
askthedust
Sep 20, 08:39 AM
...but in order for me to buy this box I want it to work without connecting to a computer. Just an easy (read Front Row interface) that would let me buy and watch or listen to my purchased content. Wireless would be perfect. plug this in hook it up to my tv and stereo and all my movies and music are on it. I can buy content and save it there. The only time I would want to connect to a computer would be to back up files and to make room for new content or find old content to stream into the box. I could then take this box with me to a friend's house to watch my movies there.
javajedi
Oct 8, 04:33 PM
I'm actually not a Windows developer (hence my nick :) ) but from what I understand you can do most of your fp stuff using the P4's vector engine. I also wanted to add to my first post that in integer ops, the G4 only achives clock parity. It goes without saying that the massively clocked P4's will well outperform a G4 in integer.
fivepoint
Mar 16, 08:16 AM
http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/electricalgeneration.png
Nuclear is the only non-fossil fuel which has proven itself capable of producing sizable amounts of electricity. Wind, solar, etc. are a complete joke as of today. Instead of the OP, I guess the question you really need to answer is, should we make decisions based on sound reality based scientific data, or short-term, panic-mode, irrational reactions to the effects of an extremely rare national emergency which could have been better prepared for (like not putting the plant on the ****** BEACH!)
For those of you advocating the elimination or reduction of nuke power, just realize that the only feasible alternative currently is...
Drill baby, drill!
Nuclear is the only non-fossil fuel which has proven itself capable of producing sizable amounts of electricity. Wind, solar, etc. are a complete joke as of today. Instead of the OP, I guess the question you really need to answer is, should we make decisions based on sound reality based scientific data, or short-term, panic-mode, irrational reactions to the effects of an extremely rare national emergency which could have been better prepared for (like not putting the plant on the ****** BEACH!)
For those of you advocating the elimination or reduction of nuke power, just realize that the only feasible alternative currently is...
Drill baby, drill!
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ddtlm
Oct 10, 01:10 PM
alex_ant:
Great to see you fighting the good fight!
others:
As true as it is that the G4 is slower than most of its compeditiors, when it is performing as bad as the numbers that some people have posted here then I can just about assure you that the Mac is at a severe software disadvantage. I mean really, look at the specs of a G4, the worst case performance delta between it and a top-of-the-line PC should be maybe 4x or 5x, not these 10x and higher numbers. There are very few situations when a G4 should do less work per clock than a P4.
So lets try to remain realistic here. It is virtually gaurenteed that the actual performance potential of a 1.25ghz G4 falls between that of a 1.3ghz P4 and the 2.8ghz P4.
EDIT:
Almost forgot to talk about SPEC. Some time ago, the only SPEC results that I know of for Macs were obtained by c't:
http://www.heise.de/ct/english/02/05/182/
In these they showed the G4 was more or less the same speed as a P3 of equal clock (1.0ghz) in the integer tests, when both where done done with GCC. Intel's compiler can give the P3 at 30% edge or something, so we know that the quality of compiler is hurting the G4 here. It is not fair to look at SPEC and declare other chips to be a zillion times faster than the G4, simply because they are all using very good compilers whereas Apple is stuck with GCC. Apple is working to improve GCC however, so things may get better.
(In SPEC FP the G4 get beat worse, I might add. Compilers played a role for sure, but can't explain the whole loss.)
Great to see you fighting the good fight!
others:
As true as it is that the G4 is slower than most of its compeditiors, when it is performing as bad as the numbers that some people have posted here then I can just about assure you that the Mac is at a severe software disadvantage. I mean really, look at the specs of a G4, the worst case performance delta between it and a top-of-the-line PC should be maybe 4x or 5x, not these 10x and higher numbers. There are very few situations when a G4 should do less work per clock than a P4.
So lets try to remain realistic here. It is virtually gaurenteed that the actual performance potential of a 1.25ghz G4 falls between that of a 1.3ghz P4 and the 2.8ghz P4.
EDIT:
Almost forgot to talk about SPEC. Some time ago, the only SPEC results that I know of for Macs were obtained by c't:
http://www.heise.de/ct/english/02/05/182/
In these they showed the G4 was more or less the same speed as a P3 of equal clock (1.0ghz) in the integer tests, when both where done done with GCC. Intel's compiler can give the P3 at 30% edge or something, so we know that the quality of compiler is hurting the G4 here. It is not fair to look at SPEC and declare other chips to be a zillion times faster than the G4, simply because they are all using very good compilers whereas Apple is stuck with GCC. Apple is working to improve GCC however, so things may get better.
(In SPEC FP the G4 get beat worse, I might add. Compilers played a role for sure, but can't explain the whole loss.)
Rodimus Prime
Mar 12, 01:44 PM
BTW, this Japanese plant was built in 1971, which is *older* than the 30+ years you deride the old Soviet plants for being. So there's more of your 'expert because I've got two degrees' opinion lying in more not so expert after all rubble. Speaking of deriding:
:p
I might like to point out that the Chernobyl plant was designed to produced weapons grade plutonium and produce power. That put some major problems on the design and put safety at risk. Control rods would have to be able to removed WHILE the reactor was running and fairly often. Not something you do unless you plane on making weapons grade plutonium. It also had to be much larger in size because it needed to produce power.
Yet another reason why this is not be Chernobyl.
We can also add unlike Soviet Russia Japan would not of cut huge safety corners to save cost at the time and over the past 30 years they sure as hell would of improved the plants safe.
:p
I might like to point out that the Chernobyl plant was designed to produced weapons grade plutonium and produce power. That put some major problems on the design and put safety at risk. Control rods would have to be able to removed WHILE the reactor was running and fairly often. Not something you do unless you plane on making weapons grade plutonium. It also had to be much larger in size because it needed to produce power.
Yet another reason why this is not be Chernobyl.
We can also add unlike Soviet Russia Japan would not of cut huge safety corners to save cost at the time and over the past 30 years they sure as hell would of improved the plants safe.
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torbjoern
Apr 24, 12:23 PM
What about fear of hell in the afterlife? Pretty powerful motivator that. Most mainstream religions still cling to this notion.
There are hells (known as "naraga") in Hinduism and Buddhism too, but none of them are eternal and all of them are only for people who have done really bad things in life - regardless of faith or lack thereof.
Christian believers who are enslaved by their fear of hell, as opposed to having their faith based on genuine love to God, will allegedly end up in hell anyway.
There are hells (known as "naraga") in Hinduism and Buddhism too, but none of them are eternal and all of them are only for people who have done really bad things in life - regardless of faith or lack thereof.
Christian believers who are enslaved by their fear of hell, as opposed to having their faith based on genuine love to God, will allegedly end up in hell anyway.
javajedi
Oct 8, 04:39 PM
I completely agree. As a software guy myself (maybe I'm a bit biased :)) I think the real magic is software. I think most would agree with me that Apple has a rather "unique" approach to software engineering, that sets it apart from the rest of the pack. Afterall, this is the biggest reason we use Macintosh. In my opinion, this is much more important than speed.
Silentwave
Jul 13, 08:29 AM
I've been wondering about this too. Surely they have the source code (or most of it) written in a high level language, right? If I'm not totally mistaken, there shouldn't be that much more work involved than a re-compilation for x86. Even if some filters or other stuff are hand coded in assembler, they already have that code in x86-assembler in the Windows version.
Adobe is weird...but I think they have a lot more up their sleeve than just universal. I think they want it to run extremely well on intel macs, and perhaps continue work at the same time on making more of their features take advantage of quads.
Adobe is weird...but I think they have a lot more up their sleeve than just universal. I think they want it to run extremely well on intel macs, and perhaps continue work at the same time on making more of their features take advantage of quads.
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Chappers
Mar 13, 12:13 PM
When pumps failed to pump in water and the back up diesel powered generators failed they ran into problems.
If its important - have more than one backup. Risk assessment means always thinking of the worse case scenario. Pumping in sea water seems like a panic back up plan.
If its important - have more than one backup. Risk assessment means always thinking of the worse case scenario. Pumping in sea water seems like a panic back up plan.
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tigress666
Apr 10, 01:08 PM
Honestly, I think what will be a major deciding factor on how well the iphone/android does against dedicated handhelds is how many developers decide to also put their games on the iphone/android as well as how many very good and unique to the handheld game the handhelds get (basically can these people deciding if they are also going to buy a handheld on top of their smartphone still play the games they want on their smartphone even if it isn't as good as an experience on the hand held? I think many people might decide it's not worth buying that extra handheld long as they can get the games they want to play on the device they already have. And that there aren't games that entice them to get the handheld that they can't get on their smartphone).
I don't think a 3D screen is going to make a big difference more than just game availability (for example the 3d screen is neat to look at, but I wouldn't buy the 3Ds for that. I'm more likely to be enticed by the new Sony hand held coming out as I suspect it more likely will attract the games I want to play. So far I'm less than impressed with the games out on the 3Ds. And I know I"m very disappointed in the type of games Nintendo tends to attract. My mom gave me her wii and I still haven't found a game I want to buy for it :( ). I think having some really good games that you can't get on the smartphones will be what convinces people that it is worth it to buy that extra device.
But in the end, when talking about gaming systems, it doesn't matter how good your hardware is, the most important deciding factor is games available. You could have the best hardware in the world, the best designed controller, the prettiest screen, but it won't amount to a hill of beans if you can't attract a good amount of *good* games.
I don't think a 3D screen is going to make a big difference more than just game availability (for example the 3d screen is neat to look at, but I wouldn't buy the 3Ds for that. I'm more likely to be enticed by the new Sony hand held coming out as I suspect it more likely will attract the games I want to play. So far I'm less than impressed with the games out on the 3Ds. And I know I"m very disappointed in the type of games Nintendo tends to attract. My mom gave me her wii and I still haven't found a game I want to buy for it :( ). I think having some really good games that you can't get on the smartphones will be what convinces people that it is worth it to buy that extra device.
But in the end, when talking about gaming systems, it doesn't matter how good your hardware is, the most important deciding factor is games available. You could have the best hardware in the world, the best designed controller, the prettiest screen, but it won't amount to a hill of beans if you can't attract a good amount of *good* games.
The Beatles
Apr 9, 12:49 PM
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)
Ahhh. A Gamer. Thanks.;) What you are seeing is called RDF. That field will not be around forever.
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Ahhh. A Gamer. Thanks.;) What you are seeing is called RDF. That field will not be around forever.
Evangelion
Jul 12, 02:51 PM
APPLE IS USING INTEL STOCK PARTS incase you didn't know , so mixing the MacPro with Conroe/Woody would not cost a dime more. they will use a basic P965 chipset for Conroe and 5000X Chipset for Woody.
Yes it would. Ever heard of economies of scale? If Apple told Intel "we want to buy 600.000 Woodcrests from you", they would get a nice discount. Spread that purchase over several different CPU's, and the discount is not that nice anymore. Furtermore, having two different CPU's, two different chipsets and two different types of RAM in single line of computers, is going to make inventory-management and maintentance quite a bit more expensive than having single lineup with one type of compoennts.
Yes it would. Ever heard of economies of scale? If Apple told Intel "we want to buy 600.000 Woodcrests from you", they would get a nice discount. Spread that purchase over several different CPU's, and the discount is not that nice anymore. Furtermore, having two different CPU's, two different chipsets and two different types of RAM in single line of computers, is going to make inventory-management and maintentance quite a bit more expensive than having single lineup with one type of compoennts.
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awmazz
Mar 11, 02:36 AM
Watching NHK at the moment and the static camera showing live feed of the burning gas pipeline just kept shaking for two minutes and the newsreader said it was an aftershock.
NB. I guess the most critical things that can get damaged in Japan are the nuke power stations, the reports so far say none are leaking.
NB. I guess the most critical things that can get damaged in Japan are the nuke power stations, the reports so far say none are leaking.
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skunk
Apr 25, 12:48 PM
I know that there is no chance whatever that the gods espoused by any religion are anything but contemporary imaginations of forces to be explained or propitiated, either in the natural world or in the psychology of homo sapiens. To claim that any one is real, or more real than any other, is blindly to ignore their obvious common derivation.
milo
Sep 20, 11:39 AM
With FrontRow on the Mini it can act as a hub for the other computers in the network and play the movies via iTunes streaming.
Sure. And you're spending more to have two computers instead of one computer and one cheaper, simpler box.
1) No TV tuner support (eyeTV hybrid no go on iTV). eyeTV on another computer defeats the purpose of pausing live TV.
If they can make it work, I don't see any reason why eyeTV live TV couldn't be paused via the iTV remote. There's no technical reason it wouldn't be possible, they'd just have to implement it. Same with buying iTunes content direct from iTV, they could certainly add the feature if they wanted to.
But nobody will be downloading HD for iTV, so that's a moot point. From what I've seen so far it actually does less than other media streamers.
That's an assumption on your part. How do you know that iTunes won't include HD content in the future? How do you know that people won't be able to stream HD content from other sources?
?? TiVo will provide you a PVR that burns DVDs, has a tuner and hard drive, and wirelessly connects to your macintosh and plays your photo library and itunes for $300 plus you have to buy a usb network reciever for like $25.
So it's basically the same thing except for the videos which of course didn't exist when tivo adopted the technology, and since they'll play your photos they'll probalby adopt the videos too. I think I'll just hold out for my TiVo to do the same thing PLUS be a PVR and DVD burner.
Link? And is the $300 buying the box, or is that a montly fee for some amount of time? Where is the mac support, the tivo site says they don't support it?
Sure. And you're spending more to have two computers instead of one computer and one cheaper, simpler box.
1) No TV tuner support (eyeTV hybrid no go on iTV). eyeTV on another computer defeats the purpose of pausing live TV.
If they can make it work, I don't see any reason why eyeTV live TV couldn't be paused via the iTV remote. There's no technical reason it wouldn't be possible, they'd just have to implement it. Same with buying iTunes content direct from iTV, they could certainly add the feature if they wanted to.
But nobody will be downloading HD for iTV, so that's a moot point. From what I've seen so far it actually does less than other media streamers.
That's an assumption on your part. How do you know that iTunes won't include HD content in the future? How do you know that people won't be able to stream HD content from other sources?
?? TiVo will provide you a PVR that burns DVDs, has a tuner and hard drive, and wirelessly connects to your macintosh and plays your photo library and itunes for $300 plus you have to buy a usb network reciever for like $25.
So it's basically the same thing except for the videos which of course didn't exist when tivo adopted the technology, and since they'll play your photos they'll probalby adopt the videos too. I think I'll just hold out for my TiVo to do the same thing PLUS be a PVR and DVD burner.
Link? And is the $300 buying the box, or is that a montly fee for some amount of time? Where is the mac support, the tivo site says they don't support it?