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Steve Jobs on HDTV, "I finally cracked it."

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Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
I hope this TV does come out one day and is actually pretty unique so we can all look back on dismissive quotes like this.

Pretty much. Although any walled garden comments already go through my nutter filter. haha
 
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
I hope this TV does come out one day and is actually pretty unique so we can all look back on dismissive quotes like this.
It'll be unique, and it'll be walled. And I'll be there to say that a TV with internet access would be better in every conceivable way.

Apple could then compete with their UI and offerings on an open marketplace, where they'd still kick ass.
 
giga said:
Still too complicated. The device needs to be iOS levels of easiness.

The web interface to setup is pretty easy to use IMO. It just asks what you have it sets it all up and you're on your way. That pretty much does 95% of what you'll need to do and for most that last 5% isn't even needed. Heck they even made a Harmony iPhone/iPad/Android version. I'm not sure how much easier it can get without removing functionality of what you can do. I wouldn't say removing functionality is a way to say you cracked the problem.
 

rezuth

Member
Marty Chinn said:
Opposite end? Slow? What? Which model do you have? The Harmony remotes is the first time I could ever put away all my remotes and anyone could use my setup without knowing how it works. They really do a lot of things to simplify the experience for the end user.
I have a Harmony One. It takes almost a full second longer than my normal remote. It uses power like crazy compared to it. Unintended touches are made all the time on the touchscreen, not to mention its way too small to work properly. You also need to be an advanced computer user to set one up. I mean there is a huge list of problems with the product. If you are an experienced user it can clearly help out a lot but for normal users its a nightmare. At least based on my experience and others I know. (I know that sucks but these are the average joes)
 

Lima

Member
Windu said:
You underestimate how dumb people are. The idea of different inputs is like rocket science to my dad, i even made a idiots guide to the tv and that didnt get through to him.

People are only so dumb because we treat them like the are dumb.
 

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
Liu Kang Baking A Pie said:
I hope this TV does come out one day and is actually pretty unique so we can all look back on dismissive quotes like this.
Lol how is that unique? its all about content deals, it always has been and it always will be. Btw most tvs nowadays can connect to the internet for upgrades and even some have special content.
 
Lima said:
People are only so dumb because we treat them like the are dumb.

After doing tech support for a few years, I'd say you're so so wrong. Some cannot and will not be taught anything when it comes to tech.

It has nothing to do with lowered expectations.
 
Cereal KiIIer said:
Pretty simple
y2Npe.png
I got one. And while setup(timings etc) was a bitch with my system, thks thing has been a godsend.
 

iNvid02

Member
NullPointer said:
Yeah - its called a TV with internet access. No walled garden required.

I cracked it too.

recently got a samsung smart tv and the smart part is OK but could do with a lot of improvement.

for one its quite slow, typing with a remote takes aages, ui design is a mess - someone
like apple could come along and clean everything up and do it much better.
 

rezuth

Member
Windu said:
Lol how is that unique? its all about content deals, it always has been and it always will be. Btw most tvs nowadays can connect to the internet for upgrades and even some have special content.
This is true but my Sony is pretty much useless and so fucking slow. I tried browsing some youtube on it but the slowness and the bad UI just killed it for me.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Cereal KiIIer said:
Pretty simple
y2Npe.png

That picture makes it looks simple. but I have a Harmony remote. And setting up Macros is fucking idiotic. In a 1978 browser. And heaven forfend that one of your IR devices is obscured by a plant when it TURNS EVERYTHING ON TO WATCH A DVD.

So I find myself using the discreet device buttons, and then I find myself realizing not all of the buttons are accurately mapped.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool, but it's actually counter to the idea of simplicity. It's actually just a rounder edged flavor of complexity.

Exhibit A: My wife can't use the Harmony remote and seeks out the individual ones.
 

kehs

Banned
He probably came up with iRblaster.

p.s. anyone with a smartphone/tablet/itouch should get a wifi ir blaster.
 
Windu said:
Lol how is that unique? its all about content deals, it always has been and it always will be. Btw most tvs nowadays can connect to the internet for upgrades and even some have special content.
Um, we don't know anything about what Jobs thought up for the TV beyond "iCloud" and "I cracked it." What are you criticizing, exactly?
 

giga

Member
Marty Chinn said:
The web interface to setup is pretty easy to use IMO. It just asks what you have it sets it all up and you're on your way. That pretty much does 95% of what you'll need to do and for most that last 5% isn't even needed. Heck they even made a Harmony iPhone/iPad/Android version. I'm not sure how much easier it can get without removing functionality of what you can do. I wouldn't say removing functionality is a way to say you cracked the problem.
Can you post some screenshots of the user interface?

I look at this:

15600.png


And I'm wondering how do I select a specific TV show or movie? What's the music interface like? Isn't this merely just a $500 remote with the problem that you're still going up and down channels with an up/down toggle instead of just picking what you want and watching it?
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
i doubt Apple will enter the TV landscape. There isnt much they can do with yearly updates. Then again they did yearly planned obsolescence with mp3 players so who knows? Maybe people will buy a new big screen every year?
 
rezuth said:
I have a Harmony One. It takes almost a full second longer than my normal remote. It uses power like crazy compared to it. Unintended touches are made all the time on the touchscreen, not to mention its way too small to work properly. You also need to be an advanced computer user to set one up. I mean there is a huge list of problems with the product. If you are an experienced user it can clearly help out a lot but for normal users its a nightmare. At least based on my experience and others I know. (I know that sucks but these are the average joes)

I've only messed with a Harmony One for a little bit, but my 676 is pretty damn responsive. Just as responsive the normal remotes. Something odd is going on if you're getting a full second delay. I don't see how you need to be an advance cocmputer user to set one up since it just asks you a series of questions and sets most of it for you. To tweak it for advance functionality, sure, but the core setup is pretty easy and painless. Once it's setup, the usage is damn simple for just about anyone. I've seen people use my setup for the first time with a simple instruction of, just press the activity you want to do, and if you ever have an issue, press the help button. Nobody ever has to know how my setup works because now it just works through the remote. I don't see how you're going to get much simpler other than removing functionality. Maybe Steve Jobs figured out how to streamline the setup on the software setup, but other than that, you're going to have to do something to play with other equipment that you have no control over.
 

KHarvey16

Member
Haha, Apple making an MP3 player? Like that hasn't been done! What a bunch of noobs!

Haha, Apple making a phone? Like that hasn't been done! What a bunch of noobs!
 

water_wendi

Water is not wet!
KHarvey16 said:
Haha, Apple making an MP3 player? Like that hasn't been done! What a bunch of noobs!
Hey.. i thought some people thought Apple invented the mp3 player? Theres a person who doesnt live under a rock on this very forum that was totally fucking floored that the iPod wouldnt skip like his CD player.
 
I just want a cable box with a UI that isn't horribly clunky and slow, and that finally does away with numbered channels. I don't want to remember that ESPN is channel 5540, just list it as ESPN, and put the channels in alphabetical order.
 
giga said:
Can you post some screenshots of the user interface?

I look at this:

And I'm wondering how do I select a specific TV show or movie? What's the music interface like? Isn't this merely just a $500 remote with the problem that you're still going up and down channels with an up/down toggle instead of just picking what you want and watching it?

Well for starters, you can set it up so you can choose channels by picture icons. There's also a guide you can setup so that you can pick by content and it will know what channel to turn to. Outside of that, it's going to be hard to completely revamp the interface while still using Cable or Satellite systems. A Harmony remote simply takes the current setup and streamlines it to minimize what you have to hit to do what you want to do.

Now if Apple's solution is to get all the content providers, provide some other service that allows you to get to that content without usint your existing setup, then I wouldn't call that cracking it. If they're just doing what Google did except with the blessing of the content providers, then I think anyone could have figured that out as to being the solution to that problem. Without that, I'm not sure how else you can solve it outside of something like what Harmony is doing where they are trying to mask channel numbers with inputs that jump you to what you want to see.
 

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
KHarvey16 said:
Haha, Apple making an MP3 player? Like that hasn't been done! What a bunch of noobs!

Haha, Apple making a phone? Like that hasn't been done! What a bunch of noobs!
there were mp3 players before the ipod. And yeah the iphone was the first with multitouch.

but the notion that a tv with a internet connection, harddrive and gui is new is laughable. Apple of course will make it better than anything on the market but it wont be a "new" concept.
 

demon

I don't mean to alarm you but you have dogs on your face
Ninja Scooter said:
I just want a cable box with a UI that isn't horribly clunky and slow, and that finally does away with numbered channels. I don't want to remember that ESPN is channel 5540, just list it as ESPN, and put the channels in alphabetical order.
lol, I don't know why I never thought about this before, but you're right. Numbered channels is so antiquated.
 
I'm not an Apple guy at all, but current TV interfaces do seem pretty antiquated in the face of recent UI advances, and I think Apple could do a great job with something like this. Hopefully this makes it into a real product.
 

B!TCH

how are you, B!TCH? How is your day going, B!ITCH?
What exactly is new about Jobs saying this? He talked about this at D years ago, so what? He also said why it couldn't be done and it's a more complicated problem than the phone problem. Did you forget to include that part OP?
 

Wallach

Member
Windu said:
there were mp3 players before the ipod. And yeah the iphone was the first with multitouch.

but the notion that a tv with a internet connection, harddrive and gui is new is laughable. Apple of course will make it better than anything on the market but it wont be a "new" concept.

You quoted that guy but I'm not really convinced you are responding to him.
 
Zhengi said:
I'd love to get one of these babies if it wasn't so expensive.

Harmony remotes can be cool.. and they look cool, but programming them is a pain in the ass and the activities only work properly if everything is off when you choose one.. so you have to set up activities to return everything to their previous state.. the issue is that you can't easily go from something like "watch tv" to "watch dvd" with activities... if you have "power on TV" as part of your activity, the second activity will cut off your tv and the step where you have it configured to change inputs to the one for your DVD player will be useless because the TV is off.

Conflicts like that basically ruin the simplistic appeal of using the activity macros.. that and the fact that IR can be unreliable and may not be picked up by the TV and the activity will have moved on to the next step despite the fact that step X didn't happen properly.

When I had a harmony remote, I hit the help button to troubleshoot the macro more than pretty much any other button on the remote.

Great idea, shitty implementation.
 
Ninja Scooter said:
I just want a cable box with a UI that isn't horribly clunky and slow, and that finally does away with numbered channels. I don't want to remember that ESPN is channel 5540, just list it as ESPN, and put the channels in alphabetical order.

This I agree with. Doesn't Tivo already do that though? I think my DirecTV box will let you arrange by alphabetical order too. Harmony can mask some of that though.

Robobandit said:
Harmony remotes can be cool.. and they look cool, but programming them is a pain in the ass and the activities only work properly if everything is off when you choose one.. so you have to set up activities to return everything to their previous state.. the issue is that you can't easily go from something like "watch tv" to "watch dvd" with activities... if you have "power on TV" as part of your activity, the second activity will cut off your tv and the step where you have it configured to change inputs to the one for your DVD player will be useless because the TV is off.

Conflicts like that basically ruin the simplistic appeal of using the activity macros.. that and the fact that IR can be unreliable and may not be picked up by the TV and the activity will have moved on to the next step despite the fact that step X didn't happen properly.

When I had a harmony remote, I hit the help button to troubleshoot the macro more than pretty much any other button on the remote.

Great idea, shitty implementation.


This is just not true though. You start with everything in an off state but once you start from that point, the remote keeps track of what's on and what's off and can turn things on appopriately. It's all seemless.
 

rezuth

Member
Marty Chinn said:
I've only messed with a Harmony One for a little bit, but my 676 is pretty damn responsive. Just as responsive the normal remotes. Something odd is going on if you're getting a full second delay. I don't see how you need to be an advance cocmputer user to set one up since it just asks you a series of questions and sets most of it for you. To tweak it for advance functionality, sure, but the core setup is pretty easy and painless. Once it's setup, the usage is damn simple for just about anyone. I've seen people use my setup for the first time with a simple instruction of, just press the activity you want to do, and if you ever have an issue, press the help button. Nobody ever has to know how my setup works because now it just works through the remote. I don't see how you're going to get much simpler other than removing functionality. Maybe Steve Jobs figured out how to streamline the setup on the software setup, but other than that, you're going to have to do something to play with other equipment that you have no control over.
For one, making it work with my sound system was a pain in the ass. Same goes for my cable box, I don't know if its because I live in Sweden but anyway. After all this time it still gets confused when I switch between TV and Xbox360 since they are on the same UAX but different channels. So it does not understand the concept of doublepressing the button to switch between them. Which means I'll have to manually switch back to TV sound each time I'm done playing. Not to mention it does not support the back button for my cable bo which means when I'm in a menu or looking in the guide etc I'll have to fully close it and reopen it. Can't just back out of it. Not to mention I'll have to point it in a very specific way for it to hit my sound system, tv and xbox at the same time. God forbid that I'll aim it slightly to the left of the sound system and it doesn't turn that on. Not to mention its very slow to change the channels with my cable box. Like.. Superslow. Batterylife sucks and programming macros etc is impossible for the average user.

But this is only from the top of my head, I could write a lot more .

I mean I'm not saying Apple can or will solve it but it hell as sure is not fine the way it is now.
 
Ninja Scooter said:
I just want a cable box with a UI that isn't horribly clunky and slow, and that finally does away with numbered channels. I don't want to remember that ESPN is channel 5540, just list it as ESPN, and put the channels in alphabetical order.

You should be able to order the channels yourself. Like..a FAVORITES.

wait a minute..
 
Windu said:
there were mp3 players before the ipod. And yeah the iphone was the first with multitouch.

but the notion that a tv with a internet connection, harddrive and gui is new is laughable. Apple of course will make it better than anything on the market but it wont be a "new" concept.
It's awesome how every discussion going on here is going way over this dude's head.
 
Marty Chinn said:
This is just not true though. You start with everything in an off state but once you start from that point, the remote keeps track of what's on and what's off and can turn things on appopriately. It's all seemless.

My low-end harmony remote sure as hell didn't keep track of that.. maybe they got better in later years, but mine was constantly turning devices off when I changed activities.

At any rate, I have 2 remotes.. and I basically only have to use one of them.. for all 5 of my devices.

I've found it much simpler just routing everything through my A/V receiver.. I only need the receiver remote to change inputs and volume and if I still had TV service, I'd need the cable box remote to flip channels..
 
Ninja Scooter said:
I just want a cable box with a UI that isn't horribly clunky and slow, and that finally does away with numbered channels. I don't want to remember that ESPN is channel 5540, just list it as ESPN, and put the channels in alphabetical order.

Does nobody have a guide button on their remote?

On my cable box, I can bring up the listings in channel format, by name, alphabetically, by type (learning, home shopping) By time. It will even list shows based on if its a re-run or not.

What type of getto setups do you people have?
 
rezuth said:
For one, making it work with my sound system was a pain in the ass. Same goes for my cable box, I don't know if its because I live in Sweden but anyway. After all this time it still gets confused when I switch between TV and Xbox360 since they are on the same UAX but different channels. So it does not understand the concept of doublepressing the button to switch between them. Which means I'll have to manually switch back to TV sound each time I'm done playing. Not to mention it does not support the back button for my cable bo which means when I'm in a menu or looking in the guide etc I'll have to fully close it and reopen it. Can't just back out of it. Not to mention I'll have to point it in a very specific way for it to hit my sound system, tv and xbox at the same time. God forbid that I'll aim it slightly to the left of the sound system and it doesn't turn that on. Not to mention its very slow to change the channels with my cable box. Like.. Superslow. Batterylife sucks and programming macros etc is impossible for the average user.

But this is only from the top of my head, I could write a lot more .

I mean I'm not saying Apple can or will solve it but it hell as sure is not fine the way it is now.

What's a UAX? I'm not understanding how your setup works at the moment. As far the back button, you realize the Harmony is a learning remote right? You can make it understand any IR command you want because of it. You're not limited to what's in the database. I have no idea why your input is so slow, but you can go in and tweak the timing. Maybe the profile that someone setup for your box was poorly done, but I have not had any type of terrible lag at all when doing any type of input on my fairly complex setup. I do hear the battery life is short with the Harmony One but you're supposed to put it on the cradle when not in use to my understanding, otherwise it only lasts about two weeks. My Harmony will last 4 months before I need to change the battery. It's that LCD screen and smaller battery that causes that.

Robobandit said:
My low-end harmony remote sure as hell didn't keep track of that.. maybe they got better in later years, but mine was constantly turning devices off when I changed activities.

Which one did you have? In my experience the only difference between Harmony remotes is layout on the physical remote, the number of devices you can setup on it, and the amount of memory the device has; otherwise core functionality is the same across the board. It definitely should remember the state of things if you've set it up properly. Depending on when you had it, maybe the software had changed for the setup that caused it to be confusing. I know the software today is different than before. I've also had a Harmony for over 6 years now so it's definitely worked for awhile.

At any rate, I have 2 remotes.. and I basically only have to use one of them.. for all 5 of my devices.

I've found it much simply just routing everything through my A/V receiver.. I only need the receiver remote to change inputs and volume and if I still had TV service, I'd need the cable box remote to flip channels..

Everything should be routed through your receiver anyway. Harmony would still solve people not knowing what inputs to set the receiver to.
 

mrklaw

MrArseFace
as already said, there are some vested interests in linear broadcasting that might affect this, but plenty of channels are already widely available to view online live - in the UK most free to air channels are simulcast over the internet.

So I'd like the ability to kind of merge Tivo with catch-up TV. So I can build a list of programs or smart searches, and that is used as the basis for the EPG. Each member of the family can have their own preferences.

And the EPG will show me relevant programs regardless of channel or when they are on. If its on now, I can tune to that channel. If its on in the future I can set a recording (or it'll record it automatically like tivo wish lists). If its already been on, I can watch it via catchup.


oh, and while modern DVR remotes might have a few too many buttons, I'd like one with more than the apple remote has
 

rezuth

Member
specialguy said:
People aren't going to pay $500 premium for a television.

That ends that idea.
People aren't going to pay premium for a MP3 player.
People aren't going to pay premium for a phone.
People aren't going to pay premium for a computer.
People aren't going to pay premium for a tablet.

Oh wait...
 

Geek

Ninny Prancer
B!TCH said:
What exactly is new about Jobs saying this? He talked about this at D years ago, so what? He also said why it couldn't be done and it's a more complicated problem than the phone problem. Did you forget to include that part OP?
So he talked about it at D years ago, but recently said he "cracked it." That sounds exactly like "new" to me.
 

Stinkles

Clothed, sober, cooperative
Marty Chinn said:
This I agree with. Doesn't Tivo already do that though? I think my DirecTV box will let you arrange by alphabetical order too. Harmony can mask some of that though.




This is just not true though. You start with everything in an off state but once you start from that point, the remote keeps track of what's on and what's off and can turn things on appopriately. It's all seemless.


If your Harmony misses a device, and I used a plant obscuring an IR device as an example, it gets totally out of whack. I am a "power" user and find it irritating that adding or removing a device from a stack is far from trivial. Activities are ool on paper but moronic in my setup.

That said, I wish phones came with IR blasters, because this shit would all be sorted by now with remote apps.
 

Windu

never heard about the cat, apparently
Wallach said:
You quoted that guy but I'm not really convinced you are responding to him.
heh yeah, whoops. My point still stands though.
It's awesome how every discussion going on here is going way over this dude's head.
hey, im just pointing out that it wont be thar unique, it will just have more content deals if it is successful. There have been similar products on the market before.
 
You'd think that by now Steve Jobs's new ideas for existing technology would be the one thing in tech that people weren't cynical and dismissive of. Give him shit for every single other thing in his life, but the guy has a track record of tech hits like no one else.
 
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