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

[JimDaGeek]

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.

Re:hacked

[ocelotbob]

The AppleTV's been out for 1 day, obviously the hacks at this point are at the quick and dirty level. If you fully RTFA, you'll learn that they're working on ways to streamline the process, and should have something a lot nicer soon.

Re:hacked

[JimDaGeek]

While as a geek I think it is cool to hack the hardware to offer more features, I don't think you should have to do that for a device you pay for to just watch some content that you record. Xvid is open, so there is no reason for Apple to not at least include Xvid playback support. 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.

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.

HDTV (component 480i counts) only?

[stratjakt]

Moronic. Turns out it's not that much more useful than my Xbox 360, and infinitely less useful than a hacked xbox media center.

I mean OH MY GOD APPLE I LOVE THIS YOU HAVE REINVENTED MY TV! It now has YOUR STORE ATTACHED TO IT!

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:Shouldn't this be the "iTV"?

[an.echte.trilingue]

Already trademarked as the eye TV, I understand. I believe that this is the product that holds that trademark: http://www.elgato.com/

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:hmm

[Anonymous Coward]

It will play... realmedia files

that goes in the con column

I guess I spend too much time at work ....

[nbvb]

I saw "Netgear EVA8000" and thought of HP's midrange disk array.

I'm actually surprised that Netgear chose the name, since it's blatantly similar to this.

Re:Give me a call when it plays my MYTHTV recordin

[wizbit]

I was going to ignore, but I had to plug Myth2iPod. Singly the greatest hack I've seen come out of the MythTV community. And, it should work with AppleTV - AppleTV plays DivX content, and Myth will happily transcode to DivX. Setup a feed in iTunes, and fiddle with the encoding settings in myth2iPod (e.g., better quality, maybe encode to h.264) and leave iTunes running on a computer in the basement with a network share. Bingo, instant MythTV feed to AppleTV via iTunes and myth2iPod. And that's available *now*. I'm sure some Mac developer will come up with an even slicker solution - you can run the frontend on a Mac these days, after all.

What's the point?

[rizzo420]

i'm not sure i understand the point of apple tv. i have a tivo that no only lets me play files off my computer, but also let's me record tv. what's the point of the apple tv (only 50 hours), which costs more than an 80 hour tivo with dual tuner that comes with a 1 year subscription? with my tivo, i can move movies to my computer (currently only windows, but possibly macos as well, i'm not sure), record tv on 2 stations at the same time, have a nice tv guide, watch movies from my computer on my tv, play music on my computer through my tv, show picture slideshows from my computer on my tv, download amazon unbox videos, and watch tivo casts that i get off the internet. what's the point of apple tv if it doesn't even do half of this, yet costs the same? i just don't get it.

Re:What's the point?

[2nd Post!]

1) Cheaper because it has no subscription costs
2) Easier because it does less

Both of these points were very salient to the iPod's success. Apple expects them to be key drivers for the AppleTV as well.

Re:What's the point?

[jfengel]

Mostly this is Apple's way of leveraging the video capability of its iTMS out to your TV, exactly the way TiVo does for Amazon Unbox.

I'll admit I'm mystified why they didn't make it a general DVR at the same time. My best guess is that it's coming but that the software wasn't ready yet; Apple's got very high standards for such things. But I haven't heard any complaints from TiVo customers, and my limited experience with them has been pleasant.

On the other hand I've heard much bitching about Unbox. Maybe Apple felt that they could get ahead of that and make people prefer to download rather than record; they'd rather sell you Lost for $2 than record it for free. They're certainly being way forward-looking by aiming at HDTVs, but they're not selling HDTV content yet, so they seem to be premature or out of touch.

Re:Shouldn't this be the "iTV"?

[HaeMaker]

Didn't stop them with iPhone.

Here is what is going to make it worth it..

[BlueBoxSW.com]

What is going to make AppleTV worth the money is this:

Video Podcasting.

There are already a plethera of great video podcasts available, and with AppleTV you can sit and watch them in your livingroom, not on a computer or 2" ipod video screen.

Sure, a bit of effort every day, you can download the same content and burn it to DVD, or get it to play some other way on your TV, but with AppleTV and a smart iTunes playlist, you can have a couple hours of content that's new and interesting and commercial-free every single night.

This isn't a strike at Tivo, this is a stike at Prime Time programming of all kinds.

Re:Eh

[Luscious868]

TV as we know it is a rapidly dying market. More than half of the people I know don't have an antenna/cable/satellite TV. I haven't had a "TV" for anything other than games and DVD's for 5+ years. The quality of the content on "TV" is consistently "lowest common denominator" and it's beyond absurd to pay for TV (cable or satellite), and then have to sit through advertisements.

I've read about you!

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.

Re:The Apple deal

[blankaBrew]

As far as I understand it, iCal Server was written by Apple using no other OSS, yet they are releasing it as OSS. Therefore, they were not compelled by a license to opensource iCal...they just did it.

I think Apple missed the ball on this

[brokeninside]

By leaving out the tuner, they left out two of the four killer apps for a set top box: pausing live TV and season passes for time shifting TV shows. Of the other two killer apps (streaming content from the internet and from one's private network) one is a bit of a pain because you have to go to a dedicated workstation to buy movies off of the internet. As of right now, I'd rather buy a Mac mini with an EyeTV dongle and add DVD playback and a tv tuner for just over double the cost of the AppleTV.

Too bad I can't afford to do that.

Not that I'm arguing that this product won't be successful. It just won't be as successful as it could have been. I'll wager, though, that Apple will add the missing feature by the end of this calendar year.

Re:Huh?

[ClosedSource]

I think it's instructive to remember that there are far more minimally successful or unsuccessful Apple products than there are very successful Apple products. Actually, the iPod is the only one that is a market leader.

So the odds that this product will be a big winner are not that high if Apple's overall performance is considered.

what not even...

[Ixlr8]

Cons: HDTV only To make matters worse, there's no floppy drive!