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IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
Originally posted by DaveGee
Two problems...

1 - Todays projectors draw a fair bit of power for the special bulbs maybe more than ADC can provide.

2 - Laptops (most common device connected to a projector) don't have ADC at all.

Dave

I don't know how much power the ADC connector can handle, but I suspect it's more dependent on the Mac it's connected to then any inherent limit on ADC. But you are right -- I thought the most recent crop of PBs had ADC, but it turns out they've only got DVI. Of course Apple could always release a new line of PBs with ADC...
 

denjeff

macrumors member
Jan 14, 2004
51
0
a pen :)
Everyone sais downloading a movie on cable is too slow... I have a cable line and if I downlaod stuff from an Apple server, I get speeds up to 800 KB/sec (now most people will say "whow :eek:" :D ). My point is, it would take only 10 minutes to download high quality movies... That s less then going to a shop to buy a DVD (even if you know I live in a quite big city).

They could have a market for movies, especially with their very compressed wavlet implementation named pixlet... And Steve has rather good contacts in the movie world. I would say "go for it!!!"... An iBeam would kick ass!!!
 

AndrewMT

macrumors regular
Originally posted by denjeff
Everyone sais downloading a movie on cable is too slow... I have a cable line and if I downlaod stuff from an Apple server, I get speeds up to 800 KB/sec (now most people will say "whow :eek:" :D ). My point is, it would take only 10 minutes to download high quality movies... That s less then going to a shop to buy a DVD (even if you know I live in a quite big city).

They could have a market for movies, especially with their very compressed wavlet implementation named pixlet... And Steve has rather good contacts in the movie world. I would say "go for it!!!"... An iBeam would kick ass!!!

I partially agree with you. Downloading full movies would not take very long; however, they could start to take up a lot of space on the user's hd. If limited DVD burning of the movies is provided with something like iTheater, that would solve the problem rather quickly.

The technology is here to download and watch movies, but the equipment is not. By equipment, I mean tivo and media center-like capabilities that enables the computer to better interface with a tv, receiver, etc. This could all be accomplished with the rumored iBox.

Oh, and how cool would it be to use your iWalk as an LCD remote?
 

jettredmont

macrumors 68030
Jul 25, 2002
2,731
328
Originally posted by neilw
I don't think white LEDs (even groups of them) could come anywhere *near* the intensity of the bulbs they use in projectors. I'm sure that if/when they become suitable for such use, manufacturers will try to use them. The expense and longevity of the bulb is one of the negatives of projectors (both front and rear) right now...

LED's can be made to be extremely bright, specifically because of the low heat generation.

The problem with white LEDs is that they're new and relatively expensive to make (at high brightnesses). And, they still have a noticeable bluish tinge to them.

Granted, most TV sets you buy will be pre-configured with a bluish tinge (and 75%+ of all consumers won't change it or even notice it), but "white" LED's are even moreso ...

But, yes, the bulb issue is the primary problem with FP systems today. Along with, of course, the fan noise necessary to just keep the housing cool enough so it doesn't melt or burn down your house ...
 

7on

macrumors 601
Nov 9, 2003
4,939
0
Dress Rosa
I love projectors and one will probably grace a future home. However, Apple releasing a projector is kinda far-fetched. I can see Samsung licensing a projector for Apple to sell in stores, but other than that there is 0% possiblity of an Apple projectors. The main reason is when I watch movies, I NEED the room pitch black. Same requirements as projectors. However, I'm the only person I've met who does this (probably other than the other projector-philes here). Apple would have a hard time selling these unless they agreed to build a windowsless (excuse the pun) room to house the projector in.
 

desdomg

macrumors member
Dec 12, 2003
90
0
Sounds like a projector from Apple could be quite nice, and another spoke to the digital hub . They already make excellent video production software. Would make sense to produce some video playback hardware too. Personally, FPs caught my eye a few years ago when I saw several folks in the loft building I lived in then had them. But at several $1000 for a decent one they were, sadly, out of my league. So bring on the Apple FP. Although, hang on, that rumor is posted in the $3500 and above forum!! Ouch.
 

backdrifter

macrumors newbie
Jan 5, 2004
8
0
Originally posted by denjeff
Everyone sais downloading a movie on cable is too slow... I have a cable line and if I downlaod stuff from an Apple server, I get speeds up to 800 KB/sec (now most people will say "whow :eek:" :D ). My point is, it would take only 10 minutes to download high quality movies... That s less then going to a shop to buy a DVD (even if you know I live in a quite big city).

They could have a market for movies, especially with their very compressed wavlet implementation named pixlet... And Steve has rather good contacts in the movie world. I would say "go for it!!!"... An iBeam would kick ass!!!

I can't believe people still bring up Pixlet in the context of downloaded movies. Both MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 achieve more compression than Pixlet. Pixlet is meant as an intra-studio or inter-studio movie exchange format, where quality needs to be maintained, but even a little compression is good.

Any download format would likely distribute movies in MPEG-4, which achieves the best compression to quality ratio. That being said, about the smallest file size you could achieve for an average movie would be 750 MB while still maintaining acceptable quality. What you get on your cable modem is is 800 Kbps, as in bits not bytes. So, lets do a calculation:

750 MB = 750000000 B = 6000000000 b (bits) / 800000 bps = 7500 seconds = 125 minutes ~ 2 hours

Now, that is assuming a near utopia. Distributing movies that will pass for acceptable on a home theater system, will likely mean at least double the quality of my example (4 hours to download). In addition, the majority of the population would be lucky to achieve average d/l rates of 200 kbps (16 hours to download).

So, if Apple were to sell movies for download, this 16 hour download figure would be about average for a standard definition movie given todays broadband figures. High definition movies would take 3-4 times as long. This will pretty much saturate your broadband connection as well, slowing down any other Internet activities you may be doing.

In short, while it could be done, a quality movie download service is very cumbersome to do correctly today. There are corners to cut in order to achieve better percieved performance, but all things considered a trip to Blockbuster or a Netflix account is probably a better experience.

Edit: Miswrote bytes instead of bits. Corrected.
 

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
I don't suppose anyone here has used the InFocus projector which the LiteShow wireless adaptor? IIRC, it's even Mac-patible.

Anyway, it's expensive, but it sounds like fun. It'd be way cool to mount one on the ceiling in the living room and then run it from an iBook. ;)
 

gooddog

macrumors regular
Mar 22, 2002
185
0
Originally posted by CalfCanuck You can make a decent markup on the units, but you only sell one to an entire workgroup, rather than one for every user.

*******

Teachers, CalfCanuck, t-e-a-c-h-e-r-s ....
that's 80 or 90 units sold per school.

And then ... iBooks, etc.

These things cost less than an iBook now.
 

gooddog

macrumors regular
Mar 22, 2002
185
0
BUT IT's ALREADY out there !

Originally posted by Vroem
If this would be possible it would exist. But it's impossible: the bandwith and speed needed by a monitor or projector is a magnitude larger than Airport or even gigabit ethernet (not to mention the latencies.)

*****

I have already seen a VERY compact digital projector that can be had with a wireless adaptor !!!! :)

AND GUESS WHO MAKES IT :) :) :)

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2003/030602g.html

---gooddog
 

mstur

macrumors member
Dec 2, 2001
55
4
Projectors have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Originally posted by Vroem
If this would be possible it would exist. But it's impossible: the bandwith and speed needed by a monitor or projector is a magnitude larger than Airport or even gigabit ethernet (not to mention the latencies.)

Projekctors which can be used in a wireless LAN have been on the market now for at least two years by Sharp and NEC. Toshiba even offers a projectors with Bluetooth connection !

Thus, would be not first for Apple anyway...
 

CalfCanuck

macrumors 6502a
Nov 17, 2003
609
120
Teachers, CalfCanuck, t-e-a-c-h-e-r-s ....
that's 80 or 90 units sold per school.

And then ... iBooks, etc.

These things cost less than an iBook now.
Of all the people on this forum, I haven't forgotten teachers - the irony is that for the last 5 years I been working on educational software.

But I for one know how price sensative the educational market is. While some schools might buy projectors in those numbers, there are already MANY different models to chose from, from many diffrerent vendors. All of these companies would love an order for 80 or 90 units. Apple would have to have a product that is feature AND price competitive, no small order.

But my main point was that Apple needs to address the CORE of their product line in 2004, not be distracted by these incidentals.

When looking at education, if Apple came out with a great new replacement for the eMac (just as one example), they would sell 500,000 of their own products rather than 2000 repackaged projectors made by someone else. And try to gain back some of the market share of education that they've lost these last 3-4 years.
 

Jerry Spoon

macrumors 6502a
Jan 8, 2002
624
0
Historic St. Charles
Originally posted by ogminlo
I'm just puzzled as to how this fits in with the rest of their products... The projector market can't be as widespread as the digital music player market... Can it? Or would this product make it wide like the iPod did?

I don't know about the impact, but I just bought an Infocus X1 for just under a grand for work. That model and Epson's PowerLite (for about the same price) are totally geared towards consumer markets. I remember one of their brochures shows a bunch of kids playing playstation with the image projected on this huge wall.

There are people out there who would buy this in addition to or instead of their big $1500 ++ tv they're buying. And if Apple can offer some type of integration of the computer and the home entertainment system, maybe all the better.
 

tny

macrumors 6502
Jun 3, 2003
436
81
Washington, DC
Originally posted by AlanAudio
In the Forum referred to, there was a lot of speculation about what sort of non-standard connector Apple might use.

My money would be on them using no connector at all - except as a fall-back option.

AirPort would be such a cool way to connect to a device like that and all modern Macs are able to use AirPort. It's widely used on the Dark side too, so you instantly get cross-platform opearation.

It would be so much better to just turn up and wirelessly log into the projector rather than to have to mess with leads, extensions and adapters.

Projectors are often located some distance from the person doing the presentation, so wireless offers significant safety and convenience advantages.

Having said that, I have my doubts about whether a video projector is really the right sort of product for Apple. They would have to come up with something amazing in order to differentiate it from the many others that are available.

We've got a wireless video projector here already. A pain to set up, though.
 

tny

macrumors 6502
Jun 3, 2003
436
81
Washington, DC
Originally posted by denjeff
Everyone sais downloading a movie on cable is too slow... I have a cable line and if I downlaod stuff from an Apple server, I get speeds up to 800 KB/sec (now most people will say "whow :eek:" :D ). My point is, it would take only 10 minutes to download high quality movies... That s less then going to a shop to buy a DVD (even if you know I live in a quite big city).

They could have a market for movies, especially with their very compressed wavlet implementation named pixlet... And Steve has rather good contacts in the movie world. I would say "go for it!!!"... An iBeam would kick ass!!!

Kilobytes per second or kilobits per second? Even at 800 kilobytes per second, that means 480 megabytes in 10 minutes. Even an DIVX takes up 650 MB for an hour of video. So we're talking about 13 minutes for one hour of DIVX video. 26 minutes for a two hour movie. And DIVX is not my idea of high quality.
 

AlanAudio

macrumors member
Jan 2, 2004
54
0
UK
Originally posted by tny
We've got a wireless video projector here already. A pain to set up, though.

Quite - but it's not an Apple one !

Apple pride themselves on making things easy that were previously considered difficult.

Also, they don't always approach things in the obvious, conventional way.

If this actually is an Apple product, I can't imagine it being remotely like any other projector.

However it could be a third party product with Apple dedicated features. That's something that I think would be significantly less groung-breaking.
 

SiliconAddict

macrumors 603
Jun 19, 2003
5,889
0
Chicago, IL
Hmm. Apple projectors. Assuming they aren't going to outrageously bloat the price and it’s competitive to Dell's projectors I'd get one for a home theater system.
 

Peyote

macrumors 6502a
Apr 11, 2002
760
1
Originally posted by jettredmont
LED's can be made to be extremely bright, specifically because of the low heat generation.

The problem with white LEDs is that they're new and relatively expensive to make (at high brightnesses). And, they still have a noticeable bluish tinge to them.

Granted, most TV sets you buy will be pre-configured with a bluish tinge (and 75%+ of all consumers won't change it or even notice it), but "white" LED's are even moreso ...

But, yes, the bulb issue is the primary problem with FP systems today. Along with, of course, the fan noise necessary to just keep the housing cool enough so it doesn't melt or burn down your house ...


I don't know about the kelvin tempature of these LED's, but a company in the link below is manufacturing a lighting setup for Audi's A8 that uses 5 LED's as a dytime running lamp and a nighttime positioning lamp. From the picture, the light seems to be very white to me, but it's hard to tell. Regardless, I would expect this same technology to make it into projectors in the near future.

link: http://www.vwvortex.com/artman/publish/audi_news/article_602.shtml
 

Squire

macrumors 68000
Jan 8, 2003
1,563
0
Canada
Originally posted by gooddog
Teachers, CalfCanuck, t-e-a-c-h-e-r-s ....
that's 80 or 90 units sold per school.

And then ... iBooks, etc.

These things cost less than an iBook now.

Would a school buy one for every teacher? I don't think so. They'd buy a few, put them in an A/V lab, and let the teachers sign them out when they were needed. (At least that's what they used to do with A/V equipment when I was in school.) Unless the curriculum was set up so that the teachers did most of their work on a computer-projector combo or the school had a surplus of funds, I can't see schools buying more than a handful of these.

Squire
 

Waluigi

macrumors 6502
Apr 29, 2003
348
0
Connecticut
Originally posted by Squire
Would a school buy one for every teacher?

Nope! However, most new schools that are built today put a projector into every classroom these days. In a new school, the budjet for technology is enourmous, and it is here where apple selling projectors could make them as much money as selling iPods. This is no joke.

My school district built a new school a few years ago, and they spent over 100 grand just to have gateway install the 300 machines! Money is no matter there since I could have gotten a few kids to do it for 1 grand! But the board of ed makes the decisions, and I have no say, they have to spend all of the money. Anyway, there was about 40 or so class rooms, which all had projectors that cost about 3 grand, and also really expensive projectors were bought for the library, and what not.

Point being, if apple taps into this market, even if it is only a few schools, they could hit the jack pot, espically since the most teachers are perfer apple, and it would be mac-friendly, easy system.

--Waluigi
 

Squire

macrumors 68000
Jan 8, 2003
1,563
0
Canada
Well that's a good thing. I guess it's a positive statement about the educational system. Go for it, then, Apple.

Squire
 

instantypo

macrumors newbie
Jun 17, 2003
20
0
Belgium
iBeam for both pro and consumer

The idea of a projector with built in HD is fantastic, I believe.

The "iBeam" could offer a hassle free set up for those who do presentations on the road. You loose the extra connection wires. You would still need your laptop which is OK because if you make any last changes in Keynote, then just upload or sync it through FireWire to the iBeam and you're all set to beam wirelessly.

But Apple would not forget the home users. Remember that Steve Jobs said that a video iPod is a bad idea since we appreciate video differently than audio. A little iPod in your ears can offer a BIG audio experience. A videoPod would always be inferior. That's why they might like the iBeam. Video needs to be watched BIG.

So, at home you would be able to import your DVD's, iDVD projects, iPhoto's, iMovies on to the iBeam using some sort of Codec and watch it everywhere and watch it BIG. You control it through a Bluetooth remote.

Ok, I would like this product a lot! And who knows what Airport Extreme would mean for such a product?

Rob
 
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