Provide an example of an independent label (i.e., not an individual) that iTunes hasn't accepted. You're making it sound like Apple is turning away independents left and right, when this is provably not the case. If Apple is biased against independent labels, why are there so many independent labels on iTunes?
"Drop DRM on iTunes for independent artists" Has Mr. Jobs done so? I'm sure the independent artists who are on iTunes "by Apple's good graces" would like their tracks DRM-free. I'm sure they've even asked Mr. Jobs & Co. to do just that. However, AFAIK, nothing has still been done about this.
In case you need it spelled out: it will become an option in May. In all probability, all an independent label will have to do is log into iTunes' label area and uncheck a box.
IMHO, he escaped by the skin of his teeth, and did the bare minimum to back up his words.
Which words are those? The man says "we'll go DRM-free when they agree to license the music to us that way", and now at least one label has, so that's what they're doing. It's getting harder by the minute to make a case that the "Thoughts on Music" thing was a big lie.
What's sad about this is that it's being called an "upgrade", when in actuality it amounts to little more than another way to make extra money on goods that people have already paid for.
Nobody has already paid for a 256kbps DRM-free track on iTunes. You're making it sound as though you're forced to pay twice for the same thing, which is plainly not true. You are not forced by any stretch of the imagination, and you aren't getting the same thing that you originally paid for.
If I ever bought a defective product in any other industry,
You're confusing rhetoric with reality. "Defective" does not mean what you think it does.
Call me a zealot if you want, it doesn't phase me. If being angered by scams masked as good-faith efforts amounts to nothing more than zealotry in your mind, then I feel sorry for you. (Attn Moderators: I care not about/. karma, so mod me as you will. I refuse to let fear of others' opinions of my views inhibit me from expressing them freely.)
Oh, come off it. Leave your persecution complex at home. Nobody is preventing you from expressing your views -- it's the friggin internet. That said, "expressing your views" doesn't mean you get to toss about half-truths and misinformation rooted in ignorance without anyone trying to correct you.
The current events overtones with the Homeland Security and illegal immigrant killings/deportations were only for the benefit of attracting those in the reviewer community that hate the US' current administration.
These are pretty traditional dystopian motifs, most of which are present in the book upon which the movie is (loosely) based. The undisguised references to current events had more to do with reinforcing the plausibility of the setting, just as the extreme lack of "futuristic" accouterments made it more readily familiar. "Attracting reviewers" is a dreadfully shallow explanation.
Not free enough for Linux nerds: AAC is a standard, which is good. AAC requires a license fee, which is bad. AAC has no royalty or usage fee, which is good. AAC is patent "encumbered", which is bad. Ogg Vorbis is free, Free, and patent-free. Actually, nobody's really sure if it's patent-free, but it's generally believed to be. It's still about as widely supported as baby-eating, though, which makes the benefit of all this "freedom" rather intangible.
AFAIK, Apple still expects us to be exclusive to them i.e. they demand exclusive online distribution.
This is outright bullshit. Whoever told you that is an idiot and/or a liar. There are plenty of independent labels and artists that sell through iTunes and other stores. I don't know of any online store that has such a stipulation.
However, it's worth noting, that these are clearly AMD ideas.
No, they're obvious ideas. Moving stuff on-die makes it faster. Duh. There isn't a whole lot in CPU design that hasn't been thought about long before it's feasible.
Yes, the stand-alone music player's days are numbered...in the thousands. We all know that convergence is happening every year, and that the low-end market for most personal electronics is turning into one market for do-it-all gadgets, there's no serious disagreement there. It is just the headline that's sensationalist.
Yeah, I hate visiting sites and seeing them render properly!
Where did I say anything about rendering? As far as I can tell, Safari/WebKit and Firefox/Gecko are both more or less accurate. Safari passed Acid2 back in 2005, while Firefox is just now getting there. Besides, if I wanted to run a Gecko browser, I'd run Camino over Firefox, because it doesn't feel like a bad port from Windows.
The whole idea of virtual land is stupid anyway. They can let the space moderate itself; just let people decide who gets to have a 'door' into their space, and then the highly connected nodes are 'valuable', and it might even be worth owning land next to some that was highly connected, but probably not, connections are pretty cheap in lots of ways.
You've just described the web, more or less. Kind of hard to implement in a 3D world modeled on the real world.
Not only would this give them more space for more players, but it decreases the power of land barons. And having a 'new world' to explore would add more interest to the game. Anyone want to be Magellan? Or Columbus?
Did the discovery of the New World destroy property values in the Old World?
I predict that Coldwell Banker will lose their shirts on this one.
To lose one's shirt implies losing everything one has. If Coldwell Banker were shifting it's entire business to virtual land, that might be a sound prediction. As it is, it's more of a speculative investment. I don't know how much virtual land they own, but I doubt seriously that they spent much more than their annual budget for paperclips on it.
Linden seem to be masters of manipulating the media to the point where major companies think its smart to be involved in a game that actaully has very few players relative to other MMOs.
The number of players isn't what interests these companies. It's the fact that they can be a part of the economy, i.e. they can make money in a new way. There are few other virtual worlds for which that is true, and among them, Second Life is undoubtedly the largest.
Re-read your post and think about why you might come off as "bitching" rather than just stating your opinion. Nothing in your post relates to anything I said in mine. You're clearly not interested in it, and yet you're replying to it. You're making assumptions about my character based on...what exactly? You're the one bringing up Steve Jobs and "just works" and bizarre notions about Apple being infallible. I didn't say anything about any of that. You're making mock apologies about hurting my feelings -- feelings? What does that have to do with this? And something about Microsoft? Brain cells? What are you even talking about?
Huh? And what reason is that? To give more money to Microsoft? [then lots of blathering that has nothing to do with anything that I said]
You're being obtuse. I was saying that at least with Windows Media, the fact that it's got a massive installed base at least justifies the existence of so much content in that format, which in turn is a decent argument for supporting it. I didn't say anything about DRM. At the very least, it's a better argument that saying that anyone should go out of their way to support dozens of non-standard formats instead. To be clear: I don't think there's any reason for AppleTV to support either.
I'd also like to point out that you said nothing about the main idea expressed in my post -- that XviD is already supported if the encoder is responsible enough to use well-supported standards.
I think that apple could make a much better set-top box, with TV Tuner, big hard drive (at least 300 GB) and a remote, and an application like MythTV or SageTV.
In other words: by making it entirely different. This is the same argument that comes up every time Apple releases anything. Why a TV tuner? If I'm downloading content, I don't need one. If I'm not, why do I need a device to help me play downloaded content? Why not just get a TiVo?
A few details not in the other replies: They used Perian, and they installed it the same way you would install any other QuickTime plugin (meaning that yes, it is that easy, and should work with any codec).
The "hack" aspect of it is just getting in to it. They started by pulling the drive (Torx screws), dropping in the codec, a script to turn off the built-in firewall, and a 3rd-party SSH server. They then used a QuickTime reference movie directed at an XviD AVI file. The method they used to get the reference movie to work right is wonky and not elegant at all. Basically they transfered a "normal" iTunes movie, then replaced it with theirs. Yuk.
In the coming weeks this will obviously evolve into a simpler solution. Clearly, using the built-in SSH, and not entirely disabling the firewall would be better. Using XviD-in-.mov instead of reference movies would be a bit simpler, and iTunes would be able to sync it without any hackishness. And clearly, hacking the "diagnostic" USB port on the thing is going to turn it into a completely software hack. And that, of course, will follow with a hack to install a full copy of Mac OS X, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.
That is a lot of crap to do just to support a non-DRM encrusted format.
AppleTV plays plenty of non-DRMed formats. To pretend otherwise marks you as a dick.
The blurb even said you need QT Pro, which means more money for Apple to just play a file.
In reality, you don't need QuickTIme Pro at all. So what if the 0-day hack says it does? It's just the method they used. Hell, they used a 3rd-party SSH server because they didn't know how to enable SSH, not because it's not possible to do so.
No thanks, I will stick to MythTV.
If you've already got a solution, why are you even bothering to post? If people were banging at your door begging you to switch, maybe it would make sense to complain, but as it stands, they're not, and you don't have much reason to be complaining. "Insightful", my ass -- you're just bitching.
Xvid is open, so there is no reason for Apple to not at least include Xvid playback support.
It already does. I have hundreds of XviD-encoded videos, all of which I am confident will play on AppleTV. They already play in iTunes and on the iPod. How is this possible? Easy. I just chose not to encode them with non-standard features, and not stick them in non-standard formats like AVI or MKV.
I don't think anyone should have to compensate for the fact that open source projects don't devote much energy to making it easy to produce widely-compatable videos. For example, mencoder defaults to using AVI, no matter what codecs you've chosen, and only mplayer will play such files.
I think a stronger case could be made for them to try to support Windows Media -- at least there's a reason for so much content to exist in that format.
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.
This is a shallow observation. Most products are not market leaders. That doesn't mean they aren't successful.
You are a bigger idiot than the guy that started this shit. Let me just get that out of the way.
worth every second, have you seen xbmc in action?
Yes, actually, my friend uses it, and likes it a lot. Unlike you, he is capable of admitting that it has flaws and isn't for everyone.
The "Half the cost" included buying the cheap remote for the xbox
If so, why wasn't it mentioned in the original post about XBMC? My friend paid $200 all told, without the other modifications, that I admit are optional, but do bring an Xbox more in line with AppleTV.
If you're one of those idiots that lets iTunes control their life
My only criticism of XBMC is that, unlike what the original poster asserted, it is not a replacement for AppleTV. AppleTV's syncing is built-in to iTunes, and handles multiple sources. With XBMC, you're more or less on your own for syncing. It's not "control" -- it's the simple fact that I already use iTunes and the idea of not having to roll my own rsync scripts just to watch TV that I think is better, personally. By the way, my iTunes library is exactly the same as you describe, so if I'm "controlled", so are you.
Later on you mention playing back HD video....you plan on using wireless for that??? HAHAHAHA You must be kidding
No. You don't know what HD means. HD refers to resolution, not bit-rate. On the one hand, HDTV is something like 19Mbps MPEG-2, and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are 13Mbps h.264. On the other, DV video (720x480) at 25Mbps, isn't HD.
Meanwhile, 720p content you might find online is only 2-6Mbps, but it's still HD, and still streams over a good wireless connection. That doesn't matter, though, as you can always just tell AppleTV to sync it beforehand.
In summary: you are completely wrong.
Anyway, there are solutions for wireless. You can get the "Xbox" branded version or a netgear version for cheap.
Are you still claiming that this is going to end up costing "half as much" as AppleTV?
Still small enough to fit anywhere you need it to, and for the functionality it is totally worth it.
Bullshit. It's fucking huge. Maybe you don't care -- fine, I'm not trying to convince you. All I'm saying is that it's way bigger than an AppleTV, and that's a downside for the many people. "Totally worth it" implies that there's some objective criteria involved other than the one verifiable fact that an Xbox is at least 4 times larger than an AppleTV.
upgrade the hard drive, can you do that on your Apple TV?
Uh, yeah, if you wanted to, I can't see any reason why not. But that's an "option". If a person goes with an Xbox, they have to upgrade the disk if they want to match what the AppleTV has. Again -- my point is that XBMC isn't interchangeable. And again -- Upgrading the hard disk, adding the wireless -- is this really going to end up "half the cost"?
It plays back 720p and 1080
No it does not. I specifically linked to a page in the XBMC FAQ that says it cannot in the very line you quoted. (Since you can't be bothered to click a link, here is a relevant quote: "This means that you might only get maybe 10-20fps (frames per seconds) displayed which would appear so jerky because of all dropped frames that it will be un-viewable. The only real solution if you want to play videos with native HD resolutions on Xbox is to buy or upgrade to a non-standard Xbox with a much faster CPU (processor)") So, it can scale up to HD resolutions (with the "upgrade" of an HD adapter cable), but it cannot play back HD content, unless you upgrade the processor at additional cost -- yet another "upgrade" that wasn't mentioned in the original post about XBMC.
Good luck getting Apple to help you try and play a non-Apple format on the device.
MPEG-4 is not an Apple format. h.264 is not an Apple format. AAC is not an Apple format. I have hundreds of videos that use these formats, none of which came from Apple or were encoded with Apple products. All of them will play on AppleTV. I'm not exactly crying that proprietary Windows Media and DivX files won't play on it.
Believe it or not, the majority of the world does not use iTunes
The majority of the world does not use a computer. What's your point? Most people that have iPods (tens of millions) use iTunes. This is not a small number, if that's what you're trying to say. Look, if you (not the "majority of the world") want to use XBMC, fine -- I'm not out to convince you -- but to act as though XBMC and AppleTV are interchangeable is ridiculous.
Anyone interested in watching HD content sure isn't storing much on the 40GB Apple product either.
This might mean something if you had to store all of your content in that space. You don't. It syncs with up to five other computers out of the box. Even if you couldn't sync while watching (which you can), that's up to 20 hours of HD content. Furthermore you're glossing over the fact that an Xbox Media Center can't play HD content at all without replacing the processor, and only has an 8-10GB disk.
So far I'm not convinced that spending 2X money for DRM-compatibility for media I don't own is a good investment.
Then don't fucking buy it. Jesus H. I was just pointing out that there were significant differences that make XBMC not an attractive option for many. I don't care what XBMC has, because the things I'm looking for are all things it doesn't have.
Also, I don't believe for a minute the claim that XBMC ends up costing "half as much" if you're trying to make it an alternative to AppleTV. On top of the $150 quoted above, add in another $15 for the remote, more for the Xbox HD adapter, more for a processor upgrade that will actually let you play HD content, more for a halfway decent hard disk, more for wireless. If that doesn't end up closer to $299, I'll eat my hat.
XBMC has plenty of features you ignore like RSS readers, the ability to search/browse/watch video from Google/YouTube, meta-data scraping, DVD support blah blah blah
If I didn't already own a computer that does a better job of all of those things, this might be interesting. Sounds more like bloat to me.
and most important of all is support for a variety of more popular, open codecs such as XviD, FLAC, APE, Real, etc.
"More popular" my ass. Virtually all of my MPEG-4 files were encoded with XviD. All of them will play on AppleTV. I don't give a shit about FLAC or APE, because nothing I have ever used has ever supported them -- they aren't "popular" by any stretch of the imagination. Real is not open. Maybe if you do a lot of pirating, and don't have any control over the formats you get, this is an advantage. I prefer to stick with widely-supported standards like MPEG-4.
Slashdot Mirror
Provide an example of an independent label (i.e., not an individual) that iTunes hasn't accepted. You're making it sound like Apple is turning away independents left and right, when this is provably not the case. If Apple is biased against independent labels, why are there so many independent labels on iTunes?
/. karma, so mod me as you will. I refuse to let fear of others' opinions of my views inhibit me from expressing them freely.)
"Drop DRM on iTunes for independent artists" Has Mr. Jobs done so? I'm sure the independent artists who are on iTunes "by Apple's good graces" would like their tracks DRM-free. I'm sure they've even asked Mr. Jobs & Co. to do just that. However, AFAIK, nothing has still been done about this.
"Jobs [..] called EMI's move "the next big step forward in the digital-music revolution--the movement to completely interoperable DRM-free music." He added that "Apple will reach out to all the major and independent labels to give them the same opportunity."
In case you need it spelled out: it will become an option in May. In all probability, all an independent label will have to do is log into iTunes' label area and uncheck a box.
IMHO, he escaped by the skin of his teeth, and did the bare minimum to back up his words.
Which words are those? The man says "we'll go DRM-free when they agree to license the music to us that way", and now at least one label has, so that's what they're doing. It's getting harder by the minute to make a case that the "Thoughts on Music" thing was a big lie.
What's sad about this is that it's being called an "upgrade", when in actuality it amounts to little more than another way to make extra money on goods that people have already paid for.
Nobody has already paid for a 256kbps DRM-free track on iTunes. You're making it sound as though you're forced to pay twice for the same thing, which is plainly not true. You are not forced by any stretch of the imagination, and you aren't getting the same thing that you originally paid for.
If I ever bought a defective product in any other industry,
You're confusing rhetoric with reality. "Defective" does not mean what you think it does.
Call me a zealot if you want, it doesn't phase me. If being angered by scams masked as good-faith efforts amounts to nothing more than zealotry in your mind, then I feel sorry for you. (Attn Moderators: I care not about
Oh, come off it. Leave your persecution complex at home. Nobody is preventing you from expressing your views -- it's the friggin internet. That said, "expressing your views" doesn't mean you get to toss about half-truths and misinformation rooted in ignorance without anyone trying to correct you.
The current events overtones with the Homeland Security and illegal immigrant killings/deportations were only for the benefit of attracting those in the reviewer community that hate the US' current administration.
These are pretty traditional dystopian motifs, most of which are present in the book upon which the movie is (loosely) based. The undisguised references to current events had more to do with reinforcing the plausibility of the setting, just as the extreme lack of "futuristic" accouterments made it more readily familiar. "Attracting reviewers" is a dreadfully shallow explanation.
AAC is a free format, just like Ogg Vorbis.
Not free enough for Linux nerds: AAC is a standard, which is good. AAC requires a license fee, which is bad. AAC has no royalty or usage fee, which is good. AAC is patent "encumbered", which is bad. Ogg Vorbis is free, Free, and patent-free. Actually, nobody's really sure if it's patent-free, but it's generally believed to be. It's still about as widely supported as baby-eating, though, which makes the benefit of all this "freedom" rather intangible.
AFAIK, Apple still expects us to be exclusive to them i.e. they demand exclusive online distribution.
This is outright bullshit. Whoever told you that is an idiot and/or a liar. There are plenty of independent labels and artists that sell through iTunes and other stores. I don't know of any online store that has such a stipulation.
There's absolutely no reason why Mr. Jobs can't enable independent labels to sign up as iTunes vendors.
They already can. Your powers of ignorance are...on par with most people that cite DefectiveByDesign.
Man, I bet you have a whole stable of high horses.
When it ships, we'll finally be able to compare CPUs.
Behold, the perennial argument of fanboys on either side!
However, it's worth noting, that these are clearly AMD ideas.
No, they're obvious ideas. Moving stuff on-die makes it faster. Duh. There isn't a whole lot in CPU design that hasn't been thought about long before it's feasible.
Yes, the stand-alone music player's days are numbered...in the thousands. We all know that convergence is happening every year, and that the low-end market for most personal electronics is turning into one market for do-it-all gadgets, there's no serious disagreement there. It is just the headline that's sensationalist.
Yeah, I hate visiting sites and seeing them render properly!
Where did I say anything about rendering? As far as I can tell, Safari/WebKit and Firefox/Gecko are both more or less accurate. Safari passed Acid2 back in 2005, while Firefox is just now getting there. Besides, if I wanted to run a Gecko browser, I'd run Camino over Firefox, because it doesn't feel like a bad port from Windows.
For OSX users, Gran Paradiso is a huge improvement over previous Firefox versions. It's way faster, and it feels as fast as Safari.
If it looks like Firefox, acts like Firefox, but is as fast as Safari -- it's still Firefox. Fuck that.
The whole idea of virtual land is stupid anyway. They can let the space moderate itself; just let people decide who gets to have a 'door' into their space, and then the highly connected nodes are 'valuable', and it might even be worth owning land next to some that was highly connected, but probably not, connections are pretty cheap in lots of ways.
You've just described the web, more or less. Kind of hard to implement in a 3D world modeled on the real world.
Not only would this give them more space for more players, but it decreases the power of land barons. And having a 'new world' to explore would add more interest to the game. Anyone want to be Magellan? Or Columbus?
Did the discovery of the New World destroy property values in the Old World?
I predict that Coldwell Banker will lose their shirts on this one.
To lose one's shirt implies losing everything one has. If Coldwell Banker were shifting it's entire business to virtual land, that might be a sound prediction. As it is, it's more of a speculative investment. I don't know how much virtual land they own, but I doubt seriously that they spent much more than their annual budget for paperclips on it.
Linden seem to be masters of manipulating the media to the point where major companies think its smart to be involved in a game that actaully has very few players relative to other MMOs.
The number of players isn't what interests these companies. It's the fact that they can be a part of the economy, i.e. they can make money in a new way. There are few other virtual worlds for which that is true, and among them, Second Life is undoubtedly the largest.
Re-read your post and think about why you might come off as "bitching" rather than just stating your opinion. Nothing in your post relates to anything I said in mine. You're clearly not interested in it, and yet you're replying to it. You're making assumptions about my character based on...what exactly? You're the one bringing up Steve Jobs and "just works" and bizarre notions about Apple being infallible. I didn't say anything about any of that. You're making mock apologies about hurting my feelings -- feelings? What does that have to do with this? And something about Microsoft? Brain cells? What are you even talking about?
Huh? And what reason is that? To give more money to Microsoft? [then lots of blathering that has nothing to do with anything that I said]
You're being obtuse. I was saying that at least with Windows Media, the fact that it's got a massive installed base at least justifies the existence of so much content in that format, which in turn is a decent argument for supporting it. I didn't say anything about DRM. At the very least, it's a better argument that saying that anyone should go out of their way to support dozens of non-standard formats instead. To be clear: I don't think there's any reason for AppleTV to support either.
I'd also like to point out that you said nothing about the main idea expressed in my post -- that XviD is already supported if the encoder is responsible enough to use well-supported standards.
I think that apple could make a much better set-top box, with TV Tuner, big hard drive (at least 300 GB) and a remote, and an application like MythTV or SageTV.
In other words: by making it entirely different. This is the same argument that comes up every time Apple releases anything. Why a TV tuner? If I'm downloading content, I don't need one. If I'm not, why do I need a device to help me play downloaded content? Why not just get a TiVo?
A few details not in the other replies: They used Perian, and they installed it the same way you would install any other QuickTime plugin (meaning that yes, it is that easy, and should work with any codec).
The "hack" aspect of it is just getting in to it. They started by pulling the drive (Torx screws), dropping in the codec, a script to turn off the built-in firewall, and a 3rd-party SSH server. They then used a QuickTime reference movie directed at an XviD AVI file. The method they used to get the reference movie to work right is wonky and not elegant at all. Basically they transfered a "normal" iTunes movie, then replaced it with theirs. Yuk.
In the coming weeks this will obviously evolve into a simpler solution. Clearly, using the built-in SSH, and not entirely disabling the firewall would be better. Using XviD-in-.mov instead of reference movies would be a bit simpler, and iTunes would be able to sync it without any hackishness. And clearly, hacking the "diagnostic" USB port on the thing is going to turn it into a completely software hack. And that, of course, will follow with a hack to install a full copy of Mac OS X, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.
That is a lot of crap to do just to support a non-DRM encrusted format.
AppleTV plays plenty of non-DRMed formats. To pretend otherwise marks you as a dick.
The blurb even said you need QT Pro, which means more money for Apple to just play a file.
In reality, you don't need QuickTIme Pro at all. So what if the 0-day hack says it does? It's just the method they used. Hell, they used a 3rd-party SSH server because they didn't know how to enable SSH, not because it's not possible to do so.
No thanks, I will stick to MythTV.
If you've already got a solution, why are you even bothering to post? If people were banging at your door begging you to switch, maybe it would make sense to complain, but as it stands, they're not, and you don't have much reason to be complaining. "Insightful", my ass -- you're just bitching.
Netgear EVA8000
I thought it sounded a bit too much like "HAL 9000", myself. I don't know what that says about me, but I'll pretend to be proud of it.
How long do you think it will be by the time this thing chews through my 2.5TB of videos?
Just out of curiosity, what format is that in? Or is it just thoroughly mixed?
Xvid is open, so there is no reason for Apple to not at least include Xvid playback support.
It already does. I have hundreds of XviD-encoded videos, all of which I am confident will play on AppleTV. They already play in iTunes and on the iPod. How is this possible? Easy. I just chose not to encode them with non-standard features, and not stick them in non-standard formats like AVI or MKV.
I don't think anyone should have to compensate for the fact that open source projects don't devote much energy to making it easy to produce widely-compatable videos. For example, mencoder defaults to using AVI, no matter what codecs you've chosen, and only mplayer will play such files.
I think a stronger case could be made for them to try to support Windows Media -- at least there's a reason for so much content to exist in that format.
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.
This is a shallow observation. Most products are not market leaders. That doesn't mean they aren't successful.
You are a bigger idiot than the guy that started this shit. Let me just get that out of the way.
worth every second, have you seen xbmc in action?
Yes, actually, my friend uses it, and likes it a lot. Unlike you, he is capable of admitting that it has flaws and isn't for everyone.
The "Half the cost" included buying the cheap remote for the xbox
If so, why wasn't it mentioned in the original post about XBMC? My friend paid $200 all told, without the other modifications, that I admit are optional, but do bring an Xbox more in line with AppleTV.
If you're one of those idiots that lets iTunes control their life
My only criticism of XBMC is that, unlike what the original poster asserted, it is not a replacement for AppleTV. AppleTV's syncing is built-in to iTunes, and handles multiple sources. With XBMC, you're more or less on your own for syncing. It's not "control" -- it's the simple fact that I already use iTunes and the idea of not having to roll my own rsync scripts just to watch TV that I think is better, personally. By the way, my iTunes library is exactly the same as you describe, so if I'm "controlled", so are you.
Later on you mention playing back HD video....you plan on using wireless for that??? HAHAHAHA You must be kidding
No. You don't know what HD means. HD refers to resolution, not bit-rate. On the one hand, HDTV is something like 19Mbps MPEG-2, and HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are 13Mbps h.264. On the other, DV video (720x480) at 25Mbps, isn't HD.
Meanwhile, 720p content you might find online is only 2-6Mbps, but it's still HD, and still streams over a good wireless connection. That doesn't matter, though, as you can always just tell AppleTV to sync it beforehand.
In summary: you are completely wrong.
Anyway, there are solutions for wireless. You can get the "Xbox" branded version or a netgear version for cheap.
Are you still claiming that this is going to end up costing "half as much" as AppleTV?
Still small enough to fit anywhere you need it to, and for the functionality it is totally worth it.
Bullshit. It's fucking huge. Maybe you don't care -- fine, I'm not trying to convince you. All I'm saying is that it's way bigger than an AppleTV, and that's a downside for the many people. "Totally worth it" implies that there's some objective criteria involved other than the one verifiable fact that an Xbox is at least 4 times larger than an AppleTV.
upgrade the hard drive, can you do that on your Apple TV?
Uh, yeah, if you wanted to, I can't see any reason why not. But that's an "option". If a person goes with an Xbox, they have to upgrade the disk if they want to match what the AppleTV has. Again -- my point is that XBMC isn't interchangeable. And again -- Upgrading the hard disk, adding the wireless -- is this really going to end up "half the cost"?
It plays back 720p and 1080
No it does not. I specifically linked to a page in the XBMC FAQ that says it cannot in the very line you quoted. (Since you can't be bothered to click a link, here is a relevant quote: "This means that you might only get maybe 10-20fps (frames per seconds) displayed which would appear so jerky because of all dropped frames that it will be un-viewable. The only real solution if you want to play videos with native HD resolutions on Xbox is to buy or upgrade to a non-standard Xbox with a much faster CPU (processor)") So, it can scale up to HD resolutions (with the "upgrade" of an HD adapter cable), but it cannot play back HD content, unless you upgrade the processor at additional cost -- yet another "upgrade" that wasn't mentioned in the original post about XBMC.
Good luck getting Apple to help you try and play a non-Apple format on the device.
MPEG-4 is not an Apple format. h.264 is not an Apple format. AAC is not an Apple format. I have hundreds of videos that use these formats, none of which came from Apple or were encoded with Apple products. All of them will play on AppleTV. I'm not exactly crying that proprietary Windows Media and DivX files won't play on it.
Believe it or not, the majority of the world does not use iTunes
The majority of the world does not use a computer. What's your point? Most people that have iPods (tens of millions) use iTunes. This is not a small number, if that's what you're trying to say. Look, if you (not the "majority of the world") want to use XBMC, fine -- I'm not out to convince you -- but to act as though XBMC and AppleTV are interchangeable is ridiculous.
Anyone interested in watching HD content sure isn't storing much on the 40GB Apple product either.
This might mean something if you had to store all of your content in that space. You don't. It syncs with up to five other computers out of the box. Even if you couldn't sync while watching (which you can), that's up to 20 hours of HD content. Furthermore you're glossing over the fact that an Xbox Media Center can't play HD content at all without replacing the processor, and only has an 8-10GB disk.
So far I'm not convinced that spending 2X money for DRM-compatibility for media I don't own is a good investment.
Then don't fucking buy it. Jesus H. I was just pointing out that there were significant differences that make XBMC not an attractive option for many. I don't care what XBMC has, because the things I'm looking for are all things it doesn't have.
Also, I don't believe for a minute the claim that XBMC ends up costing "half as much" if you're trying to make it an alternative to AppleTV. On top of the $150 quoted above, add in another $15 for the remote, more for the Xbox HD adapter, more for a processor upgrade that will actually let you play HD content, more for a halfway decent hard disk, more for wireless. If that doesn't end up closer to $299, I'll eat my hat.
XBMC has plenty of features you ignore like RSS readers, the ability to search/browse/watch video from Google/YouTube, meta-data scraping, DVD support blah blah blah
If I didn't already own a computer that does a better job of all of those things, this might be interesting. Sounds more like bloat to me.
and most important of all is support for a variety of more popular, open codecs such as XviD, FLAC, APE, Real, etc.
"More popular" my ass. Virtually all of my MPEG-4 files were encoded with XviD. All of them will play on AppleTV. I don't give a shit about FLAC or APE, because nothing I have ever used has ever supported them -- they aren't "popular" by any stretch of the imagination. Real is not open. Maybe if you do a lot of pirating, and don't have any control over the formats you get, this is an advantage. I prefer to stick with widely-supported standards like MPEG-4.