Over the Air

The problem with really great technology is that sometimes it has no users. It sounds like an oxymoron but unfortunately, it’s true. The gadget graveyard is littered with products that were wonderful but did not gather critical momentum to become world-class bestsellers. Betamax, Minidisk, 3D, Voice recognition – there are multiple examples of really astonishing technologies that did not take off.

It is that famous ‘tipping point’ problem where every new product or innovation needs a certain number of users to embrace it before it becomes the de-facto standard in its sphere. Sometimes it needs a different kind of company with certain marketing skills to get the point across. Apple has done that before with the iPod – and they are attempting it again with the media streamers.

Apple with its iPod didn’t invent the portable music player, nor did it bring about the revolution of the MP3 format. All it did was to see the potential of an existing product, simplified the usage, made the device really sleek and shiny and unleashed it onto the unsuspecting consumers with dramatic marketing. The rest is history. Pretty much the same thing is happening in the world of media streamers. A number of companies make multiple versions of it and Apple is entering the market with its own version – the simple, smooth and sleek Apple TV.

Collectors

Media streamers at their most basic level are pure collectors. Today, most homes have multiple devices on which we keep many things. We have music collections, photos, movies, audio files, recorded TV shows, podcasts, video clips – but they are strewn all over the place. Most of them reside on a computer, a laptop or portable media player. Yet, most of our real viewing is done on a TV with a DVD player and a cable connection jammed into it. What if all of this could be centralized – where you could listen to a song, tune into an Internet radio station, fire up a movie or a video clip, listen to podcasts or browse an entire photo album – anywhere in the house. With no wires, no cables and a simple setup – that’s what a media streamer would do for you. Fundamentally a media streaming device will access files from multiple sources and play it anywhere you want – your bedroom, the living room or your home theatre.

Diversity

You can achieve this with an Xbox360 and Dlink, Netgear have their own versions. Microsoft media center can do this with media extenders, some companies have built this capability into a DVD player and now we have the Apple TV. Once again form takes precedence over function as this pizza box appliance is just about an inch thick, yet surprisingly heavy. Typically it is devoid of any unnecessary buttons (not even power-up); all the connections are at the back and the famous Apple branding takes its pride of place on top. It comes with a 40 GB hard drive inside and works on 802.11g and 802.11n wireless. I was up and about and running in less than 3 steps and was able to access and play most of my media files from three different computers.

However

It is not all good. The Apple TV is fairly typical of most products from the company – big on build up, huge on design, simplified to idiot-proof levels but short on functionality. Let’s save that for a detailed review of the Apple TV, the Hava and also do a comparison of the best Media Streamers in the market. Streamers will eventually be commonplace. It’s a natural evolution of home entertainment devices and is going to be a critical component of the wireless home, basically an idea whose time has come.