Ordinary Gweilo

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Box of tricks

I don’t quite understand the point of this BB Box (SCMP registration required):

Hong Kong Broadband Network, the city’s smallest fixed-line operator, aims to increase its customers’ use of broadband with the launch of its BB Box service, which brings computer multimedia files to a user’s television screen, according to chairman Ricky Wong Wai-kay.

The service, to be launched late next month or early May, is similar to Apple’s new product Apple TV, which started shipments last week.

Hong Kong Broadband Network, the fixed-line operation of Hong Kong-listed City Telecom (Hong Kong), said it was working on its product before Apple announced the Apple TV in September last year.

“Our ideas came in early last year and the whole system and development was conducted by a Beijing-based software house,” Mr Wong said.

The BB Box service, which works with Hong Kong Broadband’s pay-TV set-top box used by more than 120,000 subscribers, connects a home computer to a television for viewing of photos and films downloaded from the internet.

BB Box users need to install a software client in their computer and use a local access network cable for connecting the computer and the set-top box.

Maybe I’m stupid, but what is this actually doing?  Wouldn’t a simple cable do the job, or am I missing the point?  

Each BB Box is theoretically capable of supporting unlimited connections to other computers, as all the files users want to watch from their friends’ computers will be transmitted through the internet by streaming technology.

“It is a streaming service that demonstrates our high-speed broadband infrastructure. No storage is needed for the service,” Mr Wong said. “We want to build up a platform for our broadband users to share their multimedia files. It will be another type of video-on-demand programme. This is also another type of user-generated content.”

The company might charge users HK$60 to HK$100 per month for the BB Box service when it launches next month.

When he says “another type of video-on-demand” does he actually mean that this is an easier way of watching illegal content on your TV?  Not so much user-generated as user-uploaded…  

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7 responses to “Box of tricks”

  1. dave avatar
    dave

    It sounds like it’s just sharing a directory on the home network, and the set top box has enough clue to figure out what type of file it is and display it. As it’s being developed by a Hong Kong company, I predict that it’ll have an appalling user interface.
    It also says that it’ll share your files over HKBN’s network. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, as it could expose your PC to outside access.

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  2. spike avatar
    spike

    A wire from your computer to your TV won’t work unless you’ve got the kind of video card that can output to whatever inputs your TV will accept. And unless your computer is in the same room with your TV, you’d need to run back to your computer any time you want to stop/start/change programming.
    This would seem to be doing essentially what Apple TV and similar products from Netgear, Linksys and others are doing. Heck, even the XBOX360 has this functionality built in. The notion of being able to access files across the network on friends’ computers seems relatively unique. It’s of course quite possible to do that with current technology but requires a bit of know-how to do the set up on each end.
    I suppose the big advantage here (for some people) would be to be able to get this for a monthly rental fee rather than laying out a thousand or three at one time.
    And the question would be exactly which formats and codecs it supports – Apple TV is quite limited in that regard.

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  3. Chris avatar
    Chris

    If this BB Box is like Apple TV, does that mean that it’s a dedicated PC with media player and file sharing software and a video card? If so, I think I understand why it might be useful.
    Having said that, I don’t have much interest in Apple TV because it’s only purpose seems to be to display content from iTunes on your TV, and that content is not available in Hong Kong. So I may have misunderstood how Apple TV works.

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  4. spike avatar
    spike

    Yes, I think you’ve misunderstood how both Apple TV and iTunes work.
    Apple TV is not a dedicated PC, it is a wireless networking device optimized for streaming media, and something to convert the signal into various video and audio outputs that you can hook into your TV and stereo. It includes a remote control so that you can browse the contents of your iTunes on your TV screen.
    iTunes allows you to load your own content – mp3s, videos, photos, podcasts, etc. – into iTunes without ever using the iTunes store.

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  5. Chris avatar
    Chris

    Perhaps I was misled by this article which seems to imply to Apple TV is basically a cut-down Mac Mini
    Apple TV vs Mac Mini

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  6. spike avatar
    spike

    A lot of people apparently have been buying Mac Minis and putting them by their TV and then streaming from their bigger PCs over to the Mac to get the multimedia content in their living room.

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  7. spike avatar
    spike

    My bad, sort of. Apple TV does contain a 40 gig hard disk, an Intel processor, and an nVidia video chip, so I guess it would be correct to say it’s a kind of dedicated PC. Probably it is sort of like a crippled Mac Mini.
    The 40 gig hard disk seems like especially bad news when combined with Apple’s support for just two not-especially-popular video formats.

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