7 ms·
Yikes. This is a $300 product that is incapable of doing the single thing it says it does on the box. It directly competes with Google TV yet doesn't offer any
by jpxxx 14y ago
Yikes. This is a $300 product that is incapable of doing the single thing it says it does on the box. It directly competes with Google TV yet doesn't offer any integration with it. There's no official developer story, no promise of future features, no way of using it out of the box without already owning another Google product, and I don't even see an analog 3.5mm jack. Who is this for?
Meanwhile Apple Airplay is not getting remotely enough attention. It's social, it's rock solid, it's zero-configuration, it's invisible, it enables desirable real-world media sharing scenarios, and it's already on a billion devices. Google should get out their checkbook and license it before they're permanently shut out of the living room.
- SCdF 14y agoCould they licence it? As in, would Apple give them a licence? The main reason I have no interest in Airplay is that it requires iTunes, and none of my media 'workflow' involves it, not to mention it being a horrible piece of software.
- jpxxx 14y agoIt is true that PCs only have the one workflow: airplay audio out of iTunes. And iTunes is a raging piece of shit. But it is basically a system service on iOS, which does not require iTunes. And with the next release of the Mac OS, display mirroring will be built in - how hard would it be to implement it in iTunes for windows and short-circuit Microsoft's Play-To and DNLA services? Every platform vendor needs this device-spanning mortar now. And Google doesn't have it.
- jimbobimbo 14y agoMicrosoft's Play To is DLNA: http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/category/dlna/ http://digitalmediaphile.com/index.php/category/dlna/
- jpxxx 14y agoApologies! I stand corrected.
- __david__ 14y agoI recommend "Airfoil" [1] which lets you stream to airplay devices from any app on your system. It makes my airport express way more useful. [1] http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/ http://www.rogueamoeba.com/airfoil/
- b0sk 14y agoYou don't need iTunes if you are controlling Apple TV with an iOS device. In fact I'd think that's the common usage.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- astral303 14y agoWhat's more baffling is the lack of design: "If you or the friend then taps the name of a song in your online Google account, it starts playing immediately, rather than being added to the queue as you’d expect. A Google rep explained to me that you’re not supposed to tap a song to add it to the playlist; you have to use a tiny pop-up menu to add it." Who thought that this possibly was a good idea or an acceptable way to release the product? No, it's not OK to explain that you must use a popup menu to add it. It's plain fucked up. It means that someone, all too easily, can mess up the current playlist by tapping at a song. One little movement with your finger and you just ruined the mood by cutting the tune. You can't trust shit like this. People will be afraid to open up the playlist. This strikes me as just thrown together enough to work, but not designed to actually work well, in every sense of the word.
- ditojim 14y agoover-reacting a little? it takes 1x to realize you just cut into someone else's song and about 10 seconds after that to figure out how to add them to the Q instead.
- bonch 14y agoYay, it only takes 10 seconds to figure out a bad interface that will always be annoying.
- modfodder 14y agoMultiply that by the number of party participants with Android that are also trying to add their song. And this action is a bit unintuitive, so I wouldn't be surprised to see people make the same mistake multiple times (not so much if the party is filled with HN readers, but the average Android reader definitely).
- willyt 14y agoI would definitely make that mistake multiple times if I was drunk at a party. If there was a lot of crap music at the party, I might even use it as an excuse for 'accidentally' changing the music.
- sigkill 14y agoHoly balls, it does so less and costs $300? It's cheaper to buy an old unlocked Android phone on ebay and an HDMI cable at that cost. You get a lot more features that way. Also, at 300 bucks, honestly it's going to be much cheaper to set up a raspberry pi or its equivalent with some hybrid franken-software setup. Add a few batch files on watch folders for video format conversion and I think you're good to go.
- Domenic_S 14y agoBuy a roku for $50, and use Plex. On the fly automatic transcoding and folder watching, no mess no fuss.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoAirPlay remains uninteresting as long as it is simply a streamer. I can't use it as a remote because it will kill my batteries. It should instead send the protocol/uri of the content and let the player be responsible for retrieving it.
- Mazer23 14y agoI'm pretty sure Airplay does exactly what you're talking about. If you play a video from YouTube or even streamed off your computer via airvideo, the apple tv connects to the server directly and the iPad or iPhone just acts as a remote. It doesn't use battery or network. It's just seamless and you don't need to know how it works to use it.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoI disagree. Not knowing how it works makes me not want to use it. I don't know if you're right or not, but certainly YouTube and desktop iTunes is only a subset of AirPlay content. This doesn't really scale without providing a spec for content to follow.
- chrisdinn 14y agoLucky for us, Apple has provided one: http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-08 http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-... All iOS apps must use HLS for videos longer than 10 minutes and Apple verifies compliance during the app store review process. As mentioned, with AirPlay all HLS media files are downloaded directly by the AppleTV, not piped through your device. I can tell you from experience it works very well.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoI just performed this test and it didn't work the way you describe: 1) Found a video on iPad YouTube. Longer than 10 minutes. 2) Played it to the TV with AirPlay. 3) Turned the iPad off. Expected the video to continue to play but it stopped immediately. Can you get a similar test to work?
- trimbo 14y ago"Meanwhile Apple Airplay is not getting remotely enough attention" Better than Airplay is DLNA.... a standard that is implemented by most modern net-connected TVs that I've seen. It still boggles my mind that I have to download an Android app to use DLNA on my Galaxy Nexus.
- barredo 14y agoAnecdote. Two years after I bought my Samsung TV (I paid 100€ more for the same model but with DLNA) I cant stream videos from my PC to the TV. I'm pissed because I have an StreamToMe.app (which is like 3$) on both iPad and iPhone who runs smoothly and eats everything: mkv, mp4, avi, divx, xvid, multiple audios, multiple subtitles and subtitle formats... Again. Anecdote.
- tdicola 14y agoI have been trying to make uPNP A/V and DLNA work for years without success. From an early Philips Streamium, to an XBox 360, and now a Sony NS400--none have had acceptable results for me. Right now my biggest annoyance is that none of the iOS DLNA controller apps I can find will play music continuously without being constantly on and in the foreground. I think this traces back to the fact that DLNA renderers are stateless and have no concept of a playlist, so as soon as a song stops the controller must be waiting for the event and ready to send the command to play the next song (this also explains why I've never heard gapless playback with DLNA either). If the controller is powered off, asleep, etc. then the music stops.
- CrazedGeek 14y agoBubbleUPnP Server can sort of fix this by turning a DLNA renderer into an OpenHome renderer: http://bubbleguuum.free.fr/upnpserver/ http://bubbleguuum.free.fr/upnpserver/
- tdicola 14y agoNice! I was hoping somebody would make a remotely controlled DLNA controller to fix these issues. Just setup BubbleUPnP and it seems to work with PlugPlayer on my ipad--most importantly music actually continues even when the ipad is asleep. For some reason I don't have volume control or the ability to pause (but can stop), but at least I can listen to an album and browse the web. It's pretty sad that DLNA alone completely fails at this task.
- mtgx 14y agoApple's Airplay is on a billion devices? There are 365 million iOS devices. Also, don't you need an Apple TV to stream the media to your TV? You're saying you need an Android device to stream to the Q, but you need an Apple TV device to stream to your TV, so it's kind of the same thing.
- Steko 14y ago"There are 365 million iOS devices." Can AirPlay from Android devices as well... http://gizmodo.com/5883721/the-top-7-android-music-apps-for-apple-airplay http://gizmodo.com/5883721/the-top-7-android-music-apps-for-...
- falling 14y agohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperbole
- bathat 14y agoI don't know if it justifies the "billion" that the other commenter threw out there, but there are a ton of Airport Express wifi devices, which support Airtunes. That's obviously not exactly the same thing, but saying that there are only 0.4 billion devices instead of 1 billion doesn't seem like a particularly strong argument. Can you clarify how you think needing a separate Android device to control a Q to stream to a TV is the same as needing an Apple TV to stream to a TV? An Apple TV comes with a basic remote, so you don't need anything other than what comes in the box to actually use the device.
- jpxxx 14y agoMy personal gripe with the entire world of streamers: neither the Q or the Apple TV do anything out of the box - you first need to hunt down a HDMI cable. That alone throws half the customer base into a frustrating situation, incurring a knock-on $30 expense. Even Roku doesn't offer this courtesy, although they do upsell an inexpensive cable during checkout.
- shinratdr 14y ago
- mamp 14y agoI agree. I saw some of the videos from WWDC and AirPlay was basically doing what the Wii U is proposing to do: multi player, split views, augmented display or mirroring. I didn't realise it was so flexible.