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Apple TV to be a Centrally Controlled P2P Network?
Rolgar writes "PBS' Bob Cringely theorizes that since the Apple TV will be an always-on device with a 40GB hard drive, Apple may move to content distribution via a P2P network. The ISPs will incur higher bandwidth locally, possibly lose some subscribers to cable TV, but have fewer costs through the Tier II Internet backbone providers. Bob also expects that Google will be involved with their fiber network and advertising expertise, and my hope is that they'll bundle in YouTube content as well. The article suspects that they won't get around to announcing the full details of this plan until they hit a half million units or more, and that this Apple and Google pairing will become the equivalent of a cable TV provider with almost none of the infrastructure costs. Eventually, he hopes, we'll see a real HD revolution from Apple and Google for this service." If Apple rolled something like this out to the service, would you bite on it? What would it take you to move to this over Tivo or MythTV?
I love my Tivo to death, and have it set up just the way I like it. Unless Apple offers something that will offset the cost of re-installing and configuration, I won't bite.
>If Apple rolled something like this out to the service, would you bite on it?
>What would it take you to move to this over Tivo or MythTV?
I will not pay for any "service" above and beyond my normal ISP fee in order to receive content. I can get all the content I want for free just by having a connection to the internet.
The only way I would subscribe to this service is if it was free.
as soon as Apple announces it.
I'm tired of the B.S., indecipherable controls, policies, unusable channels and the need to sit down or record in real time when the content is deemed fit to be distributed by some provider that decides it knows when it is best for ME to sit and watch/record.
...or... Maybe it's there so Apple can incorporate an "offline mode." I don't necessarily need to be connected to the internet to enjoy my movie, similar to the XBOX LIVE marketplace and their "rentals."
Why should I waste my bandwidth on distributing Apple's movies and music for them?
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
How is this better than the following workflow (which is what many do now, and more will do soon):
... no thanks!
* Find content on the Internet or other places (via whatever means)
* Download/aquire (again, however you need to)
* Watch on your TV (via any network-attached device or stand-alone DVD player that supports lots of codecs and can be controlled with a remote)
The only things outlined in TFA that differs from this is
* What is available is controlled by some bullshit companies who will have your worst interest at heart
* You have to watch ads
* You have to pay for downloads
* Apple and Google spy on you
Er, um
Has everybody forgotten "Cringely" just a pen name for Mark Stephens?
What would it take me to move to this over MythTV? Let's see... it'd have to be FOSS by people who aren't entangled in various dealings with all the media companies, it'd have to run on Linux, and it'd have to be something I could tweak to my needs and system specs without too much trouble.
Basically, it'd have to be MythTV.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
All I need is the iTV to allow me to rent HD movies at a reasonable price ($5). They can destroy Netflix and HD/Blu-Ray in one quick move.
Right now though, I have to buy them off the iTunes store for a much higher price. Given I can get rent 2 DVD's from hollywood for $4 and don't need to buy an iTV, I'm sticking with that option.
$299 for a 720p (only) display extender? Meh.
$299 for a 24/7 torrent node that replaces a PVR? Hmmm.
I'd buy THAT for $299.
I suppose if I actually watched TV, then I might think about it.
They can have my TiVo when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
Apple TV, from all the reports I've read, sounds spectacularly weak. I don't expect it to ever succeed.
Conjecture: "Apple TV" is the Newton of Apple's play into the convergence market. A cute idea, nice try, but they totally blew it. Apple will likely go back to the lab and come out with something that doesn't suck so much, just as they did with the iPod.
Crispin
I may bite at such a service if Apple included the functionality in their monthly fee to use the device. If it was an added feature that carried a separate charge, I certainly would not be interested.
Launch every sig.
The iTV is not meant to be a replacement for Tivo, at least by my understanding. Essentially what it is, is the same thing that the AirportExpress does. It allows you to stream the movies/TV shows from your PC (using iTunes) to your nice big TV instead of your computer monitor. It doesnt have a built-in tuner, so you can't watch live TV. I was really excited about it when I first saw it, but then realized that it's not a DVR.
WTB [sig], PST!!!
You're absolutely right. This is nothing more than them moving their responsibility onto their customers.
It's not something I'll stand for, and thus I won't bother with this service, just as I don't bother with cable or satellite.
Great, more FUD delivered by one of the internet's favorite soothsayers, delivered with all the smarm of a Starbucks-toting liberal arts blogger. Granted, it's no Continuum Transfunctioner, but its mystery IS only exceeded by its power. Get over it, fanboy.
But only if it's free.
I've got content out the wazoo... $15/month gets me loads of movie rentals.
... for xtube.com integration with Apple TV.
No. Apple is nothing more than a wanna be Emperor without clothes. About 90% of the crap that is already available from cable, satellite, internet I don't watch anyway and can't see Apple offering ANYTHING that would prompt me to pay them.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
I have DVR through Comcast for about $75 with digital cable plus. Now if I watch 10 shows a week, and the dowload costs $2 each that is $80 a month (10 shows * 4 weeks * $2), toss in the cost of the unit and then subscribtion costs and it is even less appealing. I won't replace my DVR.
Half of writing history is hiding the truth.
If Apple really wanted to put out a p2p distribution node, an easier solution would be to just release it as an update to iTunes. Then they aren't limited to only the AppleTV nodes.
Somehow, I don't think a 40GB drive will suffice for storing enough HD video to have a sufficiently large P2P base.
I think Cringely used the power of P2P to combine random buzzwords, product names, and company names faster than ever. Is there any evidence that this particular combination is actually likely to happen?
Honestly, I think the Apple TV does nees something more than what it is now to be a compelling device. Its $299, for $349, I can get a 80gb ipod which plays video, can hook up to my tv, and fits in my pocket. It just isn't high def and it doesn't have the fancy menu system. But the current iTunes store videos aren't hi-def anyways, and since the DRM doesn't let you burn them to DVD so I have a future proof backup, I am not so interested in buying them. Although if I could burn DVDs, and most network shows were on iTunes, I would consider canceling my video cable, as it would be cheaper for me to just buy subscriptions to the few shows I actually watch. If there was a lot of good, affordable, and/or free HD content I could stream or download and watch on an Apple TV I might consider it. P2P is something a device like this could uniquely do, but as a user I don't really care if it uses P2P, I just want something good to watch. (BTW, I wouldn't put YouTube into the category of "good", but a well curated YouTube like system, like the Zed show on CBC, I'd go for) It has a USB port, but I don't really see what for. What does it do? Can I attach extra storage? Can I attach an eyeTV and turn it into a DVR? Or hook up a mouse and keyboard and browse the web? Without the above, I'd be more inclined to buy a mac mini for my living room. Its more money, but since its a full computer, I would get a lot more value out of it, and it comes with the Front Row software and remote too. Without more content and features, I don't see the Apple TV being all that compelling for me beyond the "wow, Apple makes cool stuff" factor. I still think they will sell a ton of them, but there really is a lot more potential in the set top box area I hope they develop. I love ranting. I'll sit back for a while and see what version 2 of apple tv ends up being.
I'm not sure it's going to be Apple, but something like this is going to kill cable television networks like Comedy Central, Cartoon, SciFi, etc very soon (3 years).
Channels buy the rights to syndicated repeats and programming made by outside production companies, then sell ads during these programs to make money. It's all very inefficient.
Downloadable television cuts out the network middle man. You can buy content directly from the producers, ad free if they want to offer it that way. In such a world Futurama never would have been canceled.
How this is delivered technically remains to be seen, but I wouldn't buy any Viacom stock.
Faster download of HD content?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
At best your ISP's should Work TV like it was Usenet and store the Broadcast shows locally. But that would only add the the Monopoly. And we don't need that. But rather we need to bypass the ISP's and use the "NII BAND" that the FCC would not let us have.
The appleTV only supports 2-channel stereo. Why would you want to watch High-Def video with just-blah audio?
Truthfully, the *main* reason my MythTV is a superior solution to all of the commercial offerings (Apple included) is because I'm not feature-constrained, artificially, by copyright legislation.
I'm not a programmer/developer, so the fact Myth source is available means about zilch to me. I'm just as "stuck" relying on others to add new features to Myth as I would be if I was waiting for Apple or some other company to add them.
But the ability to rip and store compressed versions of all my movie DVDs, ready for instant play on demand (complete with cover art auto-downloaded as thumbnails to browse, etc.) is awesome. The top-notch commercial filtering/skipping support is great. The integration of multiple game console and coin-op arcade emulators is cool too. These are just some of the things I don't see ANY commercially sold products ever offering, since they'd prefer not to fight the legal battles that would be involved.
Apple is nothing more than a wanna be Emperor without clothes. About 90% of the crap that is already available from cable, satellite, internet I don't watch anyway and can't see Apple offering ANYTHING that would prompt me to pay them.
SO what you are saying is in fact the Emperor has plenty of clothes, you just don't like what they are wearing.
Fine but do not dismiss the fact that there are plenty of do like what they (and other studios) have to offer.
The battle is not over a small group of art-house fanatics.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I agree, but there is a complication. hugh speed Internet access in the US is a pile of dog crap. The only reasonable choice I have is to go with my local cable provider (half the price of DSL). Cable internet+basic TV service is $10 cheaper than just cable internet access; so I'm forced to buy programming to get internet. Downloadable television may cut out the middle man, but for many people like myself, only after they've already been paid once.
Here's how I see the market changing. Right now the US is the center of content creation. Slowly, other countries with affordable, non-monopolized internet access will get more and more TV and movies over IP and more of it will be locally and tailored to them. Eventually, a significant amount of content will only be available this way and US citizens will be paying for that content separately, or it will be licensed to TV channels who will rerun it. A lot of that content will be free or ad supported so some people will not wait and will view it via a Web interface. After a decade of this, the US will finally catch up enough in the network space via wireless or something, by which time we'll be way behind the curve on both content creation and the technological delivery mechanisms, effectively ceding our dominance in both those spaces and putting the momentum behind foreign companies. Once again US laws written by greedy corporations will have squashed innovation here and resulted in the US losing another huge market and slipping a little further away from being the biggest economic powerhouse as China, India, and the EU take over.
The new Apple TV media extender is supposed to ship this month, perhaps even by the time you read this column, and if you are like me you are wondering what that 40-gig hard drive is doing inside.
Um, it's called "caching". From Apple's own website:
Open iTunes and Apple TV appears in your devices list, ready to sync. Set iTunes to sync unwatched TV shows, movies, and podcasts. Set it to sync new purchases. Or manually select what you want to watch. Set your syncing preferences once and Apple TV automatically updates as your iTunes library changes.
Apple TV streams as well as it syncs, so you can pair up to five additional computers and let friends and family stream their iTunes libraries to your TV. Apple TV stores up to 50 hours of video, ready to watch when you are.
Despite nearly a decade of tech companies doing their best to sell me "surround sound", I have yet to evolve more than two ears.
The thing that KILLS the Apple TV for me is the lack of SD output. I don't have an HDTV right now and don't plan on getting one anytime soon. I'd love to buy this but its few features aren't enough to convince me to buy an expensive TV that I have no need for otherwise. It would have been really simple to add a composite or s-vid out. Sure it wouldn't look quite as nice but it would open up their potential customer base but a large amount.
I killed 3 men and 2 cats to get this sig?
I probably wouldn't use it unless Microsoft came out with the same service. Then I'd use Microsoft's version.
iTunes plays anything that is in Quicktime Format, and Quicktime will happily store MPEG-4 video. Once you install the DivX Codec for Quicktime (a free download), you can play your DivX movies in Quicktime. All you have to do is save the new file with the Quicktime wrapper (that stores the meta-information) and copy it into iTunes. Remember, Quicktime is Apple's media playing system. The Quicktime Player is just a small front-end for playing Quicktime moves (on Mac), or an embedded Quicktime + Player for Windows.
I've been debating ditching my DirecTV + Tivos system, because I can't get the new HD content without MPEG-4, and once I go MPEG-4, I can't use my HD Tivo, and the new software seems crappy. The Wife and I realized that the amount of non-network television we watch is miniscule (the 6 networks, even pretended MyNetworkTV is a Network) cover 90% of our viewing... add Battlestar Galactica, Daily Show, and Colbert Report, and that's pretty much hit, save a one-two shows a year on HBO/Showtime that come out on DVD later anyway.
This raises the Question: instead of Satellite boxes all over the place, could a MythTV recorder with a nice fat RAID Array + 6 HDTV cards that record EVERY OTA prime time show in HDTV (why bother selecting programming when you can grab them all), with a Mac Mini running an Automator Script and/or a simple Applescript running hourly to add the Quicktime Wrapper + Meta Data get all my Content into nice and happy iTunes, for easy playback on Apple TVs in the house... doesn't sound far fetched, does it?
I was on the fence about buying an iTV. Gonna buy one now, no doubt.
Since when did this become a secret? Steve Jobs made it pretty obvious in his last keynote when he said that you can sync your TV shows/movies to the Apple TV (from 1 computer), and you can stream from up to 5 computers. He even went into detail about the syncing process, and how you could have it automatically store your latest 5 unwatched TV shows to your Apple TV hard drive.
Already does this in a decentralized fashion w/o the DRM. Check it out http://www.getdemocracy.com/.
Of course Bob's saying that this is going to not be DRMed. So if Apple is sending me pre-release videos which aren't DRMed without my consent, how do they charge me for it? If Suncoast did this via fedex they wouldn't have a leg to stand on when they billed me.
My 2 cents.
I am Jack's smirking revenge.
If Apple rolled something like this out to the service, would you bite on it? What would it take you to move to this over Tivo or MythTV?
I watch t.v. on my laptop which i connect to the t.v. I've tested through movielink and cinemanow. I get battlestar galactica on itunes regularily (you HAVE to support those guys... don't get it via bittorrent... my $.02).
Will I get a set-top apple box? probably not. Will I get a set-top box that supports movielink, cinemanow, future netflix downloads, pbs shows from their site, itunes, and any/all 3rd party projects/applications, such as the venice project? Yes. Apple's box probably won't do this, so I probably won't get it. The key is open support for 3rd party apps and movie/t.v. downloads.
tivo and apple might be competing with this box in your eyes, and they might be economic competitors when you see the potential of clients dropping cable/satelite (and thus tivo) and opting for a set-top box similar to apple's, but they really are two different products in my eyes. It's not whether or not i'd move from one to the other... I'll never get tivo and probably never build a myth box. I do, however, watch t.v. via my computer, so my laptop-to-t.v. setup is in direct competition w/ apple. I don't see them getting it right.
No, it will never kill TV.
TV is a passive experience. People (like me) want to flip channels until I settle on something interesting. I do not have a list of shows I want to watch, and I don't want the experience you describe.
Movie rentals are a thing of the past. HDDVD vs BLURAY is a non issue. I already decided I needed neither - I can download HD movies on my xbox 360.
Besides, an ad supported model like this wouldn't fly. The advertising, on a global or even national scale, is too hard to sell. Watch your local fox affiliate (or whoever), notice that most of the ads are cheaply produced ads for local businesses and services? You'd cut all those little guys out of the picture - and they make up the lions share of most stations budget.
Conventional passive "push" tv is here to stay.
IPTV is going to be the next "big" thing. XBox 360 will function as an IPTV client, this year. Apple TV sounds, well, like a piece of useless shit. Too bad MSFT has it's head up it's ass. If they'd let the 360 playback Divx (or hell, anything other than WMV), it'd already do everything AppleTV does as well as do cool IPTV stuff, play games, etc.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The technology is rapidly approaching a point when I would consider purchasing almost all of my viewed content from Apple.
There are two small issues that I think should be addressed before I ditch Basic Cable, although there are enough perks to make me start thinking about ditching anything above and beyond that.
1.) Free Content.
I know the iTunes store has some 'Free' content that it bandies about, but sometimes I just need to throw the TV on to have something playing in the background. It doesn't have to be high quality stuff, but sometimes I just want to thumb through the channels. I'm not going to buy CSPAN's "Yet another Eighteen Hours with the House of Representatives" but I might thumb through the channels and see what's on, and stick around for 20 minutes on a debate on Net Neutrality.
For shows I watch regularly (The Office, Heroes, House, [adult swim]) I can safely leave all those commercials behind and download and watch the content at my leisure. It's not a complete solution, yet, but with Apple TV coming, and more shows (hopefully, where ARE you House??) showing up on iTunes, as well as movies, I'm at least considering swallowing the bait.
2.) Live Events.
I don't want to watch the Falcons game on Monday. I don't want to see NFL Network highlights or re-airs. I want to watch it live. When it's happening, with a chance to pause and rewind it. Same thing with other sporting events. If I can't watch live sporting events I can't fully buy the Apple ecosystem.
And therein lies the rub: if you can't buy ALL of the Apple TV ecosystem, it's way to expensive to buy any of it.
If I could get my TV service from Apple, a la Apple TV and iTunes, I want to see something like this:
I spend $30-$40 on basic cable. (you'll pay more for a digital solution)
I spend $50-$60 on high speed internet.
I spent $400 on my Tivo/service.
I watch all the shows I want, that are available, when I want to watch them, including random B.S. that happens to be on, and live sporting events.
I want to repeat that last line, but have the cost ratio look something like this.
I spend $30-$50 per month at the iTunes store, including season passes for my most watched shows.
I spend $50-$60 on my high speed internet service, no cable, no phone line (use VoIP and Cell)
I spent $300 on Apple TV.
As it stands I couldn't continue paying Basic Cable and feeding similar revenue to Apple and Co. That means that Apple would be getting a tremendous portion of the monthly revenue that I had allocated for other people, but I think realistically, my needs as a consumer also include an ability to quickly and cheaply access mind-numbing content as well as live events.
It's getting closer though, and my attempts to completely and totally ditch any and all cable/satellite provider and ALL wired telco companies are sounding less and less far-fetched.
Learn to spell "grammar".
Currently, I'm very happy with my TiVo. I have many hours of my favorite TV shows, all in HD, available any time.
So if Apple continues to offer just a few shows, the way they do now, with limited resolution, I'd have to think whether I really have a use for this device. After all, I can buy shows to download to my XBox 360 (often in HD), and TiVo is about to start offering a similar service, so if Apple is offering just another video download service with a fairly limited inventory (like what they now offer), I'll probably pass. On the other hand, if I could get any TV show (movies are of less interest to me; I'd rather go to the video store or get them through NetFlix), any time, it would certainly be worth it to me to buy the Apple box.
You must have a unique mutation that allows your two ears to only hear things coming from straight in front of you, and I pity you for it.
I personally have two ears as well, as I'm guessing most here do, and yet I can hear things coming from all directions and can easily distinguish which way a sound is coming from.
Your hearing is 2-channel stereo, yes, but your microphones ("ears") are not omni-directional.
My guess is you've never actually listened to a properly configured surround sound system, which is not too hard to believe since movie theaters are usually set up in a way that you don't get good directional audio (which doesn't make sense, but that's how they're built for some reason) and those silly displays at Best Buy or Circuit City with the speakers hanging from above you are set up in a way that you don't hear the rear channels there either.
Y'know, its hard to see where the big overlap in potential customer base between homebrew MythTV boxes and AppleTV lies...
What MythTV does for me is near-perfect timeshifting of free-to-air (modulo UK TV license fees) digital terrestrial TV, with all sorts of auto-scheduling goodness. Unless I've missed something, this is not what AppleTV is offering.
Now, if AppleTV (if/when it launches in the UK) offers me a reasonably-priced way of seeing (say) individual episodes of US Sci-Fi shows or recent movies without (a) subscribing to MurdochVision or (b) waiting 18 months and buying the whole series on DVD I might just buy one and sit it alongside my MythBox.
TV isn't like music - I've a shelf full of DVDs but only a select few get watched repeatedly - so I've no particular objection to paying a reasonable fee to see a show once (bit like going to the cinema, but with comfy seats and better food) - if it turns out to be a keeper then I'll be about ready to watch it again when the DVDs come out.
Meanwhile, when there isn't anything good on TV I can always hack around with my MythBox to see if I can fix the 50% chance that the video starts playing with the frame order reversed, or even try and archive some shows to DVD (which now seems to work until it hits some subtleties in the audio stream). If, however, demuxing a stubborn MPEG2 file in ProjectX (whimper!) is not your idea of entertainment there are plenty of imperfect-but-usable-by-mortals video streaming boxen and DVB-T recorders on the market.
Perhaps, if Apple produced the proverbial good DVB-T recorder (hint: like a Topfield but with Ethernet and E-SATA) I'd wake up.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Free content is just that - any content that costs me nothing.
I can download all the movies, TV, or music that I could want right now for free, including end-user created videos on youtube or tv shows, movies, or other "unapproved" content. It's all available for free right now.
I don't think the author thought this one through. Pretty much the only things they have in common are that they both run operating systems and can play back media.
Apart from that, the iPhone is designed for a portable form factor, low power consumption, relatively low screen resolution, touch sensing, relatively low bandwidth use, and cell phone capabilities. The Apple TV can take up a lot of physical space, use up a lot of power, but it has to produce a high resolution picture and be able to sustain streaming video.
These devices are designed for very different purposes so I would expect them to share very little hardware in common.
The AppleTV is the ultimate form factor for the MythTV frontend. Too bad there isn't an API for it. I've done the pricing and $299 is not bad for the form factor and cost. The cheapest I could build a front end is $350 and it wouldn't be everything I wanted.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
TV is a passive experience. People (like me) want to flip channels until I settle on something interesting. I do not have a list of shows I want to watch, and I don't want the experience you describe.
The same could have been said about music playlists versus the radio a few years back, but a I know an awful lot of people who don't listen to the radio anymore and who just start up an mp3 playlist when they want music. I do think there will be a place for TV "channels" much as there is a place for streaming radio broadcasts over IP, but I think, in general, people will move more towards playlists of TV shows. My Netflix cue right now is full of movies and TV shows and I just play whichever one I have or am in the mood for. Given the chance to pick from the list, I think I'd be happier yet. For people like you, there will always be "channels" of video with a theme.
Besides, an ad supported model like this wouldn't fly. The advertising, on a global or even national scale, is too hard to sell.
Why can't they customize the ads as part of the p2p network, adding them in on your client and based upon your recent Google searches? Heck, they might even be ads for things you actually want, instead of random feminine hygiene products and pharmaceuticals of uncertain purpose.
Conventional passive "push" tv is here to stay.
In the US, this will probably be true for quite a while, simply because the established players have too much influence on the government and ability to lock people in via cartels and monopolies. Elsewhere the winds are already changing.
Faster download of the core mainstream HD content. Won't do shit if you aren't glued to Lost, 24, or Heroes. Democracy is a stupid mechanism to decide how much leverage this kind of thing gets.
Aha, but what Democracy (and any really pure torrent based thing) can run afoul of is non-poopular items that have only a few, very slow, seeds (on second reading I'm not sure if you were talking about the actual player, but the point stands).
What commercial torrents could bring to the table is a gauranteed base speed for seeds, with improvements as things got more popular instead of degradation video sharing services can experience today. It also helps the network as a whole since some of the content you are obtaining comes from more local sources, like an akamai only free. So it really more means fewer slowdowns for something popular than it does greater speeds for less popular stuff.
Once can even imagine a future route for Akamai might be to act as commercial P2P seeds. Torrents make way too much sense for HD video network delivery to be ignored forever.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The new Apple TV media extender is supposed to ship this month, perhaps even by the time you read this column, and if you are like me you are wondering what that 40-gig hard drive is doing inside. I'm guessing we won't know for sure until later this year [...]
...unless you listened to Jobs' Macworld Keynote or read the flurry of articles that flew around afterwards -- such as this Macworld article -- in which case you would know that the AppleTV is a glorified video iPod that can be synced with iTunes like any other iPod. (Sorry, that's not technically true; apparently the AppleTV can sync over a wireless network connection.)
It will be interesting to hear Apple's explanation for the hard drive.
Is he seriously unaware of the purpose of the hard drive? Can he honestly not find the AppleTV page where they discuss how the AppleTV syncs with iTunes?
Or is this simply the most egregious example of not letting the facts -- easily-obtained facts, no less -- get in the way of his "secret answer"? I know these Cringely pieces are often light on substance and heavy on BS, but this in unbelievable...
The GP is right. With just stereo headphones and a good sound card or source audio anyone can sense all those directions. With just two ears and two sound channels.
That's because we feel those directions by perceiving small differences in time and strength between both ears, we can't move our ears like dogs or something like that.
I still remember the matchbox demo, with that little thing going over my head, behind me, under me, and so on.
With crappy speakers, you will only hear front sound, that's a given point.
I have both a surround system and a good pair of headphones and I can perceive the directions with both of them (however the surround system makes it more real, because you can perceive low frequency vibrations with more parts of your body than just your ears).
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Two things rub me about the AppleTV.
Firstly, the networking hardware:
It has 802.11 (n!) wireless and 100BaseT ethernet. I think it's a bit tight not to have Gig-Ethernet, surely for the sake of pennies, and it appears that the wireless is only capable as a client. It's a shame that it doesn't seem like it can be used to create or extend a network, like the old Airport Express. I can see the business argument for making you buy another unit, however, I could be wrong about this.
Secondly, especially with the announcement of this product, I ask myself again "Why the hell haven't Apple bought Elgato already?". Their eyeTV tuners cater for terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasts over USB and Firewire, and the lack of any conventional broadcast capability is the most glaring omission from the AppleTV. It's a perfect fit with any of the Elgato boxes, and the eyeTV software is very 'iLife-like', and even includes Front Row integration. I doubt that the Elgato functionality could be hacked into the AppleTV box, even though there's a USB port on the back begging to be connected to a tuner (a self-contained solution - perhaps even usable as a PVR without a computer). The hardware and software should be all integrated, and from where I'm standing the smartest thing that Apple could do is simply buy Elgato and knock the corners off the setup - it's nearly all there already.
Disclaimer: I think the Elgato eyeTV 410 is the best realised peripheral I have bought this millenium.
"There is nothing nice about Steve Jobs and nothing evil about Bill Gates." - Chuck Peddle
What would it take you to move to this over Tivo or MythTV?
No DRM and completely portable data. If it can't do that, it's no better than an ordinary PVR.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I'm not planning on watching TV any time soon.
On any platform.
By any delivery method.
I dont know... looks like a very limited extender for iTunes to me... but maybe i just dont see what the fuss is about. I think the key for Apple will be integrate this with their other products... they need to make this device deliver all their content to the TV.... Music, Video, On-Demand, gaming, Live Broadcasting and Photos. I think that this device may do this... however it is missing some things... no pvr? no live tv? no games? Say what you want about Microsoft the XP/Media Player/Media Center/XBox/Xbox Live integration is pretty sweet. Maybe if Apple partnered with Sony to add the content to the game console?? Sorry, without PVR and a gaming platform, this media device is pretty week. "Apple ain't no dummy" however, im sure that they have something up their sleeve on this one... PVR anyone? Oh btw - HD over 80211g is weak at best... and HD best quailty is ~10GB per hour... 40GB will not save anything... this is just an extender... the real question is... to what?
so basically apple tv doesnt need dolby digital surround because all you need is stereo headphones... good, good...
Cringely's fantasty is making the rounds and it is amazingly wrong.
The hard drive is there for one basic reason, syncing content with another computer that holds an iTunes library.
No mystery. No hidden agenda. The answer was in the Keynote and is on Apple's web site.
I guess he can't be bothered to do any kind of research.
This whole business of stacking components is pointless. An Airport goes near the cable/DSL modem or home router, not near the TV. And who exactly is telling him to put a Mac Mini near the TV set?
The Apple TV is a computer running OS X that is configured to playback content to a TV. It is not an iPhone or a stealth peer-to-peer device.
This is what I hate about pundits, their inability to discern a technophile wet dream from a well researched and logically consistent prediction based on trends and indicators.
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Will you please stop linking Cringley stories? He's like a rabid dog. It's just one endless speculative fantasy after another and I for one am sick of hearing about the his latest clap trap on Slashdot. Mod me troll if you want, but Cringley making stuff up for attention does not fit into 'stuff that matters'. This guy needs serious mental help, not more attention to his bullshit.
Do they even manufacture 40GB HD's anymore? You certainly can't find anything that small in even the cheapest laptops anymore.
I guess only "MP3" players have anything that small these days, so to use it to store the latest in HD video content seems pretty silly.
When streaming media, you do not want to segment the media file and then send it in a random order. If you do, you can't view it until it has completely finished downloading. A better solution is to send segments sequentially - this allows the media to be viewed shortly after the download is started. This is one of the reasons why I love usenet over p2p solutions for downloading media.
There is no way Apple will go the p2p route. When a user selects a video it should start playing in under a minute. Anything more and the device won't sell. Bitorrent just doesn't cut it.
Willy
Get real Cringely. Please stop theorizing reality. It requires you to be unrealistic and uncredible. I think I just gave up on your column. You answered your own question: "Apple might tell us that the Apple TV can play video from the hard drive without requiring a Mac or PC on the network. This is an answer that I would believe and I really hope it is the case, because wouldn't it be great to still watch a movie even when your computer isn't running in the next room? And it might be true because Apple loses nothing since you'd still need the host computer to load video into the Apple TV."
Apple TV, in its final form, will be a complete PlayStation 3 Killer.
.Mac / Apple.com / iTunes combo will work to automagically market the latest Apple Hardware, Ink Cartridge sales, paper, software, etc...
With Better Graphics, upgradable software, and powerful CPU performance - The Apple TV will make PS3 look like an Atari 2600.
The Apple TV will also feature seamless compatibility with iTunes, acting as a point of sale device promoting more Videos, Movies, and Audio Purchasing.
Not to be content there, it's only logical that the Apple TV /
Welcome to the Apple world!
When I first read about the Apple TV, I was pumped. I whipped out my credit card and was ready to buy one. But I never buy anything without doing a little research first. So I had a look at the specs.
What?! No divx?! No xvid?! Huh? I could overlook the puny hard drive, but to not be able to play the de facto standard of video encoding is inexcusable.
Over the last five years, I have archived dozens of movies and hundreds of hours of my own home video to the ubiquitous video compression standard known as divx. This is the mp3 of the video world, and the fact that Apple TV does not recognize it is an absolute deal breaker.
I'm sorry, I'm just not prepared to sit down and re-encode all of my legally acquired video into another less compatible standard--and pay Apple for the privilege.
Apple, you made a big mistake.
CB
One of the issues that I have been kicking around back in forth is which is better? TiVO? Or on demand viewing? With regards to TiVO, what are you really doing? You pick your favorite shows and set it record them and then you watch them later. But isn't it just as simple to decide that you want to watch last nights Lost episode that you missed and look it up in some kind of menu system and then start watching it? I have to believe that the vast majority of TiVO users are recording and watching basically the same set of content. I have a feeling that Apple is going to come out and say: Look, the majority of people are watching the same basic set of shows. Recording a show takes too much effort to set up and manage and what if you forget to record the show you wanted to see? What do you do then? We're going to give you a system where you can just pick your favorite show and you just pick the episode that you want to watch. We stream it right to your TV. We're partnering with X,Y and Z networks and offering all of their shows. We're also giving you rentable movies so you don't have to go to the video store. I don't believe for a second that the iTV is just going to be a device to watch content on your TV that is stored on your computer. There just has to be more to this device. Clearly there is a broader vision for this device and I guess we will just have to wait until Apple lays it out for us....