Apple TV

[RangerBob]

Hello all, not sure whether this should be in the wishlist but has anyone had a peek over the apple tv specs?

http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/03/21/apple_tv_ships/

From browsing the basic specs, I'm thinking if the price is good (not likely I know) (edit: now noticed £199 - not too bad!) , this could be a potential MVP killer for me! (40Gb cache hmmmm.. potential!)

So Sub, anyone, what are our chances of GBPVR + Apple TV?

[stu8080]

I read a speculative internet article (cant remember where, engadget i think) that suggested apple tv would use a bittorrent style system to transfer media between users appletv boxes ready for them to watched straight away.

Whilst there were no quotes from apple to suggest this was the case, i thought it a brilliant idea - instantly available media would be a real winner. If not, i dont think it offers anything special that GBPVR already does not, the next service to offer DRM free video downloads will make this obsolete.

As a streaming device it would be onto a winner if it can play Avi and Mpeg recordings, Cnet state it can play 720p video from iTunes and MPEG4 but no mention of MPEG2. I doubt it will allow me to steam recordings from my PC's hard drive.

This comment from Cnet worried me though:
"...it sounds to us as if you first need to stream an entire movie or show to the Apple TV's hard drive before you can begin watching it."
Which defeats the object of streaming surely?

It will be cool to see how it works out, Apple seem to be on the ball and good at giving us what we want, so my fingers are crossed!

[UKGuest44]

My main problem with Apple is the control aspect - they like to control their products quite strictly. They control the hardware quite tightly on macs, and with their upcoming iphone, they are banning third party applications developed by others, and I'd imagine the same is true with Apple TV, no doubt enforced quite tightly. Thus the sort of freedom and flexibility you get with the MVP and HTPCs is completely lost, and for me, that's far too great a price to pay.

I love to be able to skin things to make them look as I want them to, I love to be able to customise things so they work in a matter that suits me best, and I love to use things like plugins to extent functionality beyond what was the original intentions. This isn't something I'd give up willingly to Apple.

Its codec support also looks like it doesn't support mpeg2 directly, which is a shame as most of my recent non-archived recorded television is in that format, unless I'm missing something. It also looks like XVID and DIVX are out of the question

If some users were still expecting that the Apple TV will support DivX, we have received information proving the opposite.

One of our forum members, ZaraA, discussed with Jérome Rota, founder of DivX, who could confirm that Apple did not contact him regarding a possible integration of DivX into the Apple TV.

So, the Apple TV will not support DivX video

Video formats supported

* H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): Up to 5 Mbps, Progressive Main Profile (CAVLC) with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps)
* iTunes Store purchased video: 320 by 240 pixels or 640 by 480 pixels
* MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps (maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps)

Sounds like it can stream from computers without having to be streamed to the hard drive first though,

f you want to watch video from another computer, you can stream it live to your TV via Apple TV. Streamed media travels over your network to your TV — without taking up space on Apple TV’s hard drive.

It's also tied to itunes, which I think is a big negative too. Guess there'll be no YouTube plugin - Doesn't look like you'll be able to stream to it like you can an MVP easily either. With VLC, pretty much any non-DRM crippled format I can now play on the television with perfect quality.

Most disappointingly, Apple didn't open up the Apple TV like I had hoped; to enable it to connect to web services other than iTunes. Without the ability to pull down content from elsewhere on the net (such as YouTube or Flickr for example), the device feels too heavily tied to the iTunes download store

Also, although I'm sure it won't affect most people here, it looks like it's HD only, which for people like me with old SD CRTs which work fine and still look great, it'd be a no go.

Not that I wanted one anyway, but I try to keep an open mind. MediaMVP plus GBPVR plus my goold old SD CRTs for me

[_JD]

XVID and DivX were hacked into the ATV
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthr...id=2391956
using the open source Perian
http://perian.org/

They also dropped SSH on to the device to allow easy access and to copy content directly to the 40G disk. Another hack replaces the 40G drive with a 120 G.
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/home-entertai...246567.php

The ATV does not need a widescreen display - has component out. So any newer display that has component input would be usable.

The hacks will continue. I would expect that linking into a SMB file share of content is not too far away.

>>JD<<

[mixedup]

I currently don't have a PC near my TV so I use an AV/IR remoting device (remotes the PC 2nd screen and sound to the PC in a different room + picks up IR remote signals from the TV room and sends them back to the PC). The audio/video quality is OK for me but probably considered quite poor technically.

I was thinking AppleTV could be a good way to replace my AV/IR remoting device. That is use GB-PVR to setup recording schedules etc but then use AppleTV (physically near the TV) to:
- play my music (from iTunes)
- play my recorded TV and videos

Comments? (oh, this assumes there is an appropriate hack/work around to allow divx/avi type content to be played on the appleTV)

Cheers