Home entertainment, Cubed? (Part 1)

By porruka, porruka@macedition.com

Now that the Cube has been out in the market for a short period of time (by announcement, pre-order and picture, anyway), and many, many websites (including this one: Racking the Cube) have had a say about the uses, misuses and market for the Cube. There's more to the story, though.

Could the Cube be a rack-mounted server? Sure, with work. Could the Cube be a trophy computer for those with a bit too much disposable income or a rogue corporate executive? Indeed, it likely will be, especially at the current price/performance point. Is the Cube the genesis of true digital entertainment convergence? Some think so, and with full-blown digital delivery in the near future, this is a notion that deserves a closer look.

What sort of functionality would be found in such an entertainment center? Certainly, DVD-Video, CD- and DVD-Audio, digital television (digitized analog and high-definition), digital radio, console video games, and MP3 playing would be included in this list. Also, there is likely to be Net-delivered content that may not be available over conventional connections for quite a while (streamed netcasts, specialty content, etc). Attached to this system would be a monitor capable of handling the dazzling digital video output and speakers to match the digital audio. There would also be a broadband pipe from the outside world feeding this system, and a high-bandwidth digital interconnect between all the individual components to ensure content fidelity throughout. In what ways would the Macintosh, the Mac OS, and specifically the Cube, fit into this world?

DVD-Video

The Cube is a multi-function box and may be able to do several things in addition to DVD-Video display, in a smaller space than the equivalent traditional components. This is certainly a possibility, but not a very likely one, at least as long as Apple continues to insist on using software decoding for DVD. To have audio and video not synchronize on your computer is something that Mac users put up with, but no self-respecting regular person would put up with a movie looking and sounding like a badly overdubbed Japanese monster flick. There doesn't even seem to be a good reason for this, since the ATI graphics chips have had the ability to decode DVD in hardware for a while.

Additionally, with advances in DVD media technology coming (check out some of the formats), who wants to have to replace the whole unit just to be able to play the latest movies?

Count this one against the Cube.

Recorded audio (CD- and DVD-Audio, MP3)

Let's start with CD-Audio, since it's the most stable format. What could the Cube bring to this use? A good amount, actually, if the machine is connected to the Internet. Pop a CD in, the machine could automatically get the track list (from someone such as Gracenote, neé CDDB) and even intelligently play predefined track lists or programs for that disc – all using stored information and disc recognition. However, even this capability is rapidly being assumed by dedicated devices, since some CD jukeboxes can today connect to a PC and download track information. As for the sound, this is more dependent on the speakers than the play device.

With the right speakers, score CD-Audio for the Cube, but not by a wide margin.

DVD-Audio? That's right. This is where the "Versatile" comes into play from the DVD name. With the expanded storage capacities, DVD-Audio could become the next generation of audio disc technology. Is this good for the Cube? Not really, for many of the same reasons noted in the DVD-Video section: when the drive hardware has to be updated to the latest and greatest, it's much easier to consider a standalone player "disposable".

Would MP3 (or other formats such as Windows Media Player or Liquid Audio) be Advantage: Cube? Not as much as might be expected. There would be two primary advantages to the Cube in this space: storage capacity and the ability to update for future formats. The storage isn't critical as dedicated home devices to play these formats would almost certainly have local storage of their own. But, just as DVD players have the edge when it comes to ease of upgrading (because these would necessarily be hardware upgrades), the Cube would succeed with the software music player formats, assuming that the formats in question were available for the Mac OS and run well (which is not necessarily a given).

What about other ways to play the MP3 format? Individual MP3 players could be linked into your stereo system, but they are generally designed to be portable and hence have limited memory. CD players, however, will likely be upgraded to read data CDs and decode MP3 files, especially in cars. If this scenario catches on (and it is likely; the popularity of the MP3 format almost demands some way of easily listening in a mobile environment), the ability to use CD-R or CD-RW media full of MP3 content would be a boon to the entertainment center. Add a CD burner (Apple doesn't currently bundle one) and the entertainment center could be the source of these CDs.

Even though Philips already has a home CD recorder, the nod goes to the Cube on this one because it could make this process accessible to the average person.

What's the count?

At the end of Part 1, it looks like two areas in which the Cube falls down and two where it holds its own. Of course, a straight numerical comparison isn't all that useful. Coming up: the Cube's role in New Media Delivery and "You want to connect these things using FireWhat?!? Won't that screw up my homeowner's insurance?"