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Just got the Apple TV 10 days ago. Returned it a few hours ago for a store credit (will be buying the 160GB when it's out). Glad I fell within the 14-day return window.
 
While this is a positive move, it is just an upgrade and does not have the flash of the announcement made by Microsoft (not that I think it will see the light of day).

Flash wise MS won.
Substance wise Apple won.

Yes, because an overpriced hard drive upgrade and youtube compatibility are so substantial.:rolleyes:
 
well... now I'm kinda pissed off. I would have loved to get the significantly larger hard drive. I can barely put anything on the current one. I get about two-thirds of my music and NO videos, so I'm pretty much streaming everything.

LAME...

With all the people that post on this thing, nobody heard that rumor? Yet every week we hear about an ULTRA-PORTABLE that is supposed to come out or a newly designed iMAC. You would think this one would have been a pretty easy discovery.

:(
 
With all the people that post on this thing, nobody heard that rumor? Yet every week we hear about an ULTRA-PORTABLE that is supposed to come out or a newly designed iMAC. You would think this one would have been a pretty easy discovery.

:(

Perhaps you should sue the users of Macrumors for their reckless disregard?
 
I don't have one, but have heard that the Sony Bravia TVs they use are awful at the interlacing (or something technical), and most TVs are much better looking with iTS video on AppleTV :)
Sony make low end TV's, explains. Apple TV is cheap too, do not expect it to beat a £100 DVD player with HDMI that will scale. Apple TV isn't too good in the image quality department.
 
With all the people that post on this thing, nobody heard that rumor? Yet every week we hear about an ULTRA-PORTABLE that is supposed to come out or a newly designed iMAC. You would think this one would have been a pretty easy discovery.

It's a hard drive upgrade for an existing product. It's not exactly going to make the front page of all the rumor sites and cause Apple's stock to shoot up another $20 based on that upgrade alone... :rolleyes:
 
I have not read all of the posts but their is a place on the web that offered this for $549, so a price point of $399 is Ok with me. I was kind of on the fence if I was going to buy it, but now I can it 399 I will be getting a couple.
 
Let's hope so! The current resolution sucks - I never realized it until trying to watch a clip of BSG on an Apple TV in the Vegas Apple Store - convinced me never to buy one, as the video looked horrendous...

If you rip the DVDs yourself using Handbrake 2-pass encoding, it actually looks pretty good.
 
Have you steamed any HD yet ? How do you know that then ? I seem to be able to stream HD trailers over my DSL line and that is not as fast as my 10baseT wireless network. I am going to download some HD trailers and stream them from my imac tonight to see....

When you stream over your DSL line you computer is buffering the video. Cable operators usually stream HD content at around 12Mb/s. While this is within n's capabilities, it doesn't account for dropouts in the signal which can easily happen. Furthermore, cable tends to be heavily compressed and usually runs at 720p. A 1080p movie with less compression will soon hit the ceiling for n delivery.

Blu Ray has a maximum bit rate of 40Mb/s. This would require a very quiet n environment to stream without a buffer.

Nope, the :apple:tv can only handle HD content @ max. 5mbps + 160kbps audio. So no problem for n. The quality is quite good. Just re encoded some 1080p trailer to 720p @max settings for :apple:tv and they look awesome!

About the TV Shows quality in general on iTMS. They look sometimes like they did something wrong with deinterlaceing. It just looks very lowres on high contrast parts. Hope they start encoding in HD and selling them worldwide...

See above. Your :apple:TV is buffering.
 
What is so difficult to understand...

the 40 GB is good and sufficient if you use the streaming capabilities of the device, but there seems to be a bunch of people who would rather have a bigger hard drive so there is no need to have your Mac running for the Apple TV to show your media. People were even voiding their warranty to get a third party HD upgrade. So what Apple does? they introduce a new version for those who want the extra space. Suddenly the whole product does not make sense, marketing shifted, Apple doesn't know what they are doing, etc.

Stop the ranting and enjoy the products. If you don't like them, then don't buy them.

I still can't understand what Apple wants us to us AppleTV for. One minute we're being told we only need 40GB because the whole point of Apple TV is that it's mainly a streaming device (or at least that's what I think we were being told). And then they go and increase the capacity 300% :confused:

I wish they'd just have released two versions: One which is just a streaming device for those with a permanent desktop somewhere in the house/flat, and; Another which was just a little bigger to allow for a full size hard disk that is a standalone unit that stores the media on its own hard disk. The latter would be useful for people like me who perhaps only have laptops.
 
Yes, because an overpriced hard drive upgrade and youtube compatibility are so substantial.:rolleyes:

The typical 160GB hard drive on Newegg is around $110 so I don't know what pricing you expected Apple to provide. They're not going to drop their drawers for you. Share price is over a c-note a share so they're obviously doing something right.

well... now I'm kinda pissed off. I would have loved to get the significantly larger hard drive. I can barely put anything on the current one. I get about two-thirds of my music and NO videos, so I'm pretty much streaming everything.

LAME...

:(

Why store you're music locally? AAC files are an easy stream even on 11g. If space is premium then stream the music and store the video content locally. Or upgrade the hard drive.

the 40 GB is good and sufficient if you use the streaming capabilities of the device, but there seems to be a bunch of people who would rather have a bigger hard drive so there is no need to have your Mac running for the Apple TV to show your media. People were even voiding their warranty to get a third party HD upgrade. So what Apple does? they introduce a new version for those who want the extra space. Suddenly the whole product does not make sense, marketing shifted, Apple doesn't know what they are doing, etc.

Stop the ranting and enjoy the products. If you don't like them, then don't buy them.

nope...some people have a peculiar feature to their persona. The more they whine the better they feel. Everything is supposed to be free, everything is supposed to playback every codec known to mankind. How dare Apple fall short of perfection. ;)
 
What they need to do is allow you to connect your own drive to the USB port. I'm sure that could be done for free with only a software upgrade. Then people could connect their multi TB RAIDs. Not unreasonable to ask for this either as the Airport Extreme router allows you to connect a hub and any number of drives and printers.

Still, I don't see the point of a large HD on the ATV. The ATV uses the drives as a staging area only. Just a place to buffer content. Movies can be erased after they are shown. The main storage lives on the Mac or PC iTunes library. If you have a wired network or the new "N" wireless you can stream in real time and don't need an HD at all.
 
If you rip the DVDs yourself using Handbrake 2-pass encoding, it actually looks pretty good.

Good to know - I should hope that would be the case. Still though, in theory, and in an "Apple world", Apple no doubt envisions that all the content you use on your AppleTV would have been purchased from iTMS, meaning that's predominantly what people would be watching - and if this is the case, you would think Apple would strive harder to make its own content higher quality. Easier said than done though of course. ;)
 
Good to know - I should hope that would be the case. Still though, in theory, and in an "Apple world", Apple no doubt envisions that all the content you use on your AppleTV would have been purchased from iTMS, meaning that's predominantly what people would be watching - and if this is the case, you would think Apple would strive harder to make its own content higher quality. Easier said than done though of course. ;)

As Steve implied today at D, its only a matter of time...
 
I don't think I will own an Apple TV but I think a case could be made this is further proof for the Mac Mini is going away rumors.
 
I don't think I will own an Apple TV but I think a case could be made this is further proof for the Mac Mini is going away rumors.

Yeah, the Mac mini has been pretty much neglected by Apple as of late. I wouldn't be surprised if it is discontinued as well. Somewhat ironic, thinking back to the old G4 cube... :eek: ;)
 
Yeah, the Mac mini has been pretty much neglected by Apple as of late. I wouldn't be surprised if it is discontinued as well. Somewhat ironic, thinking back to the old G4 cube... :eek: ;)

I don't think it will be discontinued; if it was given an h.264 encoding/decoding chip, they could market it more as a media machine to compliment your AppleTV :)
 
I don't think it will be discontinued; if it was given an h.264 encoding/decoding chip, they could market it more as a media machine to compliment your AppleTV :)

True, but I still have my doubts. Only time will tell though! We'll probably have a better idea after the few weeks surrounding WWDC are over, depending what all we see for hardware updates and announcements.
 
The only things missing now are:

- an output switch to connect a projector and a TV
- discrete surround sound
- HD content
- widescreen content
- movie rentals

Just a few... :rolleyes:
 
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