You believe the cell phone will be the media hub for HDTV?
-
After 15+ years, we've made a big change: Android Forums is now Early Bird Club. Learn more here.
AT&T beats Verizon in 3G speed? Interesting
- Thread starter Musky
- Start date
ElasticNinja
Android Expert
Knewz
Android Expert
Yes. and eventually they will load and unload my laundry.
Outlaw71
Android Expert
Rhetorical question....... right?
Do I believe that? Absolutely, 1000%. Twelve years ago I remember resisting getting a cellphone because I didn't want my wife (at the time) to have the ability to get ahold of my while I was out riding my motorcycle. A few years later I finally caved and got a flip phone, but only for emergency situations. Over the last decade I've seen that device take over more and more of my daily activities as it has absorbed more and more technologies. Here is a quick list of the things my phone has replaced...
1. Landline - It only took about 6 months of having a cellphone before I realized I really never used my landline anymore. Back then not very many people gave up their landlines because they were getting DSL over their phone line. I however was getting my internet via the cable company. So I cut the cord and never looked back.
2. PDA - I know everyone didn't have one of these, but I did. Mine was pretty basic though, more or less just an electronic rolladex. Now that all of my contacts are all backed up on the Google cloud I never again have to worry about storing them in any device.
3. Calendar - now when ever I have an important appointment to go to, or remember someone's birthday, I don't have to be standing near my fridge to look it up on my calendar. It's always with me right there on my DX.
4. Calculator - I used to own 5 or 6 different calculators, strewn all over the place from my bedroom, my kitchen, my office, my glove compartment... now I just use the calculator widget on my phone. Love it.
5. Point and shoot camera - No when I was taking photographs for a living I wasn't just using the 8 megapixel camera on my phone. These things won't be replacing DSLR's anytime soon. But for those times when you just want to be able to take a few shots of something cute, like your dog wearing your girlfriends bra, or your buddy with wing sauce from ear to ear... my DX does the job just fine.
6. Video camera - same thing. For weddings or something like that I'll still break out my HDMI video recorder. But for those everyday moments in life you want to capture, it does the trick.
7. Gameboy - while Android is no where near caught up to the likes of Nintendo or Sony in games, I do have plenty of time wasters on my phone that I use on a daily basis to overcome boredoom!
8. MP3 Player - I have no use for an iPod anymore. PowerAmp does it just as good.
9. Web browser - I no longer have to sneak onto the computer at work to check my favorite message boards and see what's going on... jeapardizing my job in the process. Now I can do anything and everything I ever want/need to do on the internet right from my phone.
10. Daily planner - I used to have one of these things way back in the day as well. Sure it's integrated in my calendar, but it is another thing I no longer have to worry about.
11. Phone - Oh yeah... AND this thing is a phone! LOL
I'm sure there are plenty of things I missed. But you get the point. The cellphone industry has been working feverishly at incorporating as many of our daily activities as they can cram into these tiny little devices to get us completely hooked on them, depend on them and just plain HAVE to have them so that they know we'll never stray very far. They have us like a crack dealer has his clients. And the more they can get us addicted to having them, the more they can charge us for their services.
So that being understood, why wouldn't they make these things our HDTV media hubs so that we're even more dependant on them as we are already? I don't just suspect it's coming, I EXPECT it's coming.
Of course I could be wrong......... I'm not........ but I could be.
It was not a rhetorical question, it was an honest question, and I appreciate your point of view.
I asked because I know so many people with HTPCs or Xboxes or other streaming vid means for their HDTV that it hadn't occurred that some might consider their phones to serve that role as well.
With 3 billion cell phones and half that many TVs, I wondered - and therefore asked.
For this scheme to work, we'll need either offline storage or Racetrack memory or more.
I asked because I know so many people with HTPCs or Xboxes or other streaming vid means for their HDTV that it hadn't occurred that some might consider their phones to serve that role as well.
With 3 billion cell phones and half that many TVs, I wondered - and therefore asked.
For this scheme to work, we'll need either offline storage or Racetrack memory or more.
gallandof
Android Expert
Outlaw71
Android Expert
Lol, ok first of all if that came off to you or anyone else like I was being a smartass then I most humbly apologize sir. No disrespect intended. The only reason I come round here is to have stimulating conversations with guys like yourself. Oh sure I do have a sarcastic streak in me, but I only unleash it an attempt to have fun, not make fun at someone elses expense.
Secondly, I'm not insinuating that what I'm predicting will take place overnight by any stretch. It most certainly will evolve slowly over time. But yes I definitely see that in our future. In another forum I'm a member of (AxiomAudio.com we've) been discussing the very future of media. And what we can foresee happening, what it seems as though the industry is migrating towards, is doing away with physical merchandise altogether, and selling 'streaming rights' to the consumer. I know that sounds rather implausible, not to mention unattractive at this time. But many of us believe it's inevitable for the following reasons...
1. Security - with all the piracy that goes on with DVD's, the industry would love to do away with physical disks to halt the hemorrhaging thay copying them causes in lost sales. Then when you throw in the theft &/or damage that occurs with the inventory and they'd be killing two birds with one stone. Not only does it take care of all the pirated disks on the blackmarket, but it completely does away with all the stolen physical inventory they put up with year after year after year.
2. Overhead - switching over to streaming rights will result in ASTRONOMICAL savings over physical inventory. First of all you save ever having to create the physical inventory in the first place. Next you don't have to pay to store it in a warehouse. Next you never have to pay shipping costs to move them from the manufacturer to the seller's location. Next you completely do away with overstock (the DVD's that sit on a shelf somewhere forever). Can you even begin to imagine how much money we're talking about here? When you look at it from the industries point of view, it's a no brainer.
They wipe away all of the money spent on creating, storing, and moving around physical inventory, and replace it with memory (which is getting cheaper and cheaper by the day) to store it all on, and servers to handle the traffic. The music industry has already been heading down this road for some time. Sure you can go down to Walmart and get a CD if you really want to, but how many of you actually still do this on a regular basis anymore? Growing up I used to buy cassette tapes in bulk. Then when 'Compact Discs' hit the market I had to buy all my tapes all over again on disc... as well as everything new that was coming out of course. But now those days are gone. I honestly couldn't tell you the last CD I bought. Everything I get now I download from the internet. And while I myself haven't paid much of anything for anything I've downloaded, iTunes customers do. And that's where the industry wants to be. And movies aren't far behind IMO. They've gotten pretty good at encrypting movies over streaming technologies such as Netflix and Amazon. I don't know of a way to copy it.
So if that's where the industry is heading, then all we'll do is stream movies via media outlets such as Netflix one time for a small fee. Or purchase the rights to the movie and download it to our hard drive. No disc to lose, store, get scratched, get stolen, etc.... And if that is indeed where it's heading, then 4g devices and their ultra high transfer rate is a shoe-in for that duty!
Almost makes you wonder why else they'd be completely overhauling the entire nations communication network, doesn't it? Are we talking any faster? Lol
you answered your own question, but didnt realize it...
-------------------------------
once these companies give nice speeds and (true) 4g is supposed to have much better ping times I can safely ditch my 1.5/768 DSL line that costs me 50 a month (thank you rural area monopolies), much in the same way i haven't had a landline for years.
You didn't come off that way to me - if my clarification sounded in any negative, overbearing or harsh, I apologize - it wasn't intended that way at all.
/on-topic
So - this whole phone as eventual media hub is on-topic because it goes to the heart of matter - bandwidth and usage.
As I've said in the net neutrality thread, the more the internet is used, the more uses are found for it - demand is at the point where we may never have enough bandwidth for all desired uses.
That said, I think many of us can sympathize with the attractiveness of your idea of everything being in the cloud and on-demand.
But - TANSTAAFL - there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. So, all of those media and distribution costs you project going away in the move from physical media - they simply shift to the consumer paying for more network infrastructure, higher access fees, and in the end, for offline storage, either for buffering or for those needing their own off-line storage.
In my opinion.
For media delivery, it has to be about buffering. Today, the DRM approaches have done away with buffering (or are attempting to) so the next logical outcome is lower quality media - with skips and compression - when bandwidth is exhausted.
Rather than change that model, they're electing to increase bandwidth, knowing full well that the advertised results are and will always be misleading - but hoping no one cares so long as all service requests are fulfilled.
After a certain point, in my opinion, trying to increase mobile bandwidth to solve these problems is like trying to build a perpetual motion machine.