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Apple TV Update

jmorrow76

jmorrow76

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 14, 2008
26
0
St. Louis
Come on Apple, make me a little happier....

Safari Browser - Integrated with iPhone Remote App
1TB Storage Capacity
TV Show Shuffle/Playlist
Music Video Shuffle/Playlist
Apps & Apps Store Access
Genius Functionality
Visualization Option
Grid View for TV Shows, Movies, Photos & Music (iTunes 8)
Casing/App for games. (Casing to convert iPhone/iPod Touch into Controller)
Subscription Service
Jaadu type functionality to remote into Macs
iChat/Web Cam Capability


Am I missing anything?
 
ATV Update

it's interesting enough to see how much effort apple is going to put into this device considering the lack of it so far and their goal to take over the living room. I ditched cable and DVD for atv and love it so far. Could use a few more features to make it really great.
 
I think if :apple:tv is going to take over the lounge then to have a internet Browser would be a must. I've just ordered a new mac and an :apple:tv, but have not been able to find video of what the software looks like (just the screen shots on the apple website). Is it basically a mac that starts up in front row?

Also to add to your list, it would be nice if you could add full mac games.

Oh and maybe for a product called 'tv' it might be quite nice, to be ability to watch tv on it with out buying an extra device?

Full home entertainment system

:apple: Browse the internet
:apple: buy and rent films and tv programs
:apple: play games
:apple: watch tv
:apple: Inbuilt fridge and microwave?
 
It's gonna take alot of changes for me to upgrade I'm at 2.1 flashed and the abilty to add Storage, play Xvid and Divx files, browse, trumps most anything they can and will add.
 
ATV Update

oddsocks said:
I think if :apple:tv is going to take over the lounge then to have a internet Browser would be a must. I've just ordered a new mac and an :apple:tv, but have not been able to find video of what the software looks like (just the screen shots on the apple website). Is it basically a mac that starts up in front row?

Also to add to your list, it would be nice if you could add full mac games.

Oh and maybe for a product called 'tv' it might be quite nice, to be ability to watch tv on it with out buying an extra device?

Full home entertainment system

:apple: Browse the internet
:apple: buy and rent films and tv programs
:apple: play games
:apple: watch tv
:apple: Inbuilt fridge and microwave?
Click to expand...

Pretty much. It's one of those devices that come across as nice add-on but is actually a great device with tons of potential that you eventually can't imagine living without in my opinion.

Actually you can already buy Movies/TV Shows/Music but can only rent movies.

I'm not sure renting TV Shows would have any merit but a subscription service could be a bonus.

I have been waiting on the browser for some time (without a hack) but the app store is where it's at. Some useful apps (widgets) such as weather, google maps & so on would really be nice.

Games would be a great addition especially if they could put together a decent casing for the iPhone/iPod Touch mixed with the remote app to play games. I've seen screenshots of a casing setup that turns the iPhone into a full gaming controller similar to the PSP. Throw in the app to support it & you have games on the ATV.
 
A Digital Video Recorder is what I'm desperately after. It would be awesome if Apple included a converter that re-encoded the recording to H.264 on your Mac once the recording was finished, so you are set to go with your iPhone or iPod.

Currently, I have to record something using EyeTV and my USB TV Tuner. Once the recording is finished (lets say it was an hour long show) it'll take about an hour and 20 minutes to export it to the Apple TV format and it all to be ready for play. Not really ideal, if you wanted to record a program while you watched another off your TV's tuner, and then wanted to watch the recording straight away.

I've always wondered how much of a strain it would be to take the MPEG2 video and encode it to H.264 while the recording is happening. I presume that DVD Recorders have a similar way of doing this, encoding the MPEG2 (for those of us stuck with SD transmissions) video to the DVD in pretty much real time? I might have to go away and Wikipedia that.
 
Kilamite said:
A Digital Video Recorder is what I'm desperately after. It would be awesome if Apple included a converter that re-encoded the recording to H.264 on your Mac once the recording was finished, so you are set to go with your iPhone or iPod.

Currently, I have to record something using EyeTV and my USB TV Tuner. Once the recording is finished (lets say it was an hour long show) it'll take about an hour and 20 minutes to export it to the Apple TV format and it all to be ready for play. Not really ideal, if you wanted to record a program while you watched another off your TV's tuner, and then wanted to watch the recording straight away.

I've always wondered how much of a strain it would be to take the MPEG2 video and encode it to H.264 while the recording is happening. I presume that DVD Recorders have a similar way of doing this, encoding the MPEG2 (for those of us stuck with SD transmissions) video to the DVD in pretty much real time? I might have to go away and Wikipedia that.
Click to expand...

DVD recorders code into MPEG2 from an analog video source. MPEG2 encoding is pretty simple these days and doesn't require much in terms of power. h264 is significantly more complex, though, and needs quite a big mreo power. High quality SD h264 encoding is sub realtime on my C2D iMac. There are, however, hardware h264 encoders that are close to realtim at SD resolutions and are fairly inexepnsive (under $100 - compared to DVD recorders that are $60 and have an MPEG2 encoder, a DVD-RW, a TV tuner, and all the electronics to make them work).

Cheap realtime HD h246 encoders aren't too far off, though, in my guess. At that point someone will make a combination ATSC tuner and h246 hardware endcoder box that you can plug into your computer and record live HDTV into a relative small .m4v file. I'd say just a year or two off... it'll be costly at first but get down to the sub $100 range pretty quickly. In the meantime, doing SD encoding from your HD recordings is the best bet. You could use the existing h264 encoders to do it but they won't be much/any faster than you are indicating now, they just free up your CPU to do other things.
 
jmorrow76 said:
Pretty much. It's one of those devices that come across as nice add-on but is actually a great device with tons of potential that you eventually can't imagine living without in my opinion.

Actually you can already buy Movies/TV Shows/Music but can only rent movies.

I'm not sure renting TV Shows would have any merit but a subscription service could be a bonus.

I have been waiting on the browser for some time (without a hack) but the app store is where it's at. Some useful apps (widgets) such as weather, google maps & so on would really be nice.

Games would be a great addition especially if they could put together a decent casing for the iPhone/iPod Touch mixed with the remote app to play games. I've seen screenshots of a casing setup that turns the iPhone into a full gaming controller similar to the PSP. Throw in the app to support it & you have games on the ATV.
Click to expand...

You can purchase movies directly from AppleTV now. This is a recent change.
 
I would like to see a direct input into the apple TV so you can watch TV via digital signal and use it like a free view box, butter applised + live TV recording Pause rewind ext... like SKY plus. Give it a bigger HD or allow the USB to connect to external ones. A safri Browser would be great, apps such as weather, Calander ect and maybe a news feature aswell

There is so much potential with the apple TV
 
I see these ATV wishlists about once a month it seems. What always cracks me up is the wishes for things which would go away from Apple making $$ other than maybe selling more ATV's (and do they really make that money on them?). Think about it...they don't want you adding more storage and putting your own content on there to watch. They want you to rent and buy from them. Same with a DVR. Why would they add this capability in to record a missed TV show when they could have you grab it from the iTunes store?! It'll never happen.

Now what may happen is enhancements to make the user experience a little bit better. We know the Remote app can be used to enter in text so why not make it available throughout. And we know a web browser is doable (Couch Surfer) so hopefully they add in Mobile Safari with Remote app text input support. But again, I never see them adding in decent Flash support for things like full screen Hulu as that competes with the iTunes Store.

Knowing that one of the ATV developers comes to these forums (even supposedly worked on the Remote app) I would hope he would understand or even pass on some of these wishes of the ATV community. I've hacked my ATV and shown some of my friends what it can do and their jaws drop. Even though a few went off and bought an ATV many others have held back because it takes hacks to do what I/they want it to do. Just enhancing the view of My Movies I think would be a major enticement but again, goes against what I say above. It probably will never happen but Apple needs to take their blinders off. More who are attracted to 'how' the ATV looks and feels, the more that will buy one and the more that will buy one is more who will rent/buy from iTunes.

Sidenote: Been playing around with XBMC for ATV with the MediaStream skin and the ATV GUI guys could take some lessons here.
 
Good list. I ditched cable and got Apple TV this past spring. The only thing I really miss is what I call 'dumb surfing.' Basically, aimlessly flipping through TV channels in a mindless stupor. What can I say? It's somehow relaxing after a long day... But Apple TV takes work to find content. And if I venture over to the podcasts or Youtube I only get small 2 or 5 minute segments then I have to browse menus again to find something else.

So, what I really want is live, ad supported programming over the Apple TV. Let me be lazy now and then.

:D
 
ATV Update

TuckBodi said:
I see these ATV wishlists about once a month it seems. What always cracks me up is the wishes for things which would go away from Apple making $$ other than maybe selling more ATV's (and do they really make that money on them?). Think about it...they don't want you adding more storage and putting your own content on there to watch. They want you to rent and buy from them. Same with a DVR. Why would they add this capability in to record a missed TV show when they could have you grab it from the iTunes store?! It'll never happen.

Now what may happen is enhancements to make the user experience a little bit better. We know the Remote app can be used to enter in text so why not make it available throughout. And we know a web browser is doable (Couch Surfer) so hopefully they add in Mobile Safari with Remote app text input support. But again, I never see them adding in decent Flash support for things like full screen Hulu as that competes with the iTunes Store.

Knowing that one of the ATV developers comes to these forums (even supposedly worked on the Remote app) I would hope he would understand or even pass on some of these wishes of the ATV community. I've hacked my ATV and shown some of my friends what it can do and their jaws drop. Even though a few went off and bought an ATV many others have held back because it takes hacks to do what I/they want it to do. Just enhancing the view of My Movies I think would be a major enticement but again, goes against what I say above. It probably will never happen but Apple needs to take their blinders off. More who are attracted to 'how' the ATV looks and feels, the more that will buy one and the more that will buy one is more who will rent/buy from iTunes.

Sidenote: Been playing around with XBMC for ATV with the MediaStream skin and the ATV GUI guys could take some lessons here.
Click to expand...

I agree with you on the DVR functionality. That's takes a big chuck of change from the iTunes store. However I think that the majority of the items listed are just to enhance the UI as well as the feature set of ATV.

Adding more storage is vital if Apple wants the ATV to really take hold in the living room especially with the introduction of HD Shows.

I ditched my cable quite awhile back & run straight ATVs throughout the house. If this ecosys is the type that Apple is targeting then I can say that allot of the items listed becomes a pretty big deal.

I myself am a techie by trade but we shouldn't have to hack it for such simple additions.
 
In reality, we aren't going to get DVR functionality any time soon.

I'm not sure why people keep posting about it - if you want a TV-tuner/PVR solution, go and buy one - the're pretty cheap these days. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath for Apple to incorporate one into the ATV.

Realistically though, I can see Apple updating the ATV software within the next few months to bring it in to line with iTunes 8 and iPhone/iPod 2.1

I see no reason at all why they won't bring out an update that allows for Genius playlists and Grid View for Albums/TV shows etc. It is also about time for the visulizer to make the switch over to the ATV as well. I can't think why they haven't done this already.

The other two improvements that Apple could do relatively easily, and bring the ATV into line with its other products (rather than branch out on a completely new corporate strategy) are:

1. Safari - if they can do it on the iPhone, there is no excuse for it not being on the ATV.

2. ATV App Store

You never know - an App Store for the ATV just might be the "killer app" that pushes the ATV ahead of all the other competition in the media streaming market.

Especially as the ATV has significantly more memory, processing power and storage space than the iPhone, and is basically just a stripped down mini-mac - so a lot of programs could be very easily re-written with minor changes for the ATV.
 
So apple updated the iPhone remote app so we can do genius playlists on appleTv but if you don't have a touch or iPhone you can't do it? Where's the AppleTv update?
 
TomP80 said:
In reality, we aren't going to get DVR functionality any time soon.

I'm not sure why people keep posting about it - if you want a TV-tuner/PVR solution, go and buy one - the're pretty cheap these days.

The other two improvements that Apple could do relatively easily, and bring the ATV into line with its other products (rather than branch out on a completely new corporate strategy) are:

1. Safari - if they can do it on the iPhone, there is no excuse for it not being on the ATV.

2. ATV App Store
Click to expand...

By your logic:

1. If you want safari, buy a mac.

2. If you want access to the App store, buy an iPhone.
 
TomP80 said:
In reality, we aren't going to get DVR functionality any time soon.

I'm not sure why people keep posting about it - if you want a TV-tuner/PVR solution, go and buy one - the're pretty cheap these days. I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath for Apple to incorporate one into the ATV.

Realistically though, I can see Apple updating the ATV software within the next few months to bring it in to line with iTunes 8 and iPhone/iPod 2.1

I see no reason at all why they won't bring out an update that allows for Genius playlists and Grid View for Albums/TV shows etc. It is also about time for the visulizer to make the switch over to the ATV as well. I can't think why they haven't done this already.

The other two improvements that Apple could do relatively easily, and bring the ATV into line with its other products (rather than branch out on a completely new corporate strategy) are:

1. Safari - if they can do it on the iPhone, there is no excuse for it not being on the ATV.

2. ATV App Store

You never know - an App Store for the ATV just might be the "killer app" that pushes the ATV ahead of all the other competition in the media streaming market.

Especially as the ATV has significantly more memory, processing power and storage space than the iPhone, and is basically just a stripped down mini-mac - so a lot of programs could be very easily re-written with minor changes for the ATV.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, and video playlists I would add to your list as well. I think that's one feature which shoulda shipped with v1.0!
 
Tilpots said:
By your logic:

1. If you want safari, buy a mac.

2. If you want access to the App store, buy an iPhone.
Click to expand...

Of course, Apple has no track record of ever consolidating many features into one device for convenience. Come on, That's pretty much what Apple is known for.

If Apple used that logic there wouldn't be an iPhone. If you want Safari, Calendar, Mail, Contacts buy a mac. If you want iPod functionality but an iPod. If you need to make a call, buy a phone.

The idea is that you take the things that are successful on other Apple platforms & bring them to all of the products.

If it flies on the iPhone, chances are good it will on the ATV as well.
 
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