Comment by jjeaff
4 years ago
I think we will get there sooner than later. Solid state storage is progressing in capacity pretty swiftly. 100 and 200tb SSDs already exist. They are just super pricey.
Home file servers/media servers would likely become more popular if you could just plug a small low power device into the wall.
Something like this already exists (one/two-bay NASes with HDDs) but it's pastime sysadmin hell to make those work well as a cloud replacement without compromising security in a big way. Someone would have to pour a huge amount of work into making watching a movie on one of those really simple and convenient even while on the go; like, Netflix simple. I have a Synology and it's a long long way from that, I can't even show photos from there on the Apple TV and their cloud features aren't compatible with my carrier's CGNAT, and their app for watching video on tvOS is kinda brittle. All of that's already way past the point most people would have sent the device back. I mean, it's not impossible, but I don't see a declouding on the horizon at all.
And then, where would people get their content from? TPB etc. isn't really a solution for the masses, for obvious reasons.
> I can't even show photos from there on the Apple TV
BUG to apple!
I have an ancient laptop running linux serving usb disks using samba. Kodi works just fine for my mp4 rips of my dvd collection. Kodi works just fine to show photos. Works just fine as a mythtv frontend!
Kodi on a pine64 single board tv box, kodi on a droid smart tv, kodi on any laptop or desktop on the local network of which there are a few.
For the apple tv to view the served content it actually works best to use vlc browsing the share of the smb as served by the pine64 box which is low enough power to just leave on. It's garbage.
The kodi devs are of course far too stupid to make their software that works on everything I've heard of with enough cpu power also work on an appletv - no wait - of course they can. Apple banned them for $reasons. Apparently there is some gutted version of kodi you can pay for in the apple store that probably works (scripting removed, re-skinned, claiming to be original, looks like a pretty shifty move) but I don't vouch for it at all.
Apple are exactly what you know they are. Let's think on that time apple destroyed the record collection of every non-geek you know stored on their ipod with a beautiful "sync". Every non-geek old enough to own an ipod has that story, you can check! The KINGS of user-friendly right there. You can really see why Microsoft want to copy them so badly. "Apple get away with wha..? Ok we can beat that!"
>Someone would have to pour a huge amount of work into making watching a movie on one of those really simple and convenient even while on the go; like, Netflix simple.
It already exists. Plex is excellent. There is also Emby and Jellyfish which are both open source.
The other part of that statement was 'easily accessed by a mobile device'. That's a much bigger problem, since now you're running a server, and you've got to secure a server.
Usage rises to fill capacity. The studios will start releasing higher res, less compressed films with insane levels of detail.
To a point, yes, but we are already well past the point of diminishing returns with resolution. You need a rather large tv to reap any benefits from 4k. I still watch most stuff on my big, 1080p tv and have seen little reason to upgrade.