iTV, cablecard, .n

[j o a r]

On 11 dec 2006, at 22.22, Kevin Callahan wrote:

> We recently bought EyeTV - mostly so that we can view things  
> commercial free.  It has its own "Front Row" look-a-like interface,  
> but it's not integrated with Apple's Front Row.

Have you tried MediaCentral?

	<http://www.equinux.com/us/products/mediacentral/index.html>

Unfortunately not compatible with EyeTV (as far as I can tell).

> I was trying to get friend interested in buying a Mac mini with  
> Front Row - he went to the Apple store to test drive a setup, but  
> he ended up spending nearly 5.5K on a Windows media center - said  
> it was because everything was integrated - tuner, music, videos,  
> photos etc.  He did say it doesn't work very well, however.

That's always the case, isn't it...   ;-)

I made the mistake of buying a D-Link WiFi base station a while back.  
It was for a small company with both Windows and Mac users. I figured  
that it might be a tad more difficult to set up, but that it would be  
cheaper and more capable. It turned out to be a complete nightmare  
with a crappy web interface, and in the end plain didn't work. I  
ended up getting an AirPort Express instead. Up and running in 5  
minutes of course. Lesson learned.

What's wrong with most (all?) companies not affiliated with the Mac  
platform? What they think is "good enough" isn't. This line of  
thought made me remember an old blog post by John Gruber:

	<http://daringfireball.net/2006/06/and_oranges>

There are a lot of clever observations in that article, but I can't  
agree with everything, for example:

	"Mac OS X is better than Windows if you care about user interface  
design;
	if you don’t, though, it’s just different, not better."

It's not just about the UI! It's about soul, culture, love, respect  
and responsibility.

Anyway - I'm off on a tangent now for sure... Better quit before I  
get smacked down by the list mom.

j o a r