Karl Lattimer wrote:
Hi all,
Hi,
While we all love tinkering with freevo, as hackers do, and we love the
excitement of getting some cool feature that Dischi or others have
written, isn't it time that we all seriously looked at the commercial
potential of FreeVo?
Yes, and this is something I think a lot about, every single day.
Let me draw your attention to this article;
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS6031471658.html
It seems microsoft is really pushing the media centre PC product into
our homes, now as a avid hater of all things evil and redmond I
personally would never stoop so low as to use such a device, however
making these systems this accessible is something that microsoft
seriously has over the freevo project.
Yes, they have lots of money and marketing power. We are just poor
hobbyists. :) Well, we have power in other areas.
Freevo 2.0 is going to give us a whole new system to tinker with, now
this could just be an opportune time to say "well, what do we need to
make freevo a commercially viable product?"
Yes, Freevo 2.0 should put us closer to that goal but it needs much more
work. Besides the timeshifting thing we'd need to dumb-down the
configuration for consumer usability. IMO this is something that can't
be done until either:
1) Some company steps up and hires or sponsors Freevo developers.
2) Freevo developers make these features a priority - which isn't going
to happen until other loose ends are tied up. This will happen in due
time but maybe not soon enough to give Freevo a commercial advantage, or
maybe I'm just being paranoid.
3) Someone with a lot of spare time steps up and submits a bunch of
code. People have been chipping in, that's good, but there's a LOT of
work to be done in this area.
Imagine if freevo had features like, a configuration front end and time
shifting? How about refinements to things like the encoding server so we
get a progress display.
There are many other features which would be 'cool' for freevo, I
remember hearing some noise on the list about multiple tuner scheduling
in fv2.0. How about iconbar information regarding TV-Schedules
(Now/Next) cycling through while you're deciding what to watch,
Recording server activity or a freevo 'dashboard' style experience
instead of an iconbar, (as per apple's tiger dashboard), allowing you to
show/hide the dashboard when a movie is playing for things like email
and alike. And of course, a miniview is a must have so you can still
watch you're entertainment as you're using the interface.
Ditto.
These are only some ideas but it would be nice for freevo to be adopted
by a company like apple for use with their hardware (imagine a mac mini
freevo). Devices like microsofts media centre extender are easy for us
to do because Linux is there in all its glory.
We can certainly turn heads, thanks to everyone who has contributed to
this project. Maybe partnering with a big company is what Freevo needs
to get into the commercial market.
Some of you may have noticed my new email address. That's because I'm
registering a business, because some way I know there's potential for
using Freevo commercially. I don't have any single business plan, no
capital, just a few bucks for a new webserver and some toys to hack on -
ALL in my spare time because I hold a full time job (you know, that puts
food on the table!). I have some plans for a website that should help
Freevo indirectly as well. It is a passion of mine and I'd love to make
it my actual profession so I'm setting myself up to pounce if an
opportunity comes around. :)
Set top boxes are the future of PVR's, and we're already ahead of the
game.
Yes, the STB is key - there's lots of work to be done though. If we can
stay under the radar for a little while longer, when 2.0 is fine we
could be in a lot better position.
-Rob
--
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Rob Shortt | http://tvcentric.com | Freevo
[EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://freevo.sf.net | Free your TV
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