Very briefly in high school, but it didn’t actually *capture* video which was what we were looking for, so back to the store it went. I remember watching Star Trek: TNG on it though.
Lots of PC’s shipped with a TV tuner 10 years ago. I remember Gateway and Toshiba had versions. Targeted at making the PC a home entertainment center. The Gateway had a TV as a monitor with only a VGA input, no composite no svideo no coax. Got it all from the PC. Both ran Win 95, but I remember an earlier one from Gateway (without TV monitor) that ran Win 3.1.
None of these (including the Mac) ever had anything close to what Media Center, Tivo, or Myth TV has tho. Pale in compairson really.
yeah… and Amiga (1985) beat Apple by 8 years to the “TV PC”…
I love Apple and all… but, Apple really doesn’t deserve credit for this… i’m not saying Amiga does either… but, honestly, TV “innovations” in home computing are hardly a noteworthy achievement… Especially considering that most early home PCs plugged right into your TV as a monitor.
It only makes sense that, as Television signals are optimized in digital format, that they be integrated back into an “intelligent” environment (e.g., computers).
Amiga also beat everyone on Video editing! Too bad commodore did not market it correctly. sigh
I wish Apple would buy NewTek and make a Video Toaster *like* product for the Macintosh. Beyond video editing, being able to control Live video feeds would be very cool indeed.
Apple aren’t asking for credit here, or claiming anything. It’s not even in the article, but instead is just made up by the author of the OS News article.
You could just plug the C64 [the Vic 20 too?] into the antenna socket of the tv and presto there you were.
I can’t see the big innovation of watching tv on your computer.
Bill Gates did give a memorable demonstration of Microsoft’s take on digital tv on Conan O’Brien’s show, though. You just don’t see that kind of laid-back flair in CEO’s anymore [please don’t point out that he’s no longer CEO].
You could just plug the C64 [the Vic 20 too?] into the antenna socket of the tv and presto there you were.
Yea but that doesn’t mean you could plug TV cable into the Commodore and control the channels through the computer’s OS. This article is giving credit to this old Mac that allowed you to actually watch TV on the computer–two totally different things.
The PC manufacturers and Microsoft release the same stuff others have been doing for 10 years, only with 10 times the bugs. A C64 is still a better computer btw
The Gateway machine was released in late 96. This first version did not do so well, as the tuner was a complicated mess that I believe was also tied to the sound card in obscure ways.
The original tuner, which I believe was called Intervideo(?) would fail if you looked at the screen wrong. The drivers were flakey and unsupported.
The remote had known issues that caused it to be unresponsive beyond only a few feet from the box.
The screen could not go beyond 640×480, although later versions were able to achieve 800×600 but caused early death to the screen if forced to that size.
Another version was released in 97 to deal with these issues – a tuner from STB, Ensoniq PCI audio card, new remotes, etc.
To save face, the earlier versions were upgraded to the newer one if a person with an older version called in with a problem. I believe that a third version was created to add 3d graphics through an overlay card made by NEC.
No amiga models came with a tuner card. The closest you could get was to plug in a ‘Live’ card from A-Squared and do a video capture display to the screen.
And it still works. Came with pr0n screen dumps on the itty bitty hard drive.
Media wise, a beige G3 with the AV card is much more capable for actually capturing and doing things with audio and video, especailly with today’s technology- and it’s not stuck to a wee little screen.
MacTV – LC form factor, built in TV tuner. Oldskool.
Pippin – Apple game console. YEARS before the XBox.
Apple VOD/Cable Box – project doesn’t have a name because it never got out of the prototype phase. Inhereted a stack of the things from a friend- based on Quadra 605 and 610 mobos with huge MPEG decoder cards
There’s a ton of stuff Apple’s been first to market with- hell, most of the stuff they’ve “introduced” with OS X they’ve already done years or decades previously. A/UX, MacX, etc. Nevermind that Classic Appleshare had ACLs and OS X doesn’t…
…which I bought in mid-98. It was an all-in-one black Mac, sold only in Europe and boasted a TV reciever with wich you could record the TV programs you were watching into QuickTime files. It also had video-in connectors (composite cinch and S-VHS) along with two audio-in cinch connectors. It also had short PCI connector, available for a second GPU or an Ethernet card.
The first iMac had been announced at the time, so these black babies were sold at a wicked-low price. I actually bought two of them, the second one for my mother.
I surfed the web, did light graphic design work and watched TV on it for a while at home (switching on a Mac with a remote is cool) and recorded studio gigs for the band which I played in, using Cubase. It performed quite well, sporting a 275MHz PPC 603e processor, the chip which served as the basis for the G3 processor.
I owned one too, an all-in-one Mac 5200 with the built in TV card. The reason most of these early TV cards didn’t allow recording was that the hard drives in those days were usually 1 GB or less. There simply was no room to record a lot of video.
Apple has always been ahead of their time. And Rolling out products ahead of their time is not wise business. Having demos that show what is to come or what may come is wiser until more interest is generated
“Apple VOD/Cable Box – project doesn’t have a name because it never got out of the prototype phase. Inhereted a stack of the things from a friend- based on Quadra 605 and 610 mobos with huge MPEG decoder cards”
Woot for another osnews trumpet up out of context useless Apple premotion.
Once again showing that apple dosent know what the market wanted and charged too much for it. As a result, Apple sold only 10,000 units, making it far rarer than the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. Apple discontinued the model quietly several months after its introduction, in February of 1994.
Why do ppl celebrate Apples failures like they are something to be proud of?
The actual beginning of the TV Tuner card for watching television on the PC was in 1992 with Animation Technologies Inc. (a.k.a. Lifeview) and also Hauppauge in the same year introducing the first TV Tuner cards for the PC.
Very briefly in high school, but it didn’t actually *capture* video which was what we were looking for, so back to the store it went. I remember watching Star Trek: TNG on it though.
Lots of PC’s shipped with a TV tuner 10 years ago. I remember Gateway and Toshiba had versions. Targeted at making the PC a home entertainment center. The Gateway had a TV as a monitor with only a VGA input, no composite no svideo no coax. Got it all from the PC. Both ran Win 95, but I remember an earlier one from Gateway (without TV monitor) that ran Win 3.1.
None of these (including the Mac) ever had anything close to what Media Center, Tivo, or Myth TV has tho. Pale in compairson really.
yeah… and Amiga (1985) beat Apple by 8 years to the “TV PC”…
I love Apple and all… but, Apple really doesn’t deserve credit for this… i’m not saying Amiga does either… but, honestly, TV “innovations” in home computing are hardly a noteworthy achievement… Especially considering that most early home PCs plugged right into your TV as a monitor.
It only makes sense that, as Television signals are optimized in digital format, that they be integrated back into an “intelligent” environment (e.g., computers).
Amiga also beat everyone on Video editing! Too bad commodore did not market it correctly. sigh
I wish Apple would buy NewTek and make a Video Toaster *like* product for the Macintosh. Beyond video editing, being able to control Live video feeds would be very cool indeed.
Apple aren’t asking for credit here, or claiming anything. It’s not even in the article, but instead is just made up by the author of the OS News article.
Nothing to see here. Move along…
” It’s not even in the article, but instead is just made up by the author of the OS News article. ”
Kind of the way newspaper headlines are made up? :>
This reminds me of an article on The Onion, about a “New $5,000 Multimedia Computer System Downloads Real-Time TV Programs, Displays Them On Monitor”
The Amiga was not bundled with a TV card tuner. The CDTV was the first TV tuner equipped ‘Amiga’.
Gateway’s PC was released in 1995, I believe.
You could just plug the C64 [the Vic 20 too?] into the antenna socket of the tv and presto there you were.
I can’t see the big innovation of watching tv on your computer.
Bill Gates did give a memorable demonstration of Microsoft’s take on digital tv on Conan O’Brien’s show, though. You just don’t see that kind of laid-back flair in CEO’s anymore [please don’t point out that he’s no longer CEO].
I didn’t know that.
You could just plug the C64 [the Vic 20 too?] into the antenna socket of the tv and presto there you were.
Yea but that doesn’t mean you could plug TV cable into the Commodore and control the channels through the computer’s OS. This article is giving credit to this old Mac that allowed you to actually watch TV on the computer–two totally different things.
oops my mistake, sorry post your links, thanx
Apple did before MS and Amiga before Apple… I don’t care because I can’t found now the Apple TV or the Amiga TV.
We can say Apple was 10 years ahead with his Pippins too, but Pippins is dead.
The PC manufacturers and Microsoft release the same stuff others have been doing for 10 years, only with 10 times the bugs. A C64 is still a better computer btw
The Gateway machine was released in late 96. This first version did not do so well, as the tuner was a complicated mess that I believe was also tied to the sound card in obscure ways.
The original tuner, which I believe was called Intervideo(?) would fail if you looked at the screen wrong. The drivers were flakey and unsupported.
The remote had known issues that caused it to be unresponsive beyond only a few feet from the box.
The screen could not go beyond 640×480, although later versions were able to achieve 800×600 but caused early death to the screen if forced to that size.
Another version was released in 97 to deal with these issues – a tuner from STB, Ensoniq PCI audio card, new remotes, etc.
To save face, the earlier versions were upgraded to the newer one if a person with an older version called in with a problem. I believe that a third version was created to add 3d graphics through an overlay card made by NEC.
No amiga models came with a tuner card. The closest you could get was to plug in a ‘Live’ card from A-Squared and do a video capture display to the screen.
Am I the only on who doesn’t get the images to load in Safari? of all the browsers for this to not work in.
Nope, I don’get get them and I’m Firefox on Windows. IE doesn’t work either.
I have one in my home office that I use for watching television. I got it from a flea market for 10 dollars about 2 years ago.
And it still works. Came with pr0n screen dumps on the itty bitty hard drive.
Media wise, a beige G3 with the AV card is much more capable for actually capturing and doing things with audio and video, especailly with today’s technology- and it’s not stuck to a wee little screen.
MacTV – LC form factor, built in TV tuner. Oldskool.
Pippin – Apple game console. YEARS before the XBox.
Apple VOD/Cable Box – project doesn’t have a name because it never got out of the prototype phase. Inhereted a stack of the things from a friend- based on Quadra 605 and 610 mobos with huge MPEG decoder cards
There’s a ton of stuff Apple’s been first to market with- hell, most of the stuff they’ve “introduced” with OS X they’ve already done years or decades previously. A/UX, MacX, etc. Nevermind that Classic Appleshare had ACLs and OS X doesn’t…
…which I bought in mid-98. It was an all-in-one black Mac, sold only in Europe and boasted a TV reciever with wich you could record the TV programs you were watching into QuickTime files. It also had video-in connectors (composite cinch and S-VHS) along with two audio-in cinch connectors. It also had short PCI connector, available for a second GPU or an Ethernet card.
The first iMac had been announced at the time, so these black babies were sold at a wicked-low price. I actually bought two of them, the second one for my mother.
I surfed the web, did light graphic design work and watched TV on it for a while at home (switching on a Mac with a remote is cool) and recorded studio gigs for the band which I played in, using Cubase. It performed quite well, sporting a 275MHz PPC 603e processor, the chip which served as the basis for the G3 processor.
I owned one too, an all-in-one Mac 5200 with the built in TV card. The reason most of these early TV cards didn’t allow recording was that the hard drives in those days were usually 1 GB or less. There simply was no room to record a lot of video.
Apple has always been ahead of their time. And Rolling out products ahead of their time is not wise business. Having demos that show what is to come or what may come is wiser until more interest is generated
“Apple VOD/Cable Box – project doesn’t have a name because it never got out of the prototype phase. Inhereted a stack of the things from a friend- based on Quadra 605 and 610 mobos with huge MPEG decoder cards”
Pics, pretty please???
Get an EyeTv if you want to watch record or pause live tv on your mac.
Fixed the problem.
Woot for another osnews trumpet up out of context useless Apple premotion.
Once again showing that apple dosent know what the market wanted and charged too much for it. As a result, Apple sold only 10,000 units, making it far rarer than the Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh. Apple discontinued the model quietly several months after its introduction, in February of 1994.
Why do ppl celebrate Apples failures like they are something to be proud of?
The actual beginning of the TV Tuner card for watching television on the PC was in 1992 with Animation Technologies Inc. (a.k.a. Lifeview) and also Hauppauge in the same year introducing the first TV Tuner cards for the PC.
http://ruel.net/pc/tv.tuner.video.recording.history.htm
So BEFORE the mac.. u could actually RECORD video on a pc.
OSNEWS lift your game.. or do a bit of research hey? BTW it took me 5 sec to find this on google.
http://www.pbzone.com/macthing.shtml
http://www.larwe.com/museum/apple4120.html
I said that it beat Windows Media Center, not every other PC manaufacturer on the face of the planet.