Topic: Tablets are the future (Read 6966 times)

JimH · « **on:** February 12, 2012, 07:18:59 am »

We've been talking about what the next version of Windows may mean, and especially Windows on Arm, primarily for tablets. It made me try to articulate what I think the future will look like. I think the smart phone and the tablet are going to be the same type of device, mainly differentiated by size.

Phones and tablets are going to have a lot of different form factors in all kinds of sizes. Devices will get better and cheaper fast.

A phone or tablet is a computer. To use it well, sometimes it needs a keyboard. I really liked the concept (but not the execution) that Motorola used for the Atrix.

A powerful tablet could be the device you carry from home to work, and could be used to sync your data.

By connecting to a TV, it could be the way you access your media.

It could serve a lot of purposes around the house while it recharged in a wall mount.

jmone · « **Reply #1 on:** February 14, 2012, 12:41:55 am »

Mmmm Looking into my crystal ball over the next 5 years (too murky further out)…I see….

1) Technology becoming ubiquitous: More and more “things” will just have general computing power built in and this trend will continue. For example, why use an HTPC or carry a tablet to play your media to your TV when your TV will be able to pull the data on its own?

2) Jack of all trades and master of none: To answer my own question, we are seeing more and more “swiss army knives” of technology and the Phone/Tablet is the latest example. For years I have purchased phones that can make calls, e-mails, browser, GPS, Modem, USB Stick, Media Player, Media controller, Remote control etc etc. They are great devices that can do almost anything….but they are really good at no single task function (my latest smartphone is not even a very good “phone”!).

3) Just because you can…..We all get very excited on what we can do with the latest technology. Yup, you already have the ability to connection your phone/tab using HDMI to your 1080p TV….and play poor quality video… as I am really not going to load up my (up to) 50GB per Blu ray movie collection. Also the excitement of watching video on these devices wears off. Do you know how underwhelming watching an epic (say LOTR) on your phone or even on a Tablet is?

So, here is how I see it over the next few years and the market opportunity / threats for MC.

There will be a continued segmentation between the easy and cheap VS the high end. Look at music on iTunes and the iPhones, it is very easy... but it is locked down and delivers songs at a quality that predates CD (a great solution for many but not all of us). Now more and more HW Devices (TV, Disc Players, Portable Media Players / Tablets / Phones) will be the media player for Video as well as Audio and the trend of pulling content from a server (local and / or cloud based) is accelerating. What happens when an “iTunes / iMovies” is integrated as a standard part of your TV? Will the average user care about the quality if it is easy?

This trend will see a rapid increase in the number of users consuming media on these display devices and most of them will be “iTunes” types, sacrificing “quality” for “convenience”. This user base will not need or want a dedicated HTPC (and hence client implementations like MC's TheaterView) but may require a home device (MC's DLNA Server???) to feed them private data not available from the “cloud”. The big boys are all working on getting users to upload their media to the cloud to even do away with them needing a server device at home at all. I do tend to think this one is still a bit further out in the crystal ball as it requires both the the price of bandwidth to decrease and the speed to increases enough to handle Video, and the telcos control this and will not want to give it away too cheaply (so big librarys will continue to be cheaper to stream from your own home network for a while yet).

Anyway, one sement of the market (Video/Audiophiles types) will continue to use HTPC / Servers due to their flexibility and higher quality output as they/we will not be satisfied with the general low quality and inflexible implementations embedded in the HW Devices (Jack of all trades) and streamed from some low bitrate server!

jmone · « **Reply #2 on:** February 14, 2012, 12:55:11 am »

PS - I'm still hoping my request to have Gizmo

1) Able to stream (as well as control and consume) content
2) Have the ability to "Talk" to other Gizmo in real time

...and then I could use these Gizmo Tables as a whole house intercom and media system! ...now that would a great future for tablets!

Scolex · « **Reply #3 on:** February 14, 2012, 01:11:31 am »

My personal Crystal Ball shows 2 different outcomes, bankruptcy or rehab, the mobile world is turning me into a data junky and mobile data is too expensive. $30 for 4GB on a mobile device is ridiculous when I can get unlimited 20Mb/s download for $50 through the cable company.
All joking aside I love where the market is going, I foresee tablets/low power devices running at speeds comparable to a high-end desktop from a few short years ago in the near future. With the ever shrinking processor nm fab the possibilities are seemingly endless.

mark_h · « **Reply #4 on:** February 14, 2012, 02:54:59 am »

If tablets are the future then the person who comes up with the anti-greasy finger screen coating will be very rich indeed...

NickF · « **Reply #5 on:** February 14, 2012, 07:59:47 am »

I think the value of the tablet or smart phone in media handling depends very much on the circumstances. There is no doubt that the UI for these devices is seriously compromised by size. I agree with the Swiss Army Knife analogy. You wouldn't choose to watch a movie on your tablet or, particularly, a phone if you had a larger display available and especially if there is more than one person watching but if it is the only display device available then improvements in quality and access to media will be welcome. Whilst capability may increase, these UI size limitations won't go away though.

Networking advances will have more impact, both within the home and the Internet or mobile networks with cloud based media servers becoming ubiquitous.

We must assume that quality is fairly important for millions of people to have invested in HD TVs although I suspect that many are not achieving the potential of these devices. We need higher quality network based media delivery to the TV.

I can't see the tablet itself displacing other components in current solutions. Their more seamless integration with other components will improve usability. Advances in TVs should have a greater impact but today's DLNA solutions are very far from perfect, compromised by current DLNA specs and tortuous implementations within the TV. That has to improve.

For me, in a home theatre and music listening environment, the tablet is an excellent control device. I could not conceive of placing it within the media path.

Nick.

JimH · « **Reply #6 on:** February 14, 2012, 08:34:31 am »

Quote from: NickF on February 14, 2012, 07:59:47 am

I think the value of the tablet or smart phone in media handling depends very much on the circumstances. There is no doubt that the UI for these devices is seriously compromised by size.

I think we will probably see "tablets" the size of small TV screens in a few years.

candycane · « **Reply #7 on:** February 14, 2012, 09:12:07 am »

Jim, I think your vision of a future with tablets seems accurate. I'd like to refine your thought that a phone or tablet is a "computer". Phones, tablets, media boxes etc can be viewed as computers in the sense that they increasingly contain CPUs and computing capabilities similar to traditional computers, but I think in the area of onboard storage these devices may continue to differ. I think users of phones, tablets and the like will depend more on networked storage rather than onboard storage. Certainly with the drop in cost of solid state drives portable devices will have considerable local storage, but I think users will prefer a networked or cloud data solution to make data management and delivery easier.

So I see as part of this tablet future a greater dependence on networked storage (combo of local sharing, NAS and cloud). I think Linux will continue to dominate the NAS world. I don't have a good feel for where Android is going other than we will have much more of it.

rjm · « **Reply #8 on:** February 14, 2012, 12:54:18 pm »

My crystal ball says we should hang on to our old devices. The coming global credit collapse will curtail most supply chains.

rick.ca · « **Reply #9 on:** February 14, 2012, 03:16:10 pm »

Quote

The coming global credit collapse will curtail most supply chains.

Hopefully not before delivering some more reliable crystal balls...

tcman41 · « **Reply #10 on:** February 14, 2012, 03:34:07 pm »

interesting article here about tablet sales:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2012/02/14/businessinsidertablet-sales-2012-2.DTL

glynor · « **Reply #11 on:** February 14, 2012, 04:38:50 pm »

Quote from: jmone on February 14, 2012, 12:41:55 am

3) Just because you can…..We all get very excited on what we can do with the latest technology. Yup, you already have the ability to connection your phone/tab using HDMI to your 1080p TV….and play poor quality video… as I am really not going to load up my (up to) 50GB per Blu ray movie collection. Also the excitement of watching video on these devices wears off. Do you know how underwhelming watching an epic (say LOTR) on your phone or even on a Tablet is?

I watch video on my phone and iPad all the time.

In fact, I'd say I use video on my phone WAY more than I use it as a phone. To me, it isn't a "phone", it is a pocket computer that happens to also serve as a passable phone when I need to use one. Seriously, don't call me... Phone calls, unless it is from my wife and a handful of my best friends, just annoy me.

The iPad is the perfect bedroom video device IMHO. We don't keep a TV in our bedroom. It makes it far too easy to "just watch what's on". If I'm going to spend (waste) my life watching something, I want to spend it watching something, not just watching anything. On the other hand, sometimes you're too tired to do much else, and your wife is probably not going to make it through the latest episode of Fringe, so... The iPad is perfect.

Likewise, if I lay down in bed but I can't sleep (common occurrence as you can probably tell by when I post on Interact most often), I don't want to wake anyone up with the home theater, and I've already trolled Interact as much as I can for the night...

Watching a silly episode of CSI on my phone is often just the ticket. Doesn't matter how small the screen is on a personal device... Just hold it closer. In the dark, the screen looks plenty big (and the iPhone's screen is high enough pixel density that you STILL don't see the pixels).

tcman41 · « **Reply #12 on:** February 14, 2012, 05:18:07 pm »

Personally, I really don't get it, watching stuff on small tablet screens would hurt my eyes, I need everything big up on my 52" samsung, every time I watch something it just makes me smile

lise · « **Reply #13 on:** February 14, 2012, 06:34:18 pm »

Reminds me of this clip which is part of a larger interview with David Lynch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0

jmone · « **Reply #14 on:** February 14, 2012, 06:35:04 pm »

Each to their own on what we like to watch content on....I like my 60" Pio "Tablet" but find it is a bit small these days

I want my full wall display

JimH · « **Reply #15 on:** February 14, 2012, 06:40:08 pm »

Quote from: jmone on February 14, 2012, 06:35:04 pm

Each to their own on what we like to watch content on....I like my 60" Pio "Tablet" but find it is a bit small these days I want my full wall display

I'm waiting for the day when you can buy an 8 foot roll of video wallpaper with adhesive on the back, and lay it around a couple of corners. I plan to live long enough to see it.

jmone · « **Reply #16 on:** February 14, 2012, 06:49:01 pm »

Good man! Appart from the "video" walls / paint concept promised by Sci Fi (and many releases from Silicon Valley Start Ups), where is my Anti gravity / skycars / jet packs type transportation.......or better still a Transporter !

Not too much to ask really....

lise · « **Reply #17 on:** February 14, 2012, 06:57:09 pm »

I think they are great devices. They have the perfect form factor for a lot of things. But, and it's a big BUT, I'm not impressed with devices unless than can do what I want them to do. And it's all about content. If they can't access content, they are useless.

I would love a tablet on the kitchen wall just above my counter. I could load my recipe and there's no need for a book or a piece of paper getting all full of flour while while I cook. Or I could watch one of those televised food shows and follow the recipe as I go. Or I could quickly google a sustitute. BUT, it has to be able to see and open MY recipes that are elsehwere in the network, on a different OS, in txt or pdf or whatever. I am not going to invest another week inputing the same recipes or text into a another device. It's gotta read what I already have. So far no luck on that one.

I would love a tablet hanging near the door to every room in the house. It could act as the thermostat, play music in the room and turn on the lights when I walk in. Again, it's a content thing.

I would love a tablet or phone as a remote (which we use). BUT, it has to have a decent keyboard interface for searches (phones are too small) or voice recognition. It's got to have a mouse type interface (like Unified Remote) and it's got to be customizable with buttons for Play DVD, Play computer, Play Satellite. Better yet, Play Sherlock and it just finds Sherlock for me no matter where it is (tv, dvr, computer file). Now we're talking. But again, it's not the device, it's the content.

And the devices as they are, are still limited to an OS, to file types, to all the same-ol' same-ol that computer technology has been bound to for decades.

My magic devices are beyond that. They just speak to anything and everyting. They are little magic wands that I use all over the house. They can recognize everything I already have anywhere on any computer, on any OS. Because that's always been the problem with any new technology. The user always has to update everything they already have to make it work. They have to abandon years worth of data because the new device can't read it. And THAT is what I'm getting so tired of doing.

So Yeah on the new devices, but Nay until they can do what I want them to do.

What's the point of having a tablet above your ccountertop if you can only access other people's recipes and not your own?

JimH · « **Reply #18 on:** February 14, 2012, 07:15:59 pm »

Quote from: lise on February 14, 2012, 06:57:09 pm

it has to be able to see and open MY recipes that are elsehwere in the network, on a different OS, in txt or pdf or whatever. I am not going to invest another week inputing the same recipes or text into a another device. It's gotta read what I already have. So far no luck on that one.

Hi Lise,
Do you have an Android device of any kind? And have you tried Gizmo.

If yes, and it's still not working, let us know. We'll make sure it does.

lise · « **Reply #19 on:** February 14, 2012, 07:35:05 pm »

Hi Jim,

We have a gazillion Android devices in the house (Jonnie tests them with his software) + 2 phones. There is one super nice, thin and light one I'm about to steal from him to replace the bulkier angry birds/sudoku machine he let me have months ago

And yes, we use gizmo all the time to play tunes. As an aside, Jonnie always found Media Center too complicated and always let me be the media person of the house, but when he discovered gizmo, goodness, you would think he'd just received a Lamborghini for Christmas, he was so excited. He's been playing tunes with it ever since and adores it.

One of the first things I did was try to get my recipes on gizmo, but no deal. Gizmo could display all the pictures of my recipes in my selected view scheme, but whenever I clicked on a recipe it just showed the jpg, not the text file or pdf. I haven't tried it since before Xmas, but I don't recall seeing anything in the various version histories that would lead me to believe it would work.

jmone · « **Reply #20 on:** February 14, 2012, 07:54:00 pm »

....and imagine that after you have read your recipe, listened to some music while cooking....if you could just press a "Talk / Page" button in Gizmo on the Kitchen Tablet and page the family for dinner via all their Gizmo enable tablets and phones in the various rooms!

2-way communication between the Gizmo's would turn it into a whole house media and intercome system. I bet a tray of donuts that this would not be too hard of a feature to add

JimH · « **Reply #21 on:** February 14, 2012, 07:57:00 pm »

Quote from: lise on February 14, 2012, 07:35:05 pm

One of the first things I did was try to get my recipes on gizmo, but no deal. Gizmo could display all the pictures of my recipes in my selected view scheme, but whenever I clicked on a recipe it just showed the jpg, not the text file or pdf.

We'll fix that. Sorry it didn't work before. Say hi to Jonnie.

gtener · « **Reply #22 on:** February 14, 2012, 10:09:40 pm »

Microsoft's vision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

imugli · « **Reply #23 on:** February 15, 2012, 05:48:48 am »

TBH Until Oz mobile providers get their heads out of their a**es and start offering decent mobile bandwidth limits for decent money, all this "streaming" of media from my home server is a pipedream anywhere outside of my wifi network.

Saying that, however, there has recently been a major case in our Federal Court, which is of course being appealed.

Basically, Telstra have the exclusive online and mobile rights to broadcast the Aussie Rules football and the National Rugby League.

So now Optus have released a product that lets you record a program and store 20gb per month to the cloud BUT (and this is the thing that the AFL, NRL and Telstra are taking action over) Optus mobile customers can stream that recording to their mobile device after as little as 90 seconds. A little like how you can record a program on MC and play it on another client soon after. The data involved in this streaming is unmetered.

The 3 claim that it's a breach of copyright given that Optus don't have the rights to broadcast the content over internet/mobile.

Optus (successfully pending trial) argued that they are not actually broadcasting the content. Our copyright laws at the moment allow for a person to record content to watch at a later time, providing it's for personal use. Optus argued that the customer is the one recording the content and watching it at a later time which, regardless of the MEANS by which the customer watches the program, still falls within the law as it currently stands.

It's a brave new world we're living in...

jrwhite · « **Reply #24 on:** February 15, 2012, 07:45:17 pm »

Hey Jim,

Yes, as Lise says, I was extremely impressed with Gizmo, what it could do for us immediately, and it's potential. Every Android device can either be a client to search / display our MC content, or, act as a control device for our main server. Brilliant design. Kudos.

Now we can listen to tunes, or watch stored videos anywhere in the house with ease on these portable devices. The real world is as Lise points out, is just getting at your stored data. The only thing lacking ( as Lise mentioned ) is the ability to display documents via Gizmo. I don't think this would be too difficult to accomplish as shelling out to associated handlers for the file type is a client bound function in Android. So, a Word or PDF doc .. Android will use the default app ( such as Docs to Go ) for that document type, or, present a choice if more than one installed app is registered as being able to handle the doc type. Being able to display all the media types that MC can handle and serve would greatly enhance Gizmo's functionality.

My personal wish for Gizmo is to be able to drill down into searches. For example, if you search for 'The Replacements', you can't drill down into the initial results .. you only have the option to 'play'. Here's an area where you could shine, and really show off the power of MC.

As Lise alluded to, we're also developing for Android, and thus have the 'gazillion' ( well, maybe about 20 or so ) devices around the house. My view on tablets / phones / and other android devices is that they're great rich media clients. It doesn't matter where the content comes from, either the cloud or local servers, their main strength is in consuming it. I don't think this will change in the short to medium term. I've always admired MC's strengths in categorization and search. It provides a great back end for media serving. Gizmo is a great client front end to get at all those capabilities.

There's one category of Android device that isn't that well known. The Android TV 'media player'. This isn't to be confused with Google TV, these are Media Players similar to WD Live devices except that they run a skinned ( or un-skinned ) version of Android, and have HDMI output instead of a screen and an IR remote control interface ( they also have USB host ports that support HID based keyboards / mice ). I've been testing these types of devices for compatibility with our software over the past few months. On a lark, I've loaded Gizmo on these devices ( thanks for providing the APK as a direct download as most of these devices don't have the Market ), and it works great. So, basically you have Gizmo on a ~$100 media player. Brilliant!

Jonnie

wilfredjg · « **Reply #25 on:** February 15, 2012, 08:43:55 pm »

I have a Windows 7 tablet and what I like to see in Windows 8 is Media Center come out with a version for Home and a version for Tablets. I use Media Center on my Tablet but sometimes I wish the buttons were larger.

dumpster · « **Reply #26 on:** February 18, 2012, 08:48:59 am »

It's a nightmare today to try to ensure gapless, lossless music playback with media appliances. Every time I consider using MC to deliver content to a media box or other component in my house, I have to get into the gibberish of transcoding, streaming, and other settings that are arcane to me, and most of the time I give up. The obstacles are never on the JRiver side - it's always on the other side, but the result is the same. The typical initial response when I query the maker of the hardware of software of what I'm trying to play to is "sure we do that - we're DLNA compliant!". And then after repeated failures and learning details I don't want to know, the response comes back with some variant of "Oh, we don't do that, because that's not required in the DLNA spec". If one more company tells me to re-rip each of my albums in my collection as a single file to avoid gapless handling, I think I'll scream.

A future of tablets where we have gapless, lossless (FLAC) music playback as a default capability, without fiddling or workarounds, is something I look forward to. It seems many companies will only do the bare minimum to get DLNA certification, so whatever pull anyone has in getting the DLNA spec to mandate easy gapless playback for FLAC without lossy transcoding, that would be dreamy for our future tablets.

MrHaugen · « **Reply #27 on:** February 18, 2012, 09:31:41 am »

The 5.0 version of Android and the hardware that it's shipped with will be able to run both Win8 and Android if we are to believe in the rumors. It's supposed to be able to switch between the OS's without rebooting. Theater View on one OS and Gizmo on the other. Now, THAT sounds tempting

If Theater View would work on ARM CPU's at all that is...

lise · « **Reply #28 on:** February 18, 2012, 09:40:41 am »

Now this is what I like. Forget tablets. Surfaces are the way to go

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=6Cf7IL_eZ38&vq=medium

jimmy neutron · « **Reply #29 on:** February 18, 2012, 11:40:09 am »

I also believe that tablets will be an evolutionary transition in how we recieve information. I have both an iPad and an Android Transformer Prime and they are both incredible. Access to all your content in a pinch, anytime and anywhere. They sit on your home network and so everything is readily available.

We have throughout our home many PC devices that I've built and installed handling different and specific tasks. I believe PC's make life simpler and more interesting. For instance, I built a Kitchen PC that runs a GUI that is tailored specifically for the kitchen. It can access millions of on-line recipes, or can import my own, can play music in the background (after all, the kitchen is the homes most used room ), can make video Skype calls as my wife cooks and washes dishes, and can do everything else a "normal" PC can do. Originally I had a touchscreen in here, but quickly found out that in the kitchen the last thing you want is a touchscreen monitor. We now use a regular wireless keyboard and mouse.

I also built a few custom "iPanels" that I designed into picture frames for better in-home integration. These are nothing more than the basic laptop carcass fit into a frame and wirelessly connected to our home network. These panels are 99% of the time fully automatic and need no user intervention, but if need be I can use my Android phone to act as a controller using GMOTE. I have these panels showing our family's HVAC conditions, Security camera feeds, e-mail status', upcoming appointments, weather conditions, and more - all tailored to each person in our home, or as a whole.

Pads and touchscreen panels also make great HT remote controls, or remote controls for music only PC's. They offer much more flexibility and customization that no button type remote can compare. We use several size touchscreens to control our HTPC's and music only playback PC's.

So I may be in the minority here, but I think the future of tablets and touchscreens is only just picking up steam. Windows 8 is geared for touch input, and tablet sales and production is climbing at a furious pace. AT&T is betting their stock that the future of home entertainment (for the majority of consumers) does not lie in home theaters, but in tablet portability. Their future plans for the home are nothing short of Minority Report - incredible. U-Verse was just a stepping stone to get people to accept AT&T as a true force in home entertainment. The next few years will be awesome.

Jimmy

pcstockton · « **Reply #30 on:** February 18, 2012, 11:50:38 am »

Quote from: gtener on February 14, 2012, 10:09:40 pm

Microsoft's vision

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6cNdhOKwi0&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Frightening.... This is why I smoke.

JimH · « **Reply #31 on:** February 21, 2012, 12:11:30 pm »

Ubuntu Linux and Android on the same phone/tablet.
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/250356/ubuntu_for_android_will_bring_the_desktop_to_your_phone.html

glynor · « **Reply #32 on:** February 21, 2012, 04:28:24 pm »

Quote from: MrHaugen on February 18, 2012, 09:31:41 am

The 5.0 version of Android and the hardware that it's shipped with will be able to run both Win8 and Android if we are to believe in the rumors. It's supposed to be able to switch between the OS's without rebooting. Theater View on one OS and Gizmo on the other. Now, THAT sounds tempting If Theater View would work on ARM CPU's at all that is...

Microsoft has already announced/confirmed that you will NOT be able to buy Windows On Arm "standalone" at retail. The only way to get it will be to buy a device that comes with it (like all the other competing tablets work, not like PCs). So... The only way that'd work is if some OEM ships a machine pre-installed with both Windows and Android.

I wouldn't hold my breath. Microsoft would NOT like that and would probably crush the project if ASUS or some other OEM got any big ideas to do it.

EDIT: Another way to do it would be running Android on x86 hardware (Atom). Then, ASUS could do it, because it'd just be a PC, and they could put the Intel version of Windows 8 on it. But I don't know how many competitive Atom-based tablets we are really going to see. At least not till 2013-2014 (and who knows).

Intel still has quite a way to go with power efficiency. They're probably on the winning side of that game, long-term, but the market may have moved on by the time they get there. As CPU power and leakage increases, the architectural advantage of ARM for power efficiency becomes less and less relevant, and then Intel could use their fabbing prowess to grind TI, Nvidia, and Samsung into the dirt.

But, they still have to prove it. They've been saying there'd be x86 Smartphones and competitive tablets for years and years, and nothing has materialized. No OEMs are even really announcing them anymore. Look at their partner lists now... $:-\$

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Author Topic: Tablets are the future (Read 6966 times)