Japanese consumer electronics giants Sony and Panasonic announced that they will be co-developing a Linux distribution for “digital home electronic devices.” As consumer electronics devices increasingly take on the capabilities of computers, makers need a sophisticated operating system to run them, and many have already turned to Linux. (like Tivo). See the Press Release.
Linux is an appealing choice because with the slim margins and stiff competition for electronics devices, a licensing fee to a company like Microsoft would drive up the price too much. Sony and Panasonic have probably realized that it would be uneconomical for them to develop in-house and thus control their own OS to keep a competitive advantage, so the next best thing is to share the development and maintenance burden with their competitors, and commoditize the OS. In keeping with this idea, during the joint announcement, Sony and Panasonic invited their competitors (Hitachi, IBM, NEC, Philips, Samsung and Sharp) to take part in the project. All of their work will be released under the GPL.
And here I was hoping that the 20 Mil investment that Sony made in Palm was going to allow them to use the BeOS for the OS in new Sony devices…
There. I said it before someone else could get in trouble for saying it… 😉
I’m currently running a media PC I built on top of a Win XP foundation, and while it works great, when there is a problem, it’s often a Windows XP specific problem.
Things such as Windows suddenly deciding to restore the default sound settings, or popping up reminders and warnings quickly can take one from the comfort of a “Media Box”, back to the reality that you’re simply using a PC for the chores of music and video playback/recording.
I’ve explored a lot of different software in an effort to build the best system possible, and while I like the stability of Linux, the media software simply isn’t at a state where it can be easily used/configured for this purpose (Yes, some are doing it, but they’re often eliminating some of the features which IMHO define a “Media PC” versus simply a PC with a TV card and some nice speakers hooked to it).
If you’re interested in this stuff right now under Windows, check out ShowShifter -Awsome software (although even it’s not a 100% all around solution!).
It’ll be very interesting to see how not only my system, but future systems built on either Linux or another OS (Man… I wish BeOS was up to the task, but alas, it’s not in it’s current incarnation(s)) will fare in light of where the studios are trying to take entertainment.
Just yesterday Slashdot had an article posted about the fact that the bigger companies are pushing for smartcard requirements in our digital TV’s and such. This alone has the potential to crush much of this “Do it yourself” PVR type of stuff.
8(
It’s amazing how Linux is suddenly the answer whenever anyone asks “What OS should we use for this application?”
But it says “digital home electronic devices.” I guess the term Internet Appliances (IA) has gained itself a bad selling reputation, I bet that most of those so called “home electronic devices” will be Internet ready.
Anyway, I declare this one my news of the month so far.
If Sony is involved, odds are that it’s going to have DRM all over it
I think there is a chance that if Sony starts using Linux a lot internally anyway, it could eventually show up as an option on their VAIO PCs and notebooks at some point. I would love to see a PC Linux distro emerge from a consumer electronics genius like Sony – I think they would do a very cool job of it and it would be a very innovative distro.
Also one more reason for MSFT to worry (not that anyone cares particularly).
Actually the company is called “Matsushita”. “Panasonic” is simply a brand they sell some of their products under.
They sell PerfectOffice and StarOffice (in Europe) as options on their PCs – and it is no secret that Sony and MSFT pretty much hate each other. I think this adds to the chances of eventually seeing Linux on VAIOs someday.
I personally think that Sony sees Microsoft as a threat to its own bread and butter (set top box devices – DVD’s, camcorder, pda’s, game satiations, etc, etc) I also think Sony notices that it is feeding the hand that bits, by paying Microsoft for numerous Software licenses (whether that be for PDA’s, Desktops, etc, etc). Just think if Sony were to move to Linux for those devices, even if they were to lose money from marketing and development, they would gain from less money going to Microsoft to be turned around and be used against themselves.
Mr. Cancelled
I also have a PC that I use for media, known as a HTPC (Home Theater PC). I have mine hooked up to my 51 inch HDTV using a transcoder. I can do everything in Linux I do in Windows with the exception of watching HD using the HD tuner card in my PC. I admit that some things are lacking such as PVR functions but they are also coming along and should as fully functional as ShowShifter in a short time.
Off topic but what transcoder are you using? also any quick advice on what to get/look for?
Shawn:
Heres a good forum to read to get started – noter there is talk about LInux but it has only recently started
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=26
I use a key digital transcoder that can be picked up here.
http://www.digitalconnection.com/HomeTheater/kdvtca2.htm
Good Luck — See ya at AVscience
thanks a million, that forum was much needed.
For last couple of years people have been say that Linux would be embedded in many consumer electronics. Unfortunatly, aside from the Zarius and the Tivo, it hasn’t been real succcessful. It’s good to seem it might actually see the light of day. Even though this doesn’t affect Linux on the desktop directly, it might be a big boost. If people know that Linux is running all of teir neat little devices, they may be more receptive to running it on their desktop computer.
This is good news!
This may be way out, but Sony just announced they will be bringing out a Mac-only product in April called RoughCut, a storage solution for Mac video editors. I cannot recall Sony doing anything Mac-only in the past. Sony is also Steve Jobs’ ideal of a company. Hmm, I wonder if they are collaborating on anything else?
I’ll definetely buy it if it interests me. If it is open source, I’ll buy it even if it doesen’t interest me
Hey calm down guys, lets not forget sony also are a very large Record Label, and are responsible for the crap thats in the charts. They’re an okay company but just anotha micro$t. So wot if they use Linux, big deal. Java is far better as an Embedded OS, dont ask me ask those large photocopier manufacturers! – Ricoh, Canon?
Who said Linux hasn’t been succesful in embedded stuff? Just because you don’t know about and see it doen’t mean its out there. (The fact that you don’t know about, and see it probably proves how well it is doing in the market.)
With embedded software you really don’t want to care what OS it is running, it really is irrelevant.
“Hey calm down guys, lets not forget sony also are a very large Record Label, and are responsible for the crap thats in the charts.”
This is OT, but no, they are not responsible, the people who buy and demand said “crap” are.
“They’re an okay company but just anotha micro$t.”
In that they also produce products which people buy?
Mr Cancelled wrote:
“I’m currently running a media PC I built on top of a Win XP foundation, and while it works great, when there is a problem, it’s often a Windows XP specific problem. ”
Oh please. A “media PC” YOU built “on top of a Win XP foundation”? Hahahahah … isn’t that just another way of saying putting together a PC with off-the-shelf parts (which any 15 year-old can do) and running XP on it.
My god, why do people insists on calling simple assembly “building a PC” like it’s rocket science. Geez.
Or wireless. And use it to eliminate all the cables. Auto detection of every AV device using Apple’s open standard TCP/IP networking, Rendevous.
Sadly, DRM will probably come in as well.
Here is info on Sony’s Linux PVR, Cocoon:
http://www.sony.jp/products/Consumer/cocoon/
(sorry in japanese)
It’s uses Matsuhita’s MontaVista embedded Linux which is likely what this project is based after.
OT
It is important that you integrate a computer into your home entertainment center because of the dynamic options it gives you. It is also important that the computer does not have DRM on it. Personally I don’t care if you buy an entertainment PC with DRM in it, its your money, but here’s some of the problems I’d have with it. It won’t make high quality backups of my content, DVDs, CDs, etc. It won’t let me copy my friend’s content, which falls under fair use. It probably won’t even let me download P2P content unless it comes from a “trusted” source. Notice the quotes around trusted. More than likely I would be severely limitted by the features of these entertainment boxes because the manufacturer’s partners expect I will use it to only view their content, after purchase, of course, hence the DRM. I wonder how DRM will treat Indy content.
Anyway, I was very impressed with how much documentation and libraries Sony wrote for Linux on the PS2. I think they’ll make an excellent system. But until I can put a DVD it in and stream the compressed MPEG-4 to my fileserver in the time it takes to play the movie I’ll stick with my Linux PC.
BTW, If I can’t do that already on Linux I will be able to very soon. I currently use it to stream content from my server. Check out transcode, xvid, ogg/ogm, xine, mplayer, etc.
back when Be was selling out, I said that Sony would benefit a lot by buying BeOS because they would need an operating system of their own in the future. People laughed at me then, but I guess this kinda proves my point, even though I still don’t get why they didn’t buy BeOS in the first place.
Why should Sony care about Be anyway? Sony, like everybody else, uses different OS’es for different devices. Before this announcement, Sony was using QNX on their Video on Demand set top boxes. Does that mean that they should buy QNX? That’s why they called COTS, commercial off the shelf.
As a hardware manufacturer, you want your own people to work on the killer app (instead of OS hacking) for your set top boxes or personal video recorders. Take ReplayTV vs. Tivo for instance. SonicBlue didn’t need to hack the OS because they use VxWorks, so their engineers were working on the killer app (i.e. commercial skipping software). Meanwhile Tivo’s engineers spent much of the last couple of years trying to debug linux/drivers. [The irony is that the lack of innovation actually worked for Tivo because SonicBlue attracted a lot more lawsuits from the movie studios.]
in a webdevice, and killed it.
perhaps that gave sony a bad taste of be inc and beos.
Sony, Panasonic, Matsushita, Microsoft – they are all HUGE companies that are only interested in profit. So they use whatever is cheapest and whatever will make them the most profit.
Obviously, Microsoft cannot use Linux. But Sony and others are mainly hardware manufacturers – they use whatever suits them best. And Linux is already good enough to use just about anywhere.
Plus it’s free. So do the math.
Custom hardware + free operating system = lots of profit.
Custom hardware + closed source operating system = less profit and more money spent on customizing that OS.
It’s not rocket science, just basic marketing.
>>>>Custom hardware + free operating system = lots of profit.
Custom hardware (anything other than a x86) means that a lot of gnu tools won’t work without time/money consuming work. Also COTS embedded OS’es have smaller footprint than embedded linux. If you are shipping your set-top box with a couple of Megs of extra flash memory than if you use either vxworks or qnx, then the cost of production is the same because the cost of runtimes for vxworks/qnx will be offset by less flash memory.
The irony is that Sony should thank Be for the extra buggy BeIA. 3COM started their IA design work later than Sony, picked a rock solid embedded OS (QNX) and went into production earlier than Sony. 3COM was selling them for much longer time (than Sony’s less than a month life of their own IA) — which means that when both companies were giving out full refunds when they announced the termination of their products, Sony lost much less money on their IA than 3COM. And it gave Sony an excuse (that the IA is slow and buggy even though 3COM used an even slower CPU for their IA) to kill the production.
so BeIA did it have promise or was it crap?
Is JLG and Be INc, did they put out quality software or crap?
>>>so BeIA did it have promise or was it crap?
Niether.
BeIA is not suitable for the IA job. You don’t need a mediaOS capable of running 10 quicktime movies at once to run on an IA. Because an IA doesn’t have the CPU horsepower, the hard drive space and the broadband connection to play/stream multiple movie files at once. You don’t need fancy “tabs” in the GUI desktop because an IA doesn’t even have a GUI desktop.