Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Apple TV Take 2 is now LIVE!

hmm

So...
1. Satellite or cable for broadcast TV.
2. DVD / Blu-Ray Player for existing discs or store rentals.
3. Apple TV in case I want to buy a TV show that I could have recorded with a DVR for free.

It sure doesn't sound like a convergence device at all to me. It seems like Apple should give it away with a subscription for rentals or something. To pay nearly $300 for a device, then have to pay for all the content on it?
 
jmorrison0722 said:
Well, that is a good point. It would be great to not buy or rent DVD's. However, most people have a collection of DVD's they've purchased. Again, I would find myself having to switch over to the DVD player to watch those, and back to Apple TV to watch content there and over to Satellite to watch it. I just wish the Apple TV could replace my Tivo, and it had a DVD player built in.
Click to expand...

What you do is you get started ripping your DVDs with handbrake. Then you have everything all in one place. I've done this with all of my DVDs. I for one don't like getting up and switching DVDs all of the time.
 
ringmod82 said:
Now why... WHHHYYYYYYY can't we get HD movies through Front Row on our Macs??? Apple wants you to go buy an AppleTV to do that... but I don't have a widescreen or HD TV. That's what I have my new Mac with a Radeon HD card for.
Click to expand...


Can you not rent HD movies via iTunes on your mac and watch them on your mac?

EDIT - Just took a look... no you can not.
 
mrrory said:
I have a pretty cheap RCA HDTV that can display 720p or 1080i. What should I set my AppleTV to output on?
Click to expand...

Unless your TV is a CRT, then it isn't actually "displaying" 1080i. Most 720p/1080i sets have a physical resolution of either 720 or 768. Any 1080i signal you feed it will be downconverted to fit in that dimension. For this reason, feeding it a 1080i signal is pretty pointless. If your set is a true 720 resolution, stick with 720p. If your set is 768, then giving it a 1080i signal will yield *slightly* better results (48 lines of resolution better, if you're being exact).

Let the flaming begin.
 
Anyone figure out what Kevin means when he mentioned the delay being "worth the wait?!"
 
not clever......

two things:

they've got wise to the UK customers with US iTunes Store accounts. so no using all the great new features....

on that note, although i'm sure it is not apple's fault the lack of international content, they should have though of something else as the background pic - having to look at all the latest and greatest shiny film / TV posters is actually very offputting and only serves to REMIND you how crippled your non-US itunes store really is.

am still puzzled how they've worked out the loophole that many in the Uk were using to buy US iTunes content..... the account is still valid as my mac can still buy all i want....but not the AppleTV.....
 
CatharticFlux said:
I thought the AppleTV didn't have the hardware to support 802.11n?
Click to expand...

Actually, the AppleTV seemed to be a big part of the impetus of rushing out pre-"pre-n" support for the Extreme... otherwise promoting it as a fully wireless device would have been a much tougher sell, given all the video content you need to fling around to take advantage of it. It even supports the 5 GHz band, which is how I use it.
 
jmorrison0722 said:
Well, that is a good point. It would be great to not buy or rent DVD's. However, most people have a collection of DVD's they've purchased. Again, I would find myself having to switch over to the DVD player to watch those, and back to Apple TV to watch content there and over to Satellite to watch it. I just wish the Apple TV could replace my Tivo, and it had a DVD player built in.
Click to expand...

You don't have to switch over to your DVD player to watch those, just convert them via Handbrake and then they can be watched on the Apple TV, without any need to ever deal with the actual DVDs again. Although Apple obviously cannot tout this feature, to me it is by far the biggest benefit of Apple TV. All those seasons of past TV shows and old movies, which I had on DVD but never bothered to load into the DVD player and watch, are now instantly available just by pressing a button on my remote. Especially good for all the kid's movies we have purchased on DVD.

If more people realized that you could do this via Handbrake and that it was not only easy but gives you a very close to DVD quality picture, Apple TV would be a huge seller. Most other options for accomplishing this same basic thing (making all your DVD movies accessible via an on-screen menu) cost thousands.
 
jersey10 said:
If more people realized that you could do this via Handbrake and that it was not only easy but gives you a very close to DVD quality picture, Apple TV would be a huge seller. Most other options for accomplishing this same basic thing (making all your DVD movies accessible via an on-screen menu) cost thousands.
Click to expand...


The problem is that you lose the multichannel soundtrack. Now. Can someone figure out how to encode a DVD for AppleTV preserving the AC3 track?
 
sandman42 said:
Pssst, not to derail the thread, but you shouldn't convince yourself this is actually legal.
Click to expand...

Depends on if you think laws are made to serve man rather than man to serve the law. 'Fair Use' has gone to through the legal system to the highest court in the land and been found legal - the attempt to circumvent that and remove this right has not.

'Fair Use' is 'most legal' until the attempt to derail it has met the same lofty legal challenge. Funny thing is they aren't even challenging it so it will go to the Supremes - they'd rather make people 'feel' they are doing something illegal when they aren't - it gives them leverage.
 
BobVB said:
Depends on if you think laws are made to serve man rather than man to serve the law. 'Fair Use' has gone to through the legal system to the highest court in the land and been found legal - the attempt to circumvent that and remove this right has not.

'Fair Use' is 'most legal' until the attempt to derail it has met the same lofty legal challenge. Funny thing is they aren't even challenging it so it will go to the Supremes - they'd rather make people 'feel' they are doing something illegal when they aren't - it gives them leverage.
Click to expand...

wow... as if this thread hasn't been derailed enough already we're going to resurrect the age-old "fair use" discussion....
 
jmorrison0722 said:
So...
1. Satellite or cable for broadcast TV.
2. DVD / Blu-Ray Player for existing discs or store rentals.
3. Apple TV in case I want to buy a TV show that I could have recorded with a DVR for free.

It sure doesn't sound like a convergence device at all to me. It seems like Apple should give it away with a subscription for rentals or something. To pay nearly $300 for a device, then have to pay for all the content on it?
Click to expand...

That's actually a really good question. I'm still trying to figure it out myself.
 
d.f said:
two things:

they've got wise to the UK customers with US iTunes Store accounts. so no using all the great new features....

on that note, although i'm sure it is not apple's fault the lack of international content, they should have though of something else as the background pic - having to look at all the latest and greatest shiny film / TV posters is actually very offputting and only serves to REMIND you how crippled your non-US itunes store really is.

am still puzzled how they've worked out the loophole that many in the Uk were using to buy US iTunes content..... the account is still valid as my mac can still buy all i want....but not the AppleTV.....
Click to expand...

perhaps you should double check :)
 
slate1 said:
wow... as if this thread hasn't been derailed enough already we're going to resurrect the age-old "fair use" discussion....
Click to expand...

Sorry but when someone says its illegal to change the format of your DVDs for your own use when that is obvious 'fair use' something has to be said.

More on track has anyone of the hacked AppleTV owners gotten an HD DD5.1 movie yet and checked the format? My fear is it is going to be a standard MKV file but we will have no means of getting them on the AppleTV since iTunes doesn't accept that format and so it can't be syncing to the AppleTV.
 
seriously?

ipedro said:
New Canadian TV Shows!

I just bought the whole season (so far) of The Border on my :apple:TV.

Finally a tv show worth buying on iTunes Canada.
Click to expand...
Seriously? "The Border?" :rolleyes: I would have nominated that for worst new show of the year myself.

I guess if I am being a bit bitter here it's because your comment sent me rushing over to iTunes to look for the "New Canadian shows" and all I see are more US ones. If you go by percentages, the Canadian content just went *down* again with these new additions.

There are tons of fantastic Canadian shows, but they aren't on iTunes. Interestingly, most of the best Canadian stuff is from CBC, but while they have CBC dreck like "Dragon's Den" showing up, almost none of the good shows do.

Mystifying.
 
fivepoint said:
No, it's not. The reason is most likely because of expsense. they will update the Express to 'N' soon enough... and when they do, I will buy two of them.
Click to expand...

phew (catching breath). Can't stop too long... Catching my breath from trying to keep up with my super-fast (old) iMac 2GHz Core Duo after 10.5.2. :D

Bring on the 'n' update for Express, and I'll buy one for each room in my place! I hate not being able to buy all the other cool WiFi stuff and have it crippled by old tech!

Oh, hold up... iMac is off again. It's like a puppy dog chasing a cat!! . Where to, no body knows... YIPEEEEEEEE....
 
pedz said:
Being the typical impatient guy i have a few questions before i go home later today, appreciate any answers of those lucky enough to be home already:
Click to expand...

- how do sources work now? When you select my movies do you have to select a source?

You select "Shared Movies" instead of "My Movies"

- What if it is only connected to one computer? Do you still need to select a source?

If you are connected for syncing to one computer, you will now see all the iTunes content in ATV in a unified list. Synced stuff (cached) will play back from the local hard drive, streamed stuff from the host. If you quit iTunes or shut down the server, only the synced content will show on ATV.

- People are talking about apple tv showing up in the speaker list to stream from itunes. Can you stream to multiple apple tv's at once? That would be great for parties.

Yes

- is the fastforward and rewind performance improved?

Yes

Kevin
 
jasonnorm said:
Kevin,

Do you know if this update helped to resolve the "pausing" issue during playback for movie with higher bitrates? (>3500). That has been my only complaint about AppleTV since day 1 (I bought when they were 1st announced).

If so, do you know what was done to help remedy the problem?
Click to expand...

A lot of work was done around performance but I don't know if these will have addressed your specific issue.

Kevin
 
.h264 macroblocking

can anyone confirm whether the macroblocking that occurred with some .h264 encoders (nero digital) has been fixed with the update? Pretty frustrated that they didn't upgrade to 10.5. I guess that's for the next hardware upgrade.
 
One thing I was REALLY hoping for with this update was enhanced podcast support... you know, actually recognizing the the chapters and showing the correct artwork. Looks like there still isn't any enhanced podcast support though...

AppleTV "insiders" (Kevin et al.): any clue as to what's going on here. Enhanced podcasts are basically an Apple proprietary format at this point, but the AppleTV still doesn't support them? Just seems wrong to me.
 
BobVB said:
Sorry but when someone says its illegal to change the format of your DVDs for your own use when that is obvious 'fair use' something has to be said.

More on track has anyone of the hacked AppleTV owners gotten an HD DD5.1 movie yet and checked the format? My fear is it is going to be a standard MKV file but we will have no means of getting them on the AppleTV since iTunes doesn't accept that format and so it can't be syncing to the AppleTV.
Click to expand...
Exactly, and the fair use discussion is not "age old" it's relevant and ongoing right now.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back