Streamium, the long term picture

[RenevandenAssem]

Where should the streamium really go, if looking more than a year away, maybe even looking beyond the present generation of products?

For now, it is all about making this product function at the most basic level. We want a working solution for the most common formats of audio / picture and video and we're not there yet.
But what should the streamium family be evolving into?

My vision is that the prime goal should be to create a multi-vendor interoperable solution that can match and supercede the MediaCenter functionality. I also think in terms of bundling it with premium content, through Philips and otherwise.
That would mean supporting unprotected as well as protected / paid content and being interoperable with emerging DRM solutions.

Two questions to all of you:
1) What would Philips have to do in the short term to make us recommend their Streamium boxes for others? (Most of bought the thing already)
2) What would YOU like the Streamium to be in 1-2 years time? (products but maybe also services)

[RenevandenAssem]

What I'd like to see in the long term:

1. Specialised content servers.
- PC as well as non-PC (low-power consumption)implementations.
- PVR functionality

2. Media receivers / settop box marriage; marriage with home theater optionally

- present capabilities
- HDTV capable
- IPTV capable
- home theater standards support (ac 5.1, and whereever that is going)
- simple web browsing as an extra?
- keep: display and non-display versions
- EPG functionality (irt server)

[Patrick_Piper]

I would like to see this evolving into a two way process: i.e. In addition to playing video and audio, the ability to record TV or audio back to the PC for viewing later.
Anybody got any ideas on when this might become a reallity?

[gataki]

I look the picture from another perspective:
Today, honestly speaking, the Streamium is a niche product, not exactly a standard CE product such as TV, DVDs....
Setup is not that easy, dealing with networks, firewalls, routers. To set up the contents you have to deal with encoders, converters, codecs....Also the firmware upgrade, though it's a great opportunity, does not make the things that easy...

I see from the number of register user of this forum, that anyway a market exists for this kind of solution.
The Question is: will Streamium develop to a mature, user-friendly product or will remain a toy for a limited range of users? How can this kind of product become a "plug&play" device?

[Satriani]

Hi!

In the future I would like to see a Streamium with
an USB2 or Firewire port and support for reading media
files from external hard drives connected to the port.

Also to make it complete the Streamium should be able to
record to the same external hard drive. It should be
able to record from both TV, Internet streams and radio.
Also the radio should not any longer be analog but digital.

Maybe it could also record from cd's and dvd but I dont
know if that is legal?