Apple TV 2.2 released

[mcdj]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

I was hoping this would fix album art not showing up on the iPhone remote app. No such luck. (this only seems to affect those of us who have music synced, and don't stream it).



Also wondering what the point of standby is. By the time I navigate back to the option, I'm the one who has gone on standby.

 

[nickarate]

If I buy a season pass for a tv show...

Will it sync back to my computer?

 

[jaw04005]

I'm loving the music video playlist support, but why couldn't they've added playlists to TV Shows and Podcasts also? It's the same feature.

I want to be able to queue up two or three 30 minute shows and let it just run in the background. I'm sure folks with kids would appreciate the feature.

 

[frankiepdx]

Is anyone using Genius on their Shared Library? If this is not possible, this update is useless for me.

 

[Maury]

- Standby option in menu (not sure if that was there already)

Good, but can you tell if there's any change in the actual standby itself? I can hear it whining away in the living room, and it drives me nuts. I unplug it most of the time.

Maury

 

[Maury]

Can there be a plethora of things added? Yes. But so did the 1st Generation iPod, and so is the iPhone....

Yeah, but the difference is that they actually did change those. ATV hasn't seen a hardware upgrade since it was released, with the exception of a drive swap. It's not so much that what it can do isn't useful, it's that the platform can clearly do about 1000 more things, and we're not being given them.

Want an example? Here's a feature that would instantly catapult the ATV from "meh" to "get one right now". AirDisk support. That's right, the same software that lets you use your DVD on the MacBook Air could be used to allow the ATV to become a DVD player. And just for fun, allow it to support the external DVD through the USB.

I think one of the reasons that the ATV doesn't sell as well as it should is because it becomes "one more limited source" in the AV stack. But if the ATV was the center of that stack instead, then it seems more interesting. One of those inputs is going to be DVD, and it seems like AirDisk is a great way to eliminate that.

Maury

 

[Maury]

A lot of us waited until 1080p was released before getting a new TV)

Count me among those, but in retrospect, for no reason.

The VAST, and I mean VAST, majority of media I find is 720p. ALL of the local TV stations. ALL of the digital cable HD stations. Everything I get from Apple. Everything I get from the 'net. etc.

The list of things that actually _use_ (as opposed to support) 1080p can be counted on two fingers, and that list is unlikely to grow very quickly. Even as consoles move to 1080, TV isn't. So what's the point? I'd rather have one truly universal format and not have to worry about it than two formats that can't even be cleanly scaled between.

Maury

 

[Jovian9]

Finally!!!!!!!!

Playlists for my music videos. I love my TV and use it a lot for photos, music, movies, even rent a movie every week.......but this feature will probably double my TV use on it's own

 

[ricosuave]

Interestingly enough, I can't seem to wake mine up sometimes! I end up having to unplug it and reboot it up

We have the same issues ever since the take 2 update. But you don't have to unplug it to reboot. Simply hold the "-" and the menu button at the same time.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Sigh. Still no 1080P support. It ain't gonna be big unless it fully uses the features of modern TVs. A lot of us waited until 1080p was released before getting a new TV and by Golly I am not going to get a TV device that will only show low resolution images on it. Once it goes 1080P for its movies then I would consider getting an Apple TV but not before that... (at it may not be powerful enough to do so)

I hate to burst people's bubble, but unless you have a HUGE screen or sit really close to your tv set (mine is 93" and I sit 8 feet from it), the whole 1080P thing is completely blown out of proportion. The FACT is unless you're sitting closer than the resolving depth, you won't be able to even see the improvement over 720P. At my screen size and distance, I should theoretically be able to get some improvement from 1080P, but even so AppleTV's 720P movies look better than HDNet's 1080i programs on cable and that's by far the best looking HD television station out there. If you had a 50 or 60" HDTV and sit a typical 8-10 feet away, 1080P won't do you one bit of good over 720P. That doesn't stop the industry from telling you that you NEED it so they can sell higher priced sets to you (the 720P LCDs were just becoming affordable when most manufacturers stopped making them to push prices up from $800 for a 48" to $1500+ again.

I find most people thought VHS was 'good enough' in the old days (I had laserdisc) and were slow to adopt DVDs even though they were a distinct improvement over DVDs (with anamorphic titles, at least) and even now HDTV adoption is just becoming the norm (largely because it's getting so you can't even buy a regular set any more) and yet people are suddenly so picky that they think they NEED 1080P when they can't even see it on their set size and seating distance. It reminds me of audiophiles who THINK they hear improvements when they pain the edges of their CDs with green markers, etc. It's just not logical.

From what I understand, the current AppleTV hardware is incapable of 1080P and even it were capable, people would STILL whine and cry that the compression is too high compared to Bluray and and they want zero compression or they won't buy one. That'll drag the bandwidth requirements into the stratosphere and you'll have to wait the better part of a day (with a GOOD connection) to start watching your movie instead of 1-15 minutes. And with AppleTV's piddly hard drive sizes, one movie would take up most of the drive. Yes, you could have AppleTV Version 3.0 that adds those capabilities, but then you'd make their entire rental library incompatible with the current AppleTV units and ISPs might just start charging for the huge bandwidth that such things would incur. The point is some people will never be happy and believe in numbers and hype more than actual pictures. Like I said, a 720P movie on AppleTV with my PT-AX100U projector and 93" screen looks pretty amazing at 8 feet. While it could stand to be a little sharper at that size for a "wow it's 3D" factor, it still looks better than the average cinema using film comparative to picture size and unlike Blu-Ray I don't have to wait a day to get the movie from NetFlix. It's ready in 1 minute.

 

[dynaflash]

I wonder if the atv *did* support full blu-ray 1080p at typical blu-ray bitrates how many people would quickly come to realize that the required investments in hdd's would become overwhelming for a library of average size.

 

[Adjei]

So, in other words, no actual useful new features. It figures. I was hoping for a visualizer even. Nope. Nothing. I guess we can forget about ever getting something like web browser support (which tied with an iPhone/Touch with "Remote" would be REALLY nice on my 93" screen in 720P), at least without hacking the crap out of it, like you have to do with most Apple products (e.g. iPhone) to get your money's worth. If you're willing to do that, you CAN get a web browser, codecs for things something like your digital camera actually records in (I can play my Canon A590's video in Quicktime on my Mac, but not on AppleTV because Apple thought it would be great if they didn't let you use AppleTV for doing anything useful).

Sorry, but it seems like AppleTV will only ever be useful as a tv front-end to buying more 'stuff' from Apple. It's kind of obvious considering "Search" under MUSIC doesn't mean "Search my library" but rather "Search the iTunes Store" so hopefully you'll buy some more stuff that we make it hard to find". In other words, NO you CANNOT search your own music library from AppleTV. You'd think that'd be a feature by 2.2, but like I said, they don't seem to want to add any useful functionality what-so-ever.

How about a RENT option for HD television shows? Nope. Even though most people only watch a tv show episode once or twice in a lifetime, they seem to want you to BUY tv shows, but they'll allow you to rent movies, even though you're more likely to watch those more than once. $2.99 to watch one TV episode? How about 99 Cents to rent it instead? But Apple isn't smart enough to do that. Even though it means they will never get 1 cent from me because I won't buy tv shows, they prefer that to renting them, which would mean I might be able to get rid of cable and save some real money (and they would then get that money instead of my cable company).

I like AppleTV as part of my whole house audio system (I therefore own two of them) and I do rent new HD movies with it that I haven't seen instead of going to the video store since Blu-Ray rentals are virtually non-existent on a local basis, but the device could be SO much more. I just find it ironic I can buy apps for my phone, but not for something that is actually far more powerful internally.

Heck, they can't even get the movie rental thing right. Movies have been losing their "Rent" option for some time now with no explanations given. For example, "Superbad" is listed under the "HD Must See" rental list, but when you click on it, it's only available to buy and only in standard definition. How can it be a must see HD rental if you can't rent it? The truth is it USED to be able to be rented, but that option suddenly disappeared with no explanation given. The same is true of "The Matrix" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" and most Disney movies, etc. etc. Either the movie companies suddenly decided they don't want those movies to be rented (doubtful given the two Matrix sequels are available for rent in HD and up until a few weeks ago so was the first one). So I figure this is actually a bug/mixup/screwup and Apple simply needs to be made aware of it. So I TRIED and I TRIED REALLY HARD to do just that. I reported the issue and asked them if it was intentional or a mixup and they sent me a link to another reporting form where they think I should actually ask that question instead of forwarding it themselves or attempting to find out if they're losing money because of some screwup. I then was nice enough to ask the same question on the new form. It's been about 2 weeks now and no one has replied back from that report and the last time I looked, none of those movies were available to rent so I think someone just trashed the report, ignores the problem and is probably costing Apple a lot of money considering about 5 of the "Must See HD" rentals are not available to rent.

I'm afraid that is typical of Apple. Everything is so secretive and hush hush that you can't even help them out by reporting actual screwups and bugs. They just blissfully ignore all of it. For example, it'd take them 2 minutes to add copy/paste to the iPhone, but it's "not a priority" for them even though it's clearly a huge priority for actual iPhone users. Go Apple!

Are you just that daft, I mean come on, they added new features, but because it's not the features you want, you complain, typical.

 

[Cave Man]

I hate to burst people's bubble, but unless you have a HUGE screen or sit really close to your tv set (mine is 93" and I sit 8 feet from it), the whole 1080P thing is completely blown out of proportion.

Well, I can see a difference between 720p rips I did with HB using a couple Disney Blu-Ray discs we own (Cars, Meet The Robinsons). But this is on my 10 foot wide screen with my Samsung Z2000 projector. The movies were transcoded at 14 mbps (which made them about 8-10 gb compared to 15-20 gb for the 30 mbps Blu-Ray rips with their AC3 audio). I'm sure there was some loss in the transcoding, but there isn't any conspicuous pixelation in either of the 720p files at 14 mbps. It may be that I could have gone lower, but certainly at 10 mbps pixelation becomes conspicuous in fast-moving scenes.

From what I understand, the current AppleTV hardware is incapable of 1080P and even it were capable,

I suspect not. I was hoping to test that, though, by installing XBMC on my ATV and give it a whirl. Unfortunately, the patchstick method does not like my ATV/eSATA setup. I sure wouldn't mind finding a disk image of OSBoot with XBMC on it somewhere...

..people would STILL whine and cry that the compression is too high compared to Bluray and and they want zero compression or they won't buy one. That'll drag the bandwidth requirements into the stratosphere and you'll have to wait the better part of a day (with a GOOD connection) to start watching your movie instead of 1-15 minutes.

For me, the biggest difference is in bit rates. Physical media will always prevail in this regard, no matter if it's Blu-Ray or Green-Ray or whatever, for the reason you just outlined. There will have to be a novel discovery in compression algorithms (along with powerful processors on the other end to decode them) to overcome it.

And of the HD movies I've rented from my ATV, they are never ready for a few hours at least. We usually buy early in the morning, or late and night to allow the download to complete before starting. Bandwidth is already an issue for us, even at 720p.

I wonder if the atv *did* support full blu-ray 1080p at typical blu-ray bitrates how many people would quickly come to realize that the required investments in hdd's would become overwhelming for a library of average size.

Plea$e don't get me $tarted. There i$ really no rea$on not to get all your video$ onto a hard di$k, after all, hard drive$ are really the only way to go for home theater$...

Now excuse me, I have to order another 1.5 TB drive...

 

[cybereal]

It's grrrreat!

wow, 3 appleTVs...

Last question. The apple website says it can sync wirelessly with itunes on another computer on the network... does this mean I can buy a big external harddrive, hook that up to the itunes computer and stream a database of movies from there without needing to fill up the 40GB appleTV itself? (I don't want to buy the 160GB if I don't have to. Thoughts? Answers?

In response to your first question? Yes I love my Apple TV. Everyone moans and groans that it isn't a huge feature creep mess but it hasn't ever bothered me so meh. I guess people are pretty demanding. Anyway, we use it every day. Period. I don't pay for cable, instead I buy seasons of the few shows we "must see" from iTunes and of course, we bring in the digital broadcasts of the free shows. This saved me over 400 dollars last year, and will be more this year (a few of those must see shows are no longer must see.)

I personally rip my own dvd's, so I have quite a bit of content now sitting on a terabyte drive organized in iTunes. 165 movies, and 65 television seasons. Add video podcasts to that and a subscription to the daily show and you might see how the apple tv totally rocks.

I was very happy with the 2.0 update. I was happy with the device before but all the added renting and direct purchasing features are really great.

And finally to answer your second question, yes you can stream right out of iTunes, that's how I deal with my movies, I only synchronize my music collection (about 20gb) and the least recent unwatched episodes of a few tv series. I have a 5ghz 802.11n only network and, contrary to a few other reports in here, have never had any stuttering streaming 720p content. Of course, ymmv.

It was kind of a gamble buying this thing but the price is good for what it can do as well as how low profile the actual device is. After 18 months of ownership, I'd still recommend it.

 

[cybereal]

We have the same issues ever since the take 2 update. But you don't have to unplug it to reboot. Simply hold the "-" and the menu button at the same time.

I found this issue to happen only when using HDMI. I switched back to component/optical and have never once had the problem again. I noticed it prior to the 2.0 update as well though.

 

[BaldiMac]

Good, but can you tell if there's any change in the actual standby itself? I can hear it whining away in the living room, and it drives me nuts. I unplug it most of the time.

Maury

If you can here the AppleTV from another room, something is probably wrong. The hard drive is the only thing that should make noise, and it should spin down when it isn't syncing in standby mode.

 

[Tramjaw]

Standby

is anyone else having trouble putting their atv to sleep with the remote?

holding down the play/pause button doesn't work anymore for me after 2.2

that seems kinda silly that they would take that feature away...

 

[mecmec]

Power Consumption standby and on.

Just checked the power consumption (thougth maybe something has changed with the new firmware.)

Way to go apple!

Power on (just the main screen no music or movie playing, or syncing)
Power : between 13 and 14 watts.

Stanby: between 13 and 14 watts

Ps.

Holding down the play button for 7 seconds don't work anymore, you have to choose standby in the menu options.

(I choose this option before I disconnect the power from the apple tv, I know this is not the best thing for the drive, but there are losts of days I don't use the apple tv)

 

[ipedro]

^ They needed to use the Press and Hold Play/Pause for the new Genius and On-the-Go playlists that you get. That's why there's a new "Standby" menu under "Settings"

 

[rogerm]

According to this page, pressing Play/Pause should still put the unit in standby mode, but this has to be done on the main menu screen now:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3187

 

[jettredmont]

do you all love your appleTVs? I've began contemplating getting one since they brought out the HD version.

Any of you wish you would have never bought it? I don't want to be in that same boat.

Love my AppleTV. In fact, dropping DirecTV altogether in favor of online video for some shows (where video quality isn't important) and AppleTV for the top-tier shows. Cheaper and significantly better quality via the AppleTV!

 

[Galley]

Like iTunes 8’s Grid View, browsing by Artists is actually browsing by Album Artist. WooHoo!
Unfortunately, similarly-titled albums ("Greatest Hits”, “Gold”, etc.) are still mixed together. The albums don’t appear sequentially either; the tracks are jumbled together. Aaargh!

 

[ipedro]

Chapter View/Selection during Movies

I'm pretty sure this is a major new feature:

When watching a movie, press and hold Play to reveal an iChat Videoesque display where you can choose the chapter.

Pardon the bad photo:

 

[jim.arrows]

On-the-fly playlist

I hate that the on-the-fly playlist doesn't queue up your selections and play them after the current selection finishes playing -- is there any way to do that? Not very "on-the-fly" if you have to exit back to the music menu, go into playlists and scroll all the way to the bottom and start playing a new playlist which immediately interrupts the song you're listening to... ATVs just got a generally bad habit of interrupting the song you're listening to by going into the wrong menu, etc. You know what should interrupt the song I'm currently listening to? Nothing! Unless I pause it or select another song or video and click "play" the current selection should continue playing, regardless of what menu I navigate to -- this has been a pet peeve of mine for the year and a half I've owned my 2 atvs. Anyway, I hope they give the on-the-fly feature the option of just queueing up your selections and playing them immediately without having to go launch a new playlist. If I'm listening to something and see another song I want to hear next, I should just be able to add it to the "on-the-fly" and it should play next without doing anything else, imo.

Edit: Oh yeah, the fact that if you're already listening to the "on-the-fly" playlist and add additional selections it doesn't play them either just makes the implementation that much worse... at least if you could add one song, start the playlist, and continue adding selections it wouldn't be so bad, but to have to restart the playlist from the beginning is just not very user-friendly.

 

[Lancetx]

If you haven't already updated to 2.2, then don't! There are major issues going on tonight apparently with the update.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1738952&tstart=0

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1738926&tstart=0