So why does Apple want to sell more phones in it's istore?
It's well known that the cellular phone companies are paying exactly the same price for an iphone that Apple charges retail customers, even though cell companies buy them in quantities of hundred thousand.
Why would it benefit Apple to try to get more of these "sales" (if they're not really sales) in their istore?
You have a cite for that? First time I've heard it and it seems very illogical. I smell BS.
Did you read your own source:
"Like the iPod before it, the iPhone is a gateway product that introduces n ew customers to the rest of the company's offerings. As Cook said last year at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference, "What is clearly happening now is that the iPhone is creating a halo for the Macintosh. The iPhone has also created a halo for iPad."
Most of the indepedent stores who resell get a cut, I would think that adds up to serious bucks with absolutely no outlay for Apple. It isn't like Mom&Pop cellular where they have to get a store, advertise, etc. Selling iPhones for the companies has to be pretty much all profit for Apple. If Radio Shack and Best Buy want Sprint, Verizon, etc., "stores" inside of their stores, Apple would have to be at least as profitable. My other guess is that they just like the control.
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Yabbut . . . The pundits were so sure that the ACA would be nixed by the court that news outlets actually announced that it was - and then had to issue retractions. Aereo's had some significant wins in the lower courts so I wouldn't write them off just yet.
It ain't over until it's over.
I agree you can't predict what the court will do. Even regarding the ACA, it isn't over yet. It seems Roberts with his supposedly genius reinvention of the Obamacare penalty as a tax, may have been the one that ultimately screwed it. A case is now making it way through the courts challenging the ACA because it involved a tax and all revenue bills must originate in the House, which ACA did not. It's pretty clear that's blatantly unconstitutional. But then maybe this time Roberts can rule that the House isn't the House, but something else.
A lot depends on just finding the right angle, which some smart folks just did with affirmative action. This time, it's pretty much over. Opponents figured out that when the people pass a law outlawing discrimination and the Constitution clearly says you can't discriminate based on race, it's impossible to rule that is unconstitutional. At least it was obvious to everyone but the few that don't care what the Constitution says, eg Sotamayor. "Well affirmative action helped me, look where I am, so it's cool I'm all for it." Doesnt matter that she got special treatment by discriminating against some white or asian that had similar background, achievements and the same qualifications. Bye, bye affirmative action. If a law ending it passed by 58% in Michigan, similar laws can and will pass in most other states.
I've had a number of tunerless media recorders before this that are capable of supporting internal SATA/PATA drives as well as the USB externals and I can say unequivocally that external drive support is far more useful. You can easily detach the drive, back it up or as I do, distribute the recordings to the in-home media network. One drive for movies, another for episodic TV, etc.
External drive support is far more valuable, at least to me. Eliminating internal drive support makes the media box both smaller and *way* cheaper to produce as a result. Thirty six bucks for a device capable of recording HD TV from free OTA broadcasts is a bit of a miracle compared to the $100-$150
*tunerless* standard density boxes I've used before. Admittedly they had more features like an ethernet port and the ability to record a composite video signal, but that's nowhere near as useful as a built in ATSC tuner that has a program guide and HD quality recordings. The Mediasonic box even has composite, component and RF outputs making it compatible with my network of old SD TV's throughout the house that serve as a front door video intercom.I can scan the electronic program guide, selecting what I want to record in the next few days with a couple of clicks. Removable media also means you don't have to do the TIVO shuffle when the disk is full and you either have to watch, erase or archive old recordings to make space. Now I just mount another $50 external USB disk and I am back to recording. The biggest downside is that now instead of getting 1 hour per gig at SD resolution it takes 5GB per HD hour. With 3 and 4 TB disks on the market, that's not really an issue since the USB port seems able to supply enough power to run even the USB bus-powered drives. I believe from what I've read it also can support multiple drives through a powered USB hub, but I have yet to test that.
While it's still a little bit buggy (latest firmware is V.14), the ability to record in HD for $36 bucks (and the cost of an external drive, which many of us have anyway) is really a quantum leap. I don't know why Panasonic, Polaroid and many others have left the DVR/PVR market, but I suspect the content providers have made it clear that they want to control any kind of recording by end-users.
That's a good point. For some Sportacus types even a 4" screen that allows them to watch a championship game would be a draw. But I suspect you're right that content providers want to control that signal as well, and OTA reception of such telecasts is not what their business models want to stress. Burning up data minutes seems to be what they would prefer to free OTA reception.
Each year Comcast takes away more and more channels that I like and replaces them with crap that's cheap for them to buy. When they dropped Turner Classic Movies that was the final straw. I decided then to "cut the cord" and go with OTA, Netflix and the free streaming that comes from Amazon Prime.
A year or so ago I bought a Netgear EVA9000 for $100. It has no tuner, and it doesn't record (although the chipset inside does have divx or h264 recording capability). It had no hard drive - I added a 1tb WD-Green drive for about $65. The box has a nice front-panel door and drawer for the hard drive - which slides out the front.
I have that box connected to my 36" Sony Wega (flatscreen tube tv, circa year 2000) and my Denon AVR 3300 receiver (via digital audio link).
What I would love is a box like the Netgear, with ATSC tuner and the ability to record OTA and anything I feed into the back of the box (NTSC composite video, for example).
A box without internal hard drive is crap. The EVA9000 has internal drive AND front and back USB ports. I can connect keyboard or mouse to this thing.
32 or 64 gb USB thumb drives are too small capacity for set-top tuner/PVR recording solution. I want a box that can store all my shit and record stuff too. The ability to stick in a thumb drive to put stuff on (the internal drive) or pull stuff off (the internal drive) is always there.Some hi-res 1920 x 1080 video files require more bandwidth than a lot of USB thumbdrives are capable of. The USB interface itself of some of these STB's are pathetically slow.
Of course there is something stopping you from taking an OTA signal and then redistributing it for free. The court case with Aero is over copyrights and violation of copyrights occurs whether you charge for it or give it away. If you put up an antenna and ran a cable down the street to 6 houses, unlikely that the networks are going to know about what you're doing or even do anything if they found out, but from everything I see, it's exactly the same copyright violation issue that they are pursuing with regard to Aero. You can't take something that's copyrighted and redistribute it.
Dell used to make a box called the Zino with exactly these specs. Mines about 3 or 4 years old now and is just starting to act up on the HDMI interface to the TV. Has 1 TB harddrive which holds all the OTA stuff I care to record (mostly football and the Sunday political shows). Runs Windows 7, so no problem with VPNs or using a web browser to view other stuff. Has a Blueray drive for DVDs.
Looking for a replacement, but short of an Android SoC (yuk) or a fullsize desktop, it's difficult to find something.
There's a lot more to it than that. An important point to remember about the exorbitant retransmission fees that OTA broadcasters exact from the cable TV companies is that they do NOT go to the copyright holders, but to the TV stations. That really muddies the water of copyright infringement claims because the actual copyright holders are not really in the loop.
When Congress gave broadcasters the choice of compelling the local cable service to retransmit their signals at no cost, or compelling compensation in exchange for consent to retransmit, it was regulating commerce and communications, not copyrights.
There is no unfairness or free-riding here because the public has no obligation to pay for access to local broadcast signals. Members of the public are *entitled* to watch and hear any over-the-air broadcast programming that they are capable of receiving. It is that simple. The copyright owner has no right to control who may join the audience. This is a little like the Bundy case in that a smoke-screen's going up meant to cloud the underlying issue: Broadcasters want money from Aereo like they get from Comcast and others.
CATV companies *could* have retransmitted broadcast signals without paying for them, but the Congressional catch was that then they could not *charge* users for them either. The CATV companies realized it would mean more profit if they paid broadcasters and charged users for the content. And charge them they did!
This is part and parcel of broadcasters enjoying the right to use the
*publicly owned* broadcast spectrum. In the Betamax decision, it was further decided that people had the right to record OTA broadcast for viewing at a later time. Aereo has compared the installation of a TV aerial on your roof (that might need a rotor to work well) and the ownership of a DVR to record from your antenna to leasing that equipment and maintenance thereof from them.In the urban canyons where Aereo flourishes it's usually not even possible to mount an external antenna. If you're on the "shadow side" of a old building with plaster lathe construction, you don't even get a signal. I know Kurt takes exception to this concept, but stop and think about it. Would anyone pay for Aereo if they could get a good OTA signal *without* paying for it?
Why would Aereo even work as a business model if the people that purchased their service could just as easily use rabbit ears? Unfortunately it's been well-established in urban areas that not everyone who is legally entitled to OTA broadcasts can actually receive them.
Because when someone is sitting in Starbucks, in a stadium, or at the office with their cell phone or tablet, they don't have a TV and antenna are some examples.
See above.
Unfortunately it's been
Whatever the issue ultimately revolves around, there are indeed legal issues that say you can't receive material OTA then put it on a cable and send it off to other folks. That was my point. The poster claimed one could do that.
Actually, I don't have a dog in this fight. My point was only that there is something stopping one from putting up an antenna, receiving broadcast TV and retransmitting it to other people's homes.
The same more viewers equals more ad revenue applies to OTA being retransmitted on cable. Yet the broadcasters managed to get them to pay......
If true, that supports my suggestion that one reason you may not see them here is that the cell phone carriers here don't want it.
What exactly are you talking about? We have DVR's here in the good old USA that are not cable boxes. I have one. Are you talking about Blu Ray recorders? You can buy those too.
With the way the corporation-funded Supreme Court ruled on Citizens United, I'm pretty sure they'll rule in favor of Areo.
And if that leads to OTA/antenna broadcasts being yanked, there just won't be anymore TV in this household.
bob haller wrote: "Really OTA is obsolete, its used by about 8% of the population many of which have cable or sat. at the time of digital conversion OTA should of been killed.
TV bandwidth is more useful for cell phones
Cable and sat would be happy to pick up more subscribers, at say 10 bucks a pop for lifeline service.
Ending OTA would save a lot of electricity...
tv stations could resell their bandwidth for cell. "
Question: Do you work for Aereo?
Does anyone happen to know just how much those fees are, on a per-customer basis?
I don't think it's possible to know what fraction of Aereo's customer live in OTA-challenged circumstances.
It would also involve speculating to what extent these customers watch Aereo on stationary TV's (which is a challenge in itself for the vast majority of people) vs on a tablet or phone somewhere else (commuting to work? In a park? At work? In a restaurant or bar?).
We would have to see a breakdown of the various use-cases for how and where these people are using aereo.
For the average person I would say yes. Many people either do not know or have long forgotten that terrestrial TV broadcasting was (and still us) commonplace and everpresent.
Ok, you're clearly operating under some old impressions here.
For one, multipath distortion did cause problems for "urban canyon" reception, particularly on VHF channels. But also remember that VHF and UHF frequencies penetrate much further into sold materials vs cell-phone frequencies. The 700 mhz spectrum (formerly used by UHF channels 53 through 69) which is now allocated to new cellular service promises a new era in trouble-free reception for portable devices.
Also note that many TV stations have abandoned VHF channels (particularly VHF-lo) and have gone to UHF.
The claim that a cell phone needs a telescoping whip antenna to receive OTA TV can be completely trashed if you simply don't even try tuning in the VHF spectrum at all, or simply optimize the internal antenna for UHF only and accept spotty VHF performance (which isin't really a hardship because as just mentioned the vast majority of TV is now using UHF channels).
Second, we're talking digital ATSC signals, for which you can receive a crystal-clear picture with surprisingly low signal levels and multipath distortion. So stop comparing the receive-ability of analog TV a decade ago in hi-rise urban appartment buildings with what is possible today's digital signal format.
The 800 lb gorilla in the room is still asking why even just a few models of cell phones made today (and available in north america) does not have the ability to receive these signals.
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Sanyo Shows Off Cell Phone With Integrated Television Tuner Saturday, August 09, 2003
For the second time in almost as many weeks, a Japanese company has been showing off a handheld device with built-in television tuner. This one is a phone with TV, not a PDA like that last one, but it still looks very interesting and promises to open more doors like this for PDAs going forward.
The Sanyo Electric used 2.2 inch organic EL display, the portable telephone of terrestrial digital television broadcasting correspondence was made on an experimental basis. Besides the fact that you use the tip/chip of new development and can do television viewing of 90 parts, video recording of 30 parts is possible inside. The substance corresponds to CDMA2000 1x. ================
Yes, that was in 2003.
You want something more recent?
================ Samsung Galaxy S II TV is an Android smartphone with built-in television receiver
Posted: 15 Aug 2013,
Despite the name, the Samsung Galaxy S II TV has almost nothing to do with the company's former flagship device. It is a brand new Android smartphone that comes with a digital TV receiver and a built-in retractable antenna. With support for the ISDB-T broadcasting standard, the handset lets its user enjoy live television, displayed on the
4-inch, 800x480 pixel screen. Further specs include a 1GHz dual-core processor, main camera of 5 megapixels, 4GB of storage, microSD card slot, and a 1500mAh battery. Android 4.2.2 is included out of the box.Clearly, the Samsung Galaxy S II TV is an interesting device despite its mid-range hardware specifications. Too bad that we might not lay our hands on it anytime soon as we're not expecting this device to be launched globally. Samsung is planning on marketing the Galaxy S II TV in Brazil where it will come in a dual-SIM flavor.
From what I've read, they've been able to watch OTA TV on cell phones in Japan and South Korea since 2005 or 2006 and China (not sure starting when).
And you well know that many people in these asian countries live in hyper-canyonized cities.
Show me a DVR sold by a big-box retailer that is a 100% digital equivalent to the old analog NTSC vcr.
By that, I mean it has:
- ATSC tuner, and possibly clear-QAM tuner
- tuner input (F-connector) for CATV cable or antenna
- component, svideo, rca (composite) video and hdmi output (so the box can function as a "digital convertor box")
- can record to internal hard drive what you've tuned into, regardless if it's a 720 or 1080 video signal
- can retreive any channel schedule information
- programmable (scheduled) recording
- auxilliary back-panel inputs for recording other signals fed into the box (RCA, S-Video, AND hdmi)
And what it should have (that wasn't around in the VCR days):
- RJ45 ethernet jack for connecting the device to your home LAN for network accessibility on other devices to stream recorded content from internal hard drive or outright copy files between devices, configure a recording schedule or look up a channel guide, watch live tv, etc.
- wifi radio to perform any of the above activities mentioned for hard-wired ethernet, to the extent that wifi is capable of.
no just interested in the industry. I repair machines for a living
bob haller wrote: "- show quoted text - no just interested in the industry. I repair machines for a living "
Great. And I happen to be the proad owner of a rooftop antenna picking up my ATSC that way and loving it.
Idiot. If you're going to play the alleged corporate power over the SC card, at least try to do it right. Who is more powerful? Little piss-ant Aero or the major broadcasters and networks?
You're obviously just watching cartoons anyway.
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