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David Pogue Reviews the Apple TV
necro81 writes "David Pogue of the NY Times has devoted his weekly column to the newly released Apple TV. He also has a video blurb to go with it. He compares it to the XBox360 and Netgear's EVA8000, which also deliver content traditionally trapped in a PC onto a TV set. Apple TV Pros: setup is as easy as can be, it's small and silent form factor will be good for home theaters, and the interface and remote control are intuitive. Cons: HDTV only, playback is limited to formats playable within iTunes, and no internet functionality other than movie trailers."
It will play on 480i, you just need component video to do it.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
AppleTV can now play Xvid -- http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=2391956
Right now my Xbox with Xbox Media Center is more functional than this. It will play just about anything. Including realmedia files inside of a rar.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
I should have qualified "no more useful than 360 wrt video"
I also should have noted that the 360 costs just as much. And the hard drive on the appletv isn't much bigger, 40 gig isn't much when you're talking HDTV movies at 7-9 gigs-ish each (based on my 360 marketplace experience).
Also, Apple doesn't say (they never do... PART OF THEIR HIP MYSTIQUE!!). I see one single lonely USB port on the back. Can that be to attach storage, or just for iPod syncing? I know I stuck a fat-formatted 80 gig usb drive filled with wmv files into my 360 and they play fine. The wmv-only is my only gripe with the 360 (its a big one, though).
Are you supposed to have all your purchased video on your Mac (sold seperately), and leave it running non-stop?
They way underdelivered here. I mean, REINVENTED HOW I WATCH TV.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Sorry, but no, 480i is not HDTV, even if it is in component video form. The connector type doesn't define whether it is HD.
I had an SDTV that I bought in 2000 had 480i component, and that TV was not capable of progressive or HD video.
Take AppleTV. Take out 40GB hard drive. Image onto 160GB hard drive. Put 160GB into Apple TV. Kappow, extra storage space.
Whilst the drive is out you can also install a SSH server so you can get access to the filesystem. The username/password on the AppleTV is frontrow/frontrow. I guess you could install Apache or Postgresql or whatever here as well, assuming the BSD layer is intact. People are working on getting the USB port fully active, and remote desktop active.
And via the SSH server you can install divx/xvid codecs into Quicktime on the AppleTV to support this common video format for backups (of DVDs, or Cinema showings, hehe).
It'll kill your warranty though. But it's looking to be a very hackable consumer BSD box right now...
Think of it this way. Here in NJ where I live I can get HDTV service with all the channels that I would need to be able to watch my show for about $100. Now, if I cancel my service I will save about $1000 dollars a year. These are very rounded number people. Take out a 300 dollars for the AppleTV and I have about $700 worth of iTunes TV content that I can purchase. Then the next year I will have $1000 of iTunes purchases that I can make. This is more than enough money to purchase the TV shows that I want to watch and also keep them for ever. That is what will drive people to the AppleTV over time, the ability to pick and choose the shows they want to watch and only pay for those shows. And also take them on their computer where ever they go and their iPods. To some, its really just simply purchasing only what they want to watch.
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I'm trying to answer your question, but you seem to keep misunderstanding.
What is the point of an iPod when the Creative Nomad was cheaper, in 2001?
iPod was smaller (same as AppleTV vs TiVo.)
iPod was easier to use (There is no need to schedule, program, or search the AppleTV. Just click and watch.)
The point YOU keep making is there are more features on the TiVo.
The point I am making is that those extra features aren't important. The person who wants an AppleTV doesn't want to "know the time and date", don't want to "program the TiVo", don't want to "Subscribe to get the guide", don't want to "Network the TiVo".
For an AppleTV all you do is:
1) Plug into TV
2) Turn on PC
3) Allow the AppleTV to synch to the PC
This is the same as the iPod:
1) Plug into headphones
2) Plug into PC
3) Allow the iPod to synch to the PC
GPL Deconstructed
They pulled the HD out of the Apple TV unit and attached it to an existing OS X system. The disk apparently contains a pretty standard OS X 10.4.7 install, so they just added the additional QuickTime plug-ins to /Library/QuickTime/.
Apparently they also enabled ssh. My speculation: They reconfigured launchd and the firewall to allow ssh connections to sshd, and presumably they configured the local user account (whatever it is) to allow public-key authentication so they don't have to futz around with any passwords. All of that can be done by simply editing text configuration files.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
"What OSS has it released?"
How about Bonjour, Darwin Streaming Server, XNU Kernel, Launchd Services and the forthcoming iCal Server which might help the OSS community finally have a competitor to Exchange.
"Apple loves to use OSS... What OSS has it released? Why isn't OS X open sourced?"
Oh....sure.... apple should open source their whole operating system...that makes a lot of sense for them and their shareholders. You sir are a moron or a troll.
In general, the consumers that are targeted by this device don't have the technological saavy to use this device.
Perversely enough, homebrew PVR users are proabably Apple's biggest potential userbase for this thing. This includes MythTV users as well as users of SageTV, WinMCE and other PVRs.
This is a problem with devices of this kind in general. You can't just setup a windows file share somewhere and put files on it. You need to futz with some speciality server software.
This thing doesn't even play the full range of things that a Mac with a robust iTunes install could play. If it did then it could play nice with MythTV by just plugging it into the same LAN.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Gad. OS X is much, much, much closer to being an implementation of FreeBSD than it is an implementation of Linux.
Also, Apple recently ditched their own "Apple Public Source License" (or whatever it was called) and started releasing everything under the Apache license.