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."

Comments

Not quite

[Hawthorne01]

It will play on 480i, you just need component video to do it.

hacked

[jamienk]

AppleTV can now play Xvid -- http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?s= &threadid=2391956

Re:hacked

[Anonymous Coward]

The only thing I can think of is that Apple wants the AppleTV to be nothing more than a player for iTMS content. If that is the case, then no thanks.

FUD. You are just using Slashdotters' desire for multiple and open formats to perpetuate the FUD that Apple devices only play Apple contents.

Yeah, Apple should support more formats (both audio and video). No argument there. However restricting it to MP-4 and H.264 does not mean it only supports iTMS content only (FWIW, there is no iTMS anymore. It's iTunes Store now). You can create your own MP4 and H.264 files without DRMs and use them with [Apple]TV. You can use QuickTime to export videos for [Apple]TV or use Handbrake to convert your DVDs to H.264.

Re:hacked

[Karlt1]

"That is a lot of crap to do just to support a non-DRM encrusted format. The blurb even said you need QT Pro, which means more money for Apple to just play a file. No thanks, I will stick to MythTV."

How in the world is this marked "insightful"? There is so much misinformation in those two sentences its ridiculous.

1. The AppleTV plays MP3, AAC, AIFF, WAV, Apple Lossless, Mpeg4 and H.264 all non DRMd formats.
2. You don't need Quicktime Pro for any AppleTV functionality. You can use Handbrake (free open source software available for Windows, Macs, and Linux) to rip DVDs to either MPEG or H.264
3. You don't even need QTPro to re-encode into an AppleTV format. There are plenty of free tools that can convert from Divx to Mpeg. If you're using a Mac, you download the codecs for QT, and you import the Divx movie into iTunes (Movie2Itunes) and then choose the "Convert to iPod format.

hmm

[mastershake_phd]

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.

Re:HDTV (component 480i counts) only?

[Jeff DeMaagd]

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.

Re:HDTV (component 480i counts) only?

[bestinshow]

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...

Re:Interesting.

[astrosmash]

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.

Re:The Apple deal

[blankaBrew]

"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.