I agree to Zylesea the G4 seems to expensive.
Maybe you can convince IBM to release the long
rumored "G3VX".

Making a _inexpensive_ SetTop/TiVo/Gaming box seems to be a nice idea to me, but it is achievable?

My Wishlist:
Sponsor yourself, take MorphOS as OS.
People who like the Xxxx G4 experience maybe will look at the Pegasos as new Computer.
Make Games compatible with Pegasos, for a bigger Market.
Let People Download/Burn movies from the Xxxx G4,
i don't like deleting films because the HD is full.

Zylesea, that we have already done...

...and Donar, you are right with all those suggestions.

Thanks!

R&B

>The Xxxxx G4 comes with the built in Family MorphOS SuperBundle package and bundled with hundreds of old Amiga and Atari games and applications

Sounds fine, Amiga had some very good games, and when you look at the crap that sells on mobilephones today...

Can I use my old Amiga disks with this system? ;)

The console should definitely be able to handle HDTV (though upgrade?), even some 60EUR TV cards can receive it, but you seem to need a fairly powerful PC to display HDTV streams properly.
Maybe Altivec can help for this kind of application.

Get Atari in the boat and label the system Atari when bundled with e.g. MOG Neverwinter Knights and it might be quite some attractive box which would make some killer PR for you if it works out.

Quote:

LOL!!!

SEGA CHANNEL

small article on sega channel here

Re-creating a service like this for a new game console would be great.

However, we want not only access to a library of classic 16bit SEGA Genesis and 8bit master system game titles, we would like: SEGA Saturn, Neptune, and SEGA Dreamcast titles.

The game console hardware should be powerful enough to run emulators. As SEGA is now out of the hardware business, licensing an official emulation solution for these classic consoles should be lot easier.

You are exactly right Darth! The CD32 is to the PlayStation what the Sega Channel is to this effort. Sometimes, it is just timing and we hope to be right on.



R&B

This could very well become something like the A500 was back in the days. Something diffrent.
As you said, hope the timing is right.
But apart from that - GO BBRV! This could really market your products.

But don't you forget to bring us Pegasos3 while you're at it!

For those doing a little research, go to google and type in "programming credits".

I want everyone thinking in this direction.

Nearly 99% of cable tv subscribers hate their cable boxes. Without cable tv services, the box is just an ugly paperweight. People get the box for the services.

So, its all about services. Those services should pay for the box, just as games sales subsidize game consoles. Its the same business model and it does work.

VoIP is going to be huge.

Video phones FOR consumers would be even bigger.. IF the service cost mere pennies more than regular phone services. $1 or more per/second just will not work! Many companies will never understand this, their loss! Then again, it only takes one company to go out and do this for others to come along and imitate.

Much of technology is about imitating, not innovating. hehe

I heard ATI mentioned for graphics. Excellent!

But what about audio? Check this out:
Blackfin

Blackfin Applications:
* Digital Still Cameras
* Digital Video Cameras
* Portable Media Players
* Digital Video Recorders
* Set Top Boxes
* Consumer Multimedia
* Automotive Vision Systems
* Broadband Wireless Systems


Its good to see low cost specialized chips like this. But is Analog Devices a good company to work with?

Would a Motorola DSP be a better solution? Will the freescale spinoff be able to provide a better solution, similar to Blackfin, with comparable or better prices?

Dolby Digital 5.1 (and be backward compatible, Dolby Digital 7.1 compatible?) must be on the device, for DVD and HDTV and others...
VoIP and Video-conference could be very nice, only put a USB cam, FW cam... and a good program... This will require drivers for the hardware, of course... Actually a system only for videoconference is expensive, so your product, with a competitive price, A LOT of capabilities... Will crush the market. be careful with big companies, they will be furious when you release your device to the market...

Atari logo on the device? Could sell too well, than as commodore logo, i know some people asking to me: do you know the new commodore things? i was buyed some, looks good... LOL

its cool to have new hardware, but where's the software? Any new
commercial companies planning on developing for the Peg system?

I bet many families would like a content filtering solution for email and the web.

A firewall that's easier to admin than those minimalistic broadband routers.

Internet Server. Web, Email, FTP, ...

VoIP base station <-> bluetooth headset.
(or simply regular phone <-> bluetooth headset)

Home Control System. Surveillence. Alarms.

GSM module. Personal SMS services.

TiVo like device.

TiVO like radio solution.

Fax / Answering machine / menu driven telephony serices.

Car/bus solutions. (GPS modules, in-vehicle voices)

Listening station for music stores / libraries.

Information kiosks. ATMs.

Public Audio-systems. Public TV systems.

For PVR, support both DVDRW and HDD recording from the same GUI interface, so you can be flexible in what you sell (as well as providing options for the users)- ie: maybe DVDRW and no HDD, HDD and only DVD etc.

PS: I have some sophisticated UDP multiplayer routines we could use for internet gaming- currently they're in Blitz, but I want to convert them to a lib in C- I hopefully may have some time to do that soon! :)

http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/ants/UDP-Docs/udp_lib-index.html

A few more thoughts...

I. The medium is the message (again!).

Where the content comes from is important, but what will be the most important issue is HOW the consumer of the content experiences it. This WILL BE the distribution system. In the consumer lies the core value and personalizing the experience to them IS the future. What they see, touch and use is the terminal or port to the digital world. It does not matter how it gets there.

Today, we can and do deliver the promise of this future distribution system to a desktop, to the core of a home entertainment center or to the base station in a "digital home." The Pegasos can fulfill all these roles, because it IS a computer. The Pegasos is just building block #1 toward establishing the fully featured computing environment that will be increasingly demanded from all consumer electronics products seeking to fill these roles. This is what is coming. To stake a claim in this new world of distribution you must start here. The sooner we establish this position the sooner we can gain mind and market share.

Hardware can be optimized, cost reduced and made much smaller. This is why partners like Motorola and IBM are important. The hardware is a necessary development step, but ultimately a commodity. We have secured these relationships. We have the same building blocks as Apple, hardware, OS and applications -- all in one package. Now, the OS and applications should be our focus as they are the key to the end user device. The device itself migrates from a fixed location today to anywhere and anytime in the future (and could still hook up to the TV or monitor). We all have the ingredients ready to go.

You can see an indication of the future of digital distribution with the iPod. Apple is selling iPods not music, but is beginning to assert a role in the distribution of the music itself. For HP to re-badge the iPod as their own is evidence of the strategy we are suggesting. We will not have to sell a million iPods to gain the same acclaim.

The content providers are desperate for a solution. Piracy will not stop with music; the "pipe" is getting bigger. Movies and video games are next. If we can show them the complete package *working* and the vision for the future they will embrace us. Our indications and experience tell us that we can achieve a "tipping point" relatively quickly. Witness Disney's effort to go around the "distributors" with MovieBeam. At the same time, consider Voom from Cablevision (not to mention the forces pushing their scope from cable to include satellite), an organization that you consider a "distributor" today. What they both had to develop was the end user device, because that is what makes the whole notion possible. The end user device is the distribution system. At this point personalization is critical. We can do that. Nevertheless, having an entire system defined and packaged is the key to obtain validation in the broader world.

Akin to the advent of the fax machine, to send or receive you had to have a machine, the objective is to integrate the content with the network itself and introduce an indispensable platform that will usher in a new generation of digital distribution.

The medium is the message (again!).

II. Building a Trusted Community

Establishing a Secure Trusted Internet based distribution system requires completely new innovation. At a minimum it must attend to these issues:

1. DRM
2. Identity theft
3. credit card fraud

It must also have a system of micropayments integrated by design.

This will be a two-way channel. By the way, in addition to providing a solution for the above our system will allow Voice and Video over IP with no further associated telephone charges. This alone creates HUGE revenue opportunities and aids in driving the product into the home. Skype has well over a million users and grows daily. In Italy, FastWeb has had a TV-based service available on its fiber-to-the-home networks for about a year. In November 2003, France Telecom's ISP, Wanadoo, launched in a betatest Visio, a person to person videotelephone service using a PC and webcam. Building a foundation for these applications in the home makes the realization of the same in the mobile space more realistic.

We can be the first to market with the next generation of distribution. The opportunity is even more compelling, because the "system" is broken today and growing less controllable for the traditional content businesses daily. As music moved from vinyl to tape to a CD to where we think things are going: bringing an always on network INTO the digital distribution itself. When this position is further enhanced and actualized by an operating system the final step can be made.

That is the LONG term view.

Thanks for all the comments here!

R&B

so at abotu using MythTV for al thetv recording and dvd features ect...?
link

If you ask my opinion about a Pegasos game console...

It should NEED at least psx1 emulation, possible psx2, and mabe XBoX hehe

So ppl won't miss anything when they
decide to buy such a pegasos game console.

Apart from that, it would be also fun to have
MAME buldin, with lot's of arcade roms,
and other existing emu's.

So it will be a game all in box, capable of running many many different games from different platforms.

That would rule.

Bye,
Felix.

I saw a really nice USB backlit keyboard in PCWorld today - that would be a cool accessory for a console.

As for VOIP and video, the openH323 project is one possible source for use.
It would help to have a couple of ethernet ports so you could throttle back on the one connected to the dsl to avoid queuing on a $50 dsl box. If the console is running Linux then no problemo! But if Morphos.... Some way of enabling custom queuing on Morphos would also be a help in minimising latency and jitter on the UDP

anything company u emulate will sue u....and tehyw il find a way.....u need to get the company's permission. i think sega dreamcast suport would be very good because sega would licence it to genesi most likely

Actually there aren't a dreamcast emulator with good compatibility. but there's exist "dreamcast on a chip", was included on some things as a digital tv receiver... Could be a very interesant addition because dreamcast has a good quantity of very good games...

A too important thing that i'm repeating too, is about this product must be very competitive, a thing too cheap for that has... If not, competence will crash you, because they are big companies and people trust more on they...

no no no 3rd party emulator....u get the specs straight from sega. have they m licence it to Genesi, that way you are not emulating compatibility, u have the real thing!

One idea might be to open this up to the OSS world as a breeding grounds for new titles and and drivers, etc. This is were OPA comes into play. If the development packages are inexpensive and the basic game/application environment is "open" this might spawn a totally new outlet and interest. When things look good the package can graduate to the MorphOS environment -- something like this:

If XXXXXX produced and distributed the Pegasos in the same manner Genesi has over the last 15 months at a factor of ten times the investment and scope XXXXXX would gain a significant share of the best OSS community involvement, because of the a) the efficiencies related to the PowerPC, b) a ready and proven development platform, c) a vision for the future.

2. Xxxxx

a. Change the rules of development. Make it easier for Developers. They do not have a platform today. They conform to what is in the market. Provide the tools. Use Linux as the "free" breeding grounds. Emulate everything. Publish OPA not only for application development, but for drivers and peripheral devices, perhaps even a new generation of hardware. We create a publishing and distribution environment.

b. Graduate to the big leagues. When you pay to play it is a whole new word. Use MorphOS for this environment. Used the closed source environment to protect IP the anytime, anyplace world.

Keep brainstorming!

R&B

The problem with speccing a game console based on a wishlist is that the market needs consoles specced according to cost. Trying to compete on overall power with Sony etc. is a bust without huge investment capital.

There's one thing none of the current consoles dohave though, and that's commoditisation - they are all proprietary systems. Instead I'd look for a low-cost but capable spec (and these days that's pretty much anything) with a limited set of industry standard interfaces such as USB, and promote it as a licensable, intercompatible system. Control the APIs and the distribution channel, and sell through multiple OEMs/channels allowing enough scope for product differentiation without breaking compatibility. Thus you might have a Samsung Pegasos console with basic games playing capability, a Motorola Pegasos console with MP3/DivX playback, a web browser and VOIP capabilities, and a Sky+ Pegasos Gamebox with PVR and DTV. I'm sure there are a lot of smaller blue chips who'd be interested in getting into the console game without actually liking the idea of trying to push their own unique platform into the market, but there would have to be scope for product differentiation within any shared spec console for that to have any chance of success.

On the hardware front I'd say some for of peer-to-peer wireless LAN capability built in would be a winner. This would be great for social play (people don't mind carrying a console to a friend's house, but link cable gaming has always been hit and miss because games companies are generally unwilling to invest much into development which requires add-on hardware, even if it's as cheap as a cable), but it would also offer other benefits such as easy broadband networking and the potential to offer an optional home server base station which could be easily accessed by multiple consoles acting as terminals around the home.

From a development viewpoint, ease of development is probably a lot less important than ease of porting. Games devs will develop for whatever product has a market to justify it - if Microsoft say they want to produce a console with multiple CPUs, the games developers sigh and accept the fact that there's going to be a lot of messing around with new compiler technology and learning new ways of managing game data and engines. However when you're the new kid on the block and have no historic market and minimal market impulse compared to the big boys, the most important thing is to keep the price of entry as low as is possible for the developers. If it's easy to port to (good cross-compilation, OpenGL, even a DirectX compatible wrapper if possible) and if there are familiar toolsets (Codewarrior IDE, Renderware etc) you make it far less expensive for the devs. If you have a distribution model that keeps costs as low as possible you have the potential to offer the softcos a simple, low cost, low maintenance revenue stream that makes it worth their while giving it a shot - better to chance a finger than an arm. With a decent software catalogue, even mostly ports, the console has the possibility of growth, and with growth the temptation for original development becomes much greater.

Hi Andrew, we said it a little different and with a bit more detail, but check your inbox... "You got it!"

Gladiateur got off to a great start and hit a snag with Vivendi, but with people like you and others still here in this Community this platform has a BIG opportunity to go somewhere.

You and people like you are the reason we post the way we do. Thanks for your ideas and contribution.

We are sure we are getting somewhere here in Texas along these lines...

R&B

I think the basic concept is a great one, and I'd love to develop on such a device...

However, remember "it's better to be different than to be better", or in other words, don't just produce a faster console with better graphics - it will fail.

Your machine must give people something they are not going to get from next-gen machines...


One of my ideas is to have USB ports on the front for easy to find paripherals. That just might be one factor to motivate people to buy.

(oh, and don't call it a 'Pegasos')