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Apple TV Take 2 is now LIVE!
- Thread starter imlucid
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2.5 hours until work is over... I am completely appletized now! Never thought I would say this a few years ago, but my phone is Apple, my computer is Apple, my CD collection is on iTunes and ran on apple, and now I will go home and watch TV through an Apple device. Thank you Apple!
Just watch out ... they own you and your checkbook now..
Learn from my mistakes: stay away from apple products
Yes.
If you hit "Play", it streams it (though streaming does utilize the disk) but won't keep it around. If you hit "Download" it downloads it to the harddrive.
Kevin
Nope.
But if you have content that exceeds the size of the apple tv hard drive, you can run into trouble. iTunes does have a few content management options for that (ie, show unplayed this/that, only sync this)
I have hundreds of gigs of content now, so i stream it all.
Just done playing with it for a bit so I don't know if any of this has been covered but my favorite bits so far:
You can get to the main menu from any screen by just holding down menu.
Apparently iPhoto events are synced now - you just need to specify it in iTunes
NO MORE SYNCING for streaming content! It is just there in the list. I really don't see any reason to keep anything on the aTV anymore.
I may unsubscribe from a lot of podcasts now and just mark them as "favorites" to save space...
You can get to the main menu from any screen by just holding down menu.
Apparently iPhoto events are synced now - you just need to specify it in iTunes
NO MORE SYNCING for streaming content! It is just there in the list. I really don't see any reason to keep anything on the aTV anymore.
I may unsubscribe from a lot of podcasts now and just mark them as "favorites" to save space...
I don't like the 24-hour limit on finishing viewing a rental. It's just a little too short.
The reason is that I tend to watch movies during the same time period each day. Let's say that 9pm-11pm is my daily movie-viewing window and suppose that I start watching a movie at 9pm. Something more important may come up, like a family member needing my help. Fine - I'll just finish the movie the next day.
But if I watched half of a 2-hour movie from 9pm to 10pm, I can't watch the rest of it in the same window the next day, because it expires as my viewing time starts. If I had 48 hours, or even 26 hours in my case, this wouldn't be a problem.
This isn't a showstopper, just a minor annoyance, but I think 24 hours is stingy and an inconvenience to at least one Apple customer: me.
The reason is that I tend to watch movies during the same time period each day. Let's say that 9pm-11pm is my daily movie-viewing window and suppose that I start watching a movie at 9pm. Something more important may come up, like a family member needing my help. Fine - I'll just finish the movie the next day.
But if I watched half of a 2-hour movie from 9pm to 10pm, I can't watch the rest of it in the same window the next day, because it expires as my viewing time starts. If I had 48 hours, or even 26 hours in my case, this wouldn't be a problem.
This isn't a showstopper, just a minor annoyance, but I think 24 hours is stingy and an inconvenience to at least one Apple customer: me.
Love the answer. Do you work for the ATV team AND PR cause that's the answer that they give when they want to deflect a direct answer to a question.
Has Apple made any "private" statements about the USB port?
802.11n
Do you find the wireless networking of the Apple TV fast enough? Streaming works well and starts playing quickly?
Do you find the wireless networking of the Apple TV fast enough? Streaming works well and starts playing quickly?
Just watch out ... they own you and your checkbook now..
Learn from my mistakes: stay away from apple products
Yes they do. But don't you love it?
Now if only I could afford to take the afternoon off and go download the update...
According to the folks at Macworld, there's a bug (or is that unplanned feature) that allows you to pause the movie and then pick up watching it, even if it's outside of the 24-hour window. This applied to their testing in iTunes. I have no idea if it will work on the AppleTV. There was some down-side to doing this, but I can't recall right now what it was.
Well, If most of what you do is to watch network broadcast TV, then Apple TV is not all that cool for you. The majority of things I watch are on network TV as well, but I do watch some podcasts as well. The AppleTV is really great for that. And, after the upgrade, there is no need to subscribe to Podcasts via iTunes on the computer anymore. Even better. But what really makes the AppleTV a must have for me is music. I have a large collection of CDs that I have on my AppleTV now, accessible from the couch. I also use the AppleTV to look at my pictures. We take a lot of pictures, and the AppleTV works really great for that. I was very happy with the AppleTV even before this update as it did everything I needed it to do, except for internet radio. But now, it works with Airtunes, which makes me even happier.
That's what makes the AppleTV cool for me.
Controls it too!!
Now one step cooler, and I didn't have time to play around with it yet, but if you do multiple speakers: Computer & Apple TV, you can change tracks from the AppleTV on both your TV and Mac!!!
I only tried it in party shuffle, and there was a slight delay between clicking the remote and the song changing.
Now one step cooler, and I didn't have time to play around with it yet, but if you do multiple speakers: Computer & Apple TV, you can change tracks from the AppleTV on both your TV and Mac!!!
I only tried it in party shuffle, and there was a slight delay between clicking the remote and the song changing.
I find that it works exceptionally. Even for HD content. Even on a g network. So, n should be even better.
Finally they added Subscriptions to the YouTube client. Yay!
Also just noticed:
TV can act as an AirTunes node now. Neat!
Also just noticed:
TV can act as an AirTunes node now. Neat!I gotta agree with you. I use Netflix, and I really don't see myself moving away from it anytime soon because of the flexibility it affords me in terms of when I watch movies and how long it takes me to finish them. I really wish Apple had gone with a subscription-style service for its rentals, or at least provided that as an option in addition to the regular pay-per-movie setup. I'll probably rent an HD movie now and again, but that's about it.
Now, how about HD movie purchases? Give me a reason not to have to buy a next-gen DVD player and I'll be very happy.
I agree. I'm intrigued by the idea of ditching cable (or having very basic cable) and going to an
TV based setup. The movie rentals are a nice point in favor of that plan, but the 24 hour limit is indeed... stingy. I can't see the harm in making it 48 hours or something like that, just to give renters some flexibility.
Without trying, I believe you can. It would be very risky for Apple to modify the restore partition during updating. If something were to go wrong, it'd brick the ATV and you wouldn't be able to do a factory restore (assuming you bought one with 1.0 or 1.1 preinstalled).
Since before this release nobody knew what method apple would use for 5.1, any DVD rips would be a crapshoot. The only safe thing to do is to wait to do any dvd rips until after aTV 2 shipped and the HB guys figured out how to make 5.1 surround work for it.
Subscription style for a fixed price isn't really an option for a download service. Companies that mail plastic disks can only do it because they don't have to pay a royalty per view; download services must pay the studio per download, so it's impossible for them to compete on the same terms.
Another thing I just noticed in regards to the earlier complaint about "My Movies" etc being at the bottom of the list. It does remember the previous selection so if you select "Movies" it will automatically go to "My Movies" first - so no scrolling.
This is good news. If there was anything that I can predict my wife complaining about in the new update, it would be having to navigate this menu. Of course, I haven't applied it yet, so I haven't been able to see for myself how well the menu system is organized. I just know how clean the old one looks compared to this one.
Well I tried it. I had a .mkv version of Serenity already encoded.
I opened in a Perian-enabled Quicktime Pro (takes a long time to fully load) and the properties inspector showed it as an H.264 video AC3 audio file. And it played video and audio.
Saved as a .mov file which also played and inspected the same.
Synced with my AppleTV take 2 and tried to play it.
Nothing. The Harmon Kardon amp just had flashing audio inputs and there was on sound on any setting. So it would seem a .mkv format file changed to a .mov container is not the way to go unfortunately.
Then don't buy one?
I have three inputs for my TV. A cable tv DVR, an
tv, and the Wii. VERY little overlap between the three. The DVR allows me to timeshift "live" TV and skip the %&#@! commercials, the tv holds all my movies, and the Wii is for playing games.What the
tv has replaced is my DVD player. I'm also looking forward to renting movies from my living room -- without needing to make two trips to blockbuster. I don't buy TV shows from iTunes, instead I record them to the DVR and manually fast-forward through the ads. But I can see where an iTunes "season pass" for certain shows might be a good alternative for people tired of paying for cable/satellite tv. Esp. if you could watch it on an iPod as well as your TV.If you watch a lot of OTA TV and use your DVD player than I can see where an
tv wouldn't add much value for you.