Durosport doesn't have a product out yet - they announced it in July, but apparently haven't even shown a prototype.

If that isn't enough, go to the Durosport website and read the news - you will not believe this story (I could not make this up):

"Prism DuroSport T-Shirt Recall Announced"

"It has come to our attention that a small number of customers have experienced problems with Prism DuroSport t-shirts purchased from our online store. While we believe that most of our t-shirts are not defective, on the advice of our legal counsel we are issuing a recall for all shirts sold during the month of July 2006.

Two specific product “defects” have been claimed. One leads to a very slight skin rash, while the other involves the actual shape of the shirt — it is possible that we may have inadvertently shipped dog shirts to a few of our human customers."

I'm rolling on the floor - who would take these guys seriously? Thanks MacNN for the best laugh in months.

Actually, the Durosport website seems to be a total farce - read all the news stories - a new portable media player that's slightly bigger than a loaf of bread and weighs 20 pounds. A recall of another product because it causes users to bleed from the ears. (Should have realized it when they accused the Zune of being a copy of the Durosport Putz).

"As for the DuroSport, it doesn't do half of what the iTV does."

DuraSport doesn't do anything...it's not a real product!

I'm pretty sure DuraSport is a spoof. I could be wrong. I'm surprised macnn even covered this...it's not even April Fool's Day!

simple as that. I do like how you try to present everyones argument on here and respond to it in your post, pretending to come up with some novel argument and then shooting it down all in the same sentence. So innovative of you. You just created a new form or communication between yourself and yourself, you can now argue both sides of the story without having to interact with others. Or you could see a shrink or do us all a favor and go play in traffic and hope for the best. But then I would be sad because your entire existance adds so much comic relief to us macnn users. Post on oh wise louzer for thee is the knower of all things you despise. You are right about the buying a mac mini instead though.

"don't be thinking about storing those movies outside the iTunes or Movies folder, that's just a big no-no!"

Wrong. I store ALL of my media files OUTSIDE the stock folders Apple setup. Haven't used it much have you?

"If its like FrontRow, it won't support VOB files (ripped DVDs). "

I thought you didn't want to speculate on an unreleased project? Handbrake anyone?

"A couple of years ago I'm sure people were talking about how 'Asteroid' was going to change everything and how nothing around was like it. Except, of course, it never was released. Hey, wait! Maybe this is Asteroid!"

Sigh. Hello! Jobs announced 'iTV' he did NOT announce the rumored Asteroid device.

"Innovation isn't taking an idea and then making it a little better."

Semantics. So after the first PC was produced in 1950 called Simon there have been no innovations? Innovation is more commonly used to mean the introduction of new ideas, goods, services, and *practices*.

Is this a joke? Is MacNN really reporting this as news? Poke around the DuroSport web site for two minutes, and I think it will be fairly obvious that this is a SPOOF web site! Unbelievable that MacNN could report on this as if it is a real company. Look at the FAQ's - http://www.prismdurosport.com/support/faqs/

Does this really look like a real company? Look at the products page... the iTunes converter is a freaking cassette recorder.

Good lord, I've seen MacNN get a story wrong in the past, but this takes the cake for irresponsible reporting.

Not only is the Durosport web site a parody web site, complete with links to a review posted on APRIL FOOLS DAY, poke around for a while and you'll find that it is an absolutely HILARIOUS parody web site. The only thing you really can buy from them is t-shirts.

Be warned, according to the site, one of their products is currently being recalled... "Prism 2 with TGPS — Under certain conditions the TGPS system will accidentally reveal where the user is going to be up to a week in the future. Since these predictions are not always accurate, we consider this to be a bug. Until we can either eliminate the bug or make the TGPS predictions 100% accurate, our lawyers have advised that we recall those models immediately."

MacNN, you should take this story down ASAP to avoid being the laughing stock of the journalism community.

I don't understand the hoopla!?!? This kinda thing has been around for several years! TviX, AviX, and a bunch of others MP4 players (some are even built into DVD players) using chipsets (mostly from Korea) with ethernet/IDE-HDs and small embedded Linux distros in them and can play MP3,WAV,WMA,MPEG1,MPEG2,VOB (VIDEO_TS/DVD),DivX,XviD,MP4,JPEG (some even do ogg!) what else do you want? I have one (No ethernet in mine), cost me 65$ USD on eBay + 120$ for a 100gig 2.5 drive. I use it as a USB2 HD all day and then at night I hook it to my TV pick up the remote and enjoy some XviDs! Best of all, 100% of my Network & Macs resources are free to surf the net while I watch!

Almost forgot... My 2.5inch HD mp4 player fits in my jeans pocket! The larger 3.5inch devices are not as portable but have ethernet (some even have firewire) and 3.5inch HDs can be way larger, you could put together a 250gig one for about 300$!

Well I've wasted an hour and a half, poking around Vladimir's DuroSport site... that's choice. That's a lot of satire/sarcsm, even has a couple of daughter sites, quite the production. Class project or just a twisted sense of humor?

Z

Do you really think Jobs fired up all cylinders at that event? Hardly. But it does demonstrate what I think is a totally new product design philosophy they learned from the iPod. Rather than package the whole media center, design a barebones, elegant device with minimal controls and lean software requirements (thanks to CoreImage, etc.) and establish its functionality, then incrementally add to it as they see how customers use it.

Apple is all about puntuated evolution - but it is starting with very simple and elegant DNA and letting mutations occur naturally rather than simply inventing their idea vision of a beast and throwing it out into the wild, 'a la MS.

Innovation comes in many forms: the revolutionary bright idea from nowhere or the innovation of a corporate culture that generates incremental, evolutionary improvement on a regular basis. Apple has shown both. Most other companies are relegated to one or the other.

If Apple makes it... it will be done well and it will work,elegantly, and easily. As with all things microsoft, it is clunky and problematic.

After all, do you know of many people using the microsft media center?

"Durosport announced our VideoTron back in June. Video on the TV! We are coming up with that idea, not Steven Jobs!"

Yeah Video on TV is a totally original Idea!!??

The Xbox 360 is a piss poor media extender, unless you are using Windows Media Center. You can only stream video from Windows Media Center. Imagine that MS has released a device that only works with a Windows PC. At least iTV will work with Mac's and PC's. Plus Windows Media Center only streams WMV files to the Xbox 360 so any other video format Divx, MOV, MPEG are useless. Now I understand you can use 3rd party products to convert your media files to WMV on the fly but that is not supported out of the box with Media Center. It plays DVD movies but you can't put a DVD with even a WMV file and play it with the 360.

I love my 360 for Xbox Live and games, but as a media device it sucks. Microsoft took a sledgehammer to the knees of the Xbox 360 so they could sell more Media Center OS's. If Sony is thinking the PS3 can be a much better media device.

I only wish the iTV had DVR.

That is one of the funniest parody sites I've seen in a long time! Hahaha!! I love some of their "products", like the Prism One and Prism Two (which has duct tape holding the screen on) and thei Home media centers, which are basically old 1930's radio setups. Friggin' classic!