Apple TV: will it ever be updated?

[TuckBodi]

I think we'll see an Apple TV update once they find some hardware that can decode 1080p while not melting the existing case.

Been out for awhile and it's being used in the WDTV....it's the Sigma chip.

Back to OP, do you think Apple is waiting for the following?
- Snow Leopard so they can put out a new OS (current ATV OS is based off of Tiger) to do more stuff (i.e. cool apps controlled by the iPhone & keyboard)
- which then allows a cheap CPU with a good GPU (kinda like what they have now but even better) to run faster and better eye candy
- which may allow them to even run 1080p (I've read the current GPU can even do 1080p, it's just not turned on)
- w/smaller more cooler components (think green)
- and they're waiting for network bandwidth to get faster to stream 1080 stuff?

I don't see them really expanding their hard drive too much more or letting you add an external. Why? Because 1) they want you to rent from iTunes and 2) the MPAA doesn't want you loading up your ATV with your own content or pirated stuff.

 

[munkees]

My friend to day show med VuDu, wow, great interface, has movies, TV, games, a very good interface, I can see the ATV become more like a VuDu. it needs more live TV content, and I keep saying Apps.

 

[ftaok]

I know it has been battled to death, but if Apple were to buy Elgato and whack in a TV tuner along with an Apple style optimised EyeTV software, then we'd be making progress.

Amen.

Put those billions to good use Apple. It'll help you make more.

I seriously doubt that Apple would ever consider adding TV tuners (and DVR software) on the aTV or Macs. Simply because of the way Americans get their TV. Most folks (~85%) in the US have cable or satellite, which without access to the "smart card", makes any tuner useless. I don't see CableLabs or D*/E* attempting to make it easier to record TV on their systems.

The remaining 15% use antennas. Typically these folks are the type that would consider using a computer to record TV. Either they don't have the income or the desire to do so. If there was a market here, you'd see more players in the OTA DVR market ... there's only 2 players here now, Tivo and Dish ... and I'd even surmise that most Tivo users are on cable.

Unless the landscape of US TV viewing shifts towards OTA, I just don't think Apple would ever enter the PVR market. Leave it to the niche guys like El Gato and Hauppauge to make and support these devices.

What I would prefer to see is Apple opening up the aTV to allow applications and plug-ins ... not to mention the USB port. Let the developers add hardware and applications to make the aTV more useful. Apple's proven the app store concept can work with the iPhone OS. Extend that philosophy to the aTV and I'm there.

ft

 

[ftaok]

My friend to day show med VuDu, wow, great interface, has movies, TV, games, a very good interface, I can see the ATV become more like a VuDu. it needs more live TV content, and I keep saying Apps.

I thought that Vudu went out of business? No?

 

[hitekalex]

Never happen because it'll knife the iTunes rental business. Although I'd like to see it happen to clean up the mess Elgato is.

Really? What's so messy about EyeTV? I certainly find it quite elegant and well integrated into the Mac ecosystem. I come from the world of PC-based DVR, and certainly I have seen worse than EyeTV.

 

[munkees]

I thought that Vudu went out of business? No?

no they are very much in business, I would like to see apple license they delivery system which they do license, so movies can be supplied quicker.

 

[MowingDevil]

I love my apple tv. All my DVDs are on a 2tb drive meaning all the discs are nicely packed away instead of being sprawled all over the lounge floor. I hope they do update sometime. It just had a FW update so they haven't forgotton about it.

A faster processor and bluetooth for a keyboard is about all I can think of. I think it does a wonderful job. All of my movies and music steam beautifully. If I want to rent a movie, click, there it is. I've almost completed getting my 700+ DVD collection onto my external hard drive. I think it's perfect, trying to make it too much more isn't really necessary IMO.

Nice, I can see that being a major advantage. I'm starting to get sick & tired of all my disc packages taking up so much space. How big of a drive do you need for 700 dvds? ...and what program are you using/what compression level/quality? Can you import movies into iTunes just like music off discs?

Thanks for everyone's replies. I'd definitely like to see 1080p be included in an upgrade, esp since most TVs are going that way now. I can see renting movies off iTunes being convenient every now & then...they should really upgrade the ATV and make it essential in the whole "hub" grand plan Jobs envisioned a decade ago (Mac being the center of the home's entire entertainment setup) ... the Aps idea is a great one, keep it in line w/ the iPhone and relevent to the wireless network. Right now it seems more like the cherry on top.

 

[Big Alsie]

How big of a drive do you need for 700 dvds? ...and what program are you using/what compression level/quality? Can you import movies into iTunes just like music off discs?

I use HandBrake to encode the dvds into video files which are easily added to iTunes. Check the other threads in this forum and you will get a good idea of what settings to use. I personally use the Universal setting with a couple of tweaks. With those settings, i get a video that will play on most apple devices. Average file size is a little over a gig per hour of film. so 700 dvds (averaging 2 hours per movie) will use up about 1.4 TB of space.

after you have the file, you can use a program like lostify or metaX to import the metadata, which really makes the imported files look great on the apple tv selection menu.

 

[bbydon]

i think the only thing it is lacking is Hulu with out having to put on boxee.
No need for a DVR at that point...it all streams.
I wish it had hulu or itunes had ad supported streaming..... i'm too cheap to buy shows.

 

[randy98mtu]

I seriously doubt that Apple would ever consider adding TV tuners (and DVR software) on the aTV or Macs. Simply because of the way Americans get their TV. Most folks (~85%) in the US have cable or satellite, which without access to the "smart card", makes any tuner useless. I don't see CableLabs or D*/E* attempting to make it easier to record TV on their systems.

The remaining 15% use antennas. Typically these folks are the type that would consider using a computer to record TV. Either they don't have the income or the desire to do so. If there was a market here, you'd see more players in the OTA DVR market ... there's only 2 players here now, Tivo and Dish ... and I'd even surmise that most Tivo users are on cable.

Unless the landscape of US TV viewing shifts towards OTA, I just don't think Apple would ever enter the PVR market. Leave it to the niche guys like El Gato and Hauppauge to make and support these devices.

What I would prefer to see is Apple opening up the aTV to allow applications and plug-ins ... not to mention the USB port. Let the developers add hardware and applications to make the aTV more useful. Apple's proven the app store concept can work with the iPhone OS. Extend that philosophy to the aTV and I'm there.

ft

I agree. The only possibility here is for them to partner with a cable/sat provider for DVR software and I just don't see that happening.

I'm betting the app store is a sure thing. I think 1080p is likely, though with limited content for some time. The thing that I believe would make these sell like hotcakes is a Bluray player built in. Put the aTV in the same box as the Mini. I doubt that is coming in September, but I think they'd have a winner. I'm buying another one when they release an updated hardware version.

 

[OldGuyDave]

Hulu + Netflix + Tivo are only good for americans, the rest of the world don't have that. Mainland Europe has nothing of the kind. I would be happy just to see it support more codecs so I didn't have to convert *everthing* to iTV standard.
=
Much like Frontrow does, maybe even stream from video_ts folders, that would make my european life easier!

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

No. There was one revision, and then they killed it. Notice that the word "skill" is not in my name, nor does it have any connotation with my name.



I've noticed that no one else ever predicts anything. Pathetic.



Enjoy. I don't care.

Hilarious. Talk about proving someone's point.

 

[MowingDevil]

I agree. The only possibility here is for them to partner with a cable/sat provider for DVR software and I just don't see that happening.

I'm betting the app store is a sure thing. I think 1080p is likely, though with limited content for some time. The thing that I believe would make these sell like hotcakes is a Bluray player built in. Put the aTV in the same box as the Mini. I doubt that is coming in September, but I think they'd have a winner. I'm buying another one when they release an updated hardware version.

Bingo! They could double the price and they'd still sell like crazy. Perhaps that would even help ease the "bag of hurt" that putting them in computers seems to inflict. I'd buy one right now if it had BluRay.

 

[Tallest Skil]

Hey... Tallest Skil definitely generally has good arguments, and not everyone can be correct al the time.

But, OT: I wish we could get an TV with 1080p handling and a Blu Ray player.

Blu-ray... Want the "in-house" explanation for why it won't happen or the public explanation?

Hilarious. Talk about proving someone's point.

Except they were wrong and I was right. The Cube was never updated, and they took their abject failure out on me.

Oh, and about the Sigma chip... does anyone think they might buy Sigma Designs? Otherwise I can't see them using the chip.

Could you imagine? Have the PA Semi guys and the Sigma guys team up to create an ultra-low-power chip capable of 1080p?

 

[ftaok]

Could you imagine? Have the PA Semi guys and the Sigma guys team up to create an ultra-low-power chip capable of 1080p?

I thought people have proven that the aTV's current hardware is capable of moderately decent 1080p playback using the patchstick unlocking method ... no?

In any case, it doesn't take much hardware power to playback reasonable 1080p .. as long as the hardware is dedicated for it. In the aTV case, since the OS is so basic, more computing power could be devoted to playback performance.

In any case, Apple's 1080p playback will probably be limited to h264 and AVCHD files. The former because of symmetry with the current iTS offerings ... the latter because millions of people are flocking to AVCHD camcorders. BTW, this is a prediction ...

 

[BORIStheBLADE]

I hope they update it. The Atv does what I need, but would like it to play 1080p so if I venture into the Blue Ray stuff I'm covered. Hopefully IF they update it they allow it to play more video formats.

I wonder why they can't pair the original hardware up with a sigma chip? It would pretty much play anything with that.

 

[dynaflash]

I thought people have proven that the aTV's current hardware is capable of moderately decent 1080p playback using the patchstick unlocking method ... no?

Of course the current hardware can play 1080p ... how well is another story and is a point of debate. Most atv software hacks allow just that, typically using mplayer, or the like. The rub is that when the software is hacked, the atv can try to play 1080p, but the gpu is not used to accelerate playback (afiak this still is not corrected) so the performance is less than ideal of course.


iTunes will not let you transfer > 720p to the atv unhacked, however imo the unhacked atv would have a better chance of playing the 1080p movies than the hacked as apple has better access to the gpu to unload some of the decoding chores from the less than stellar cpu than do the third party hacks.

It's mostly semantics however unless they decide to change the atv software to open it up to even limited 1080p playback. Right now hacking the software is the only solution.

 

[khollister]

My biggest issue with the ATV is that I can't get the same quality from ripped DVD's as playing them on my Pioneer 51 BD player (the Pioneer BDP's are probably the best upscaling players right behind the recent Oppo's). This is partly a result of the 720p limitations, but mainly (in my opinion) the result of the lack of software to upscale & transcode the video with high enough quality. Of course, this would likely be easier if ATV could play native DVD video.

 

[sven-]

The Cube was never updated

Then how would you call the "update" in february 2001, when Apple incorporated a CD-RW drive for the 500MHz model and offered an improved NVIDIA graphics card as an option ? Should I consider it as an effort ?

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

Except they were wrong and I was right. The Cube was never updated, and they took their abject failure out on me.

Mate, you seriously need to grow up.

 

[Tilpots]

I seriously doubt that Apple would ever consider adding TV tuners (and DVR software) on the aTV or Macs. Simply because of the way Americans get their TV. Most folks (~85%) in the US have cable or satellite, which without access to the "smart card", makes any tuner useless. I don't see CableLabs or D*/E* attempting to make it easier to record TV on their systems.

The remaining 15% use antennas. Typically these folks are the type that would consider using a computer to record TV. Either they don't have the income or the desire to do so. If there was a market here, you'd see more players in the OTA DVR market ... there's only 2 players here now, Tivo and Dish ... and I'd even surmise that most Tivo users are on cable.

Unless the landscape of US TV viewing shifts towards OTA, I just don't think Apple would ever enter the PVR market. Leave it to the niche guys like El Gato and Hauppauge to make and support these devices.

This is exactly the reason I think Apple needs to get in the DVR business. It's a market people spend billions on every single month for content that Apple has the rights to distribute. I would think Apple would like to take a chunk of that money for its iTMS and ATV hardware sales. They have DVR patents already so no TiVo/Dish dispute, TV's digital transition means more homes can get more stations free OTA, and what viewers can't get OTA, they supplement with the iTMS. Apple doesn't have to play nice with cable or satellite by including decoder chips. Like they do with everyone else, they shut them out of the deal.

Tell people they can get the a la carte system for TV they've been screaming for and the switch will be made. In this regard, it's much like downloading a single song, rather than buying the whole album. Lots of viewers pay for cable just to get a handful of stations, and the rest go unwatched, even though they are being paid for. Apple wouldn't have to have a huge share of the TV market either to make money. They've already got the content, and almost have the device.

What I would prefer to see is Apple opening up the aTV to allow applications and plug-ins ... not to mention the USB port. Let the developers add hardware and applications to make the aTV more useful. Apple's proven the app store concept can work with the iPhone OS. Extend that philosophy to the aTV and I'm there.

ft

Agreed

 

[TheSandeman]

nvidia ion

To me, an obvious upgrade would be the use of the nvidia ion platform. This platform has hardware h.264 decoding built-in and great graphic performance. I'm not sure if it meets the power usage and cost requirements of Apple. I think it is still a little expensive and a bit too power hungry.

What I would prefer to see is Apple opening up the aTV to allow applications and plug-ins ... not to mention the USB port. Let the developers add hardware and applications to make the aTV more useful. Apple's proven the app store concept can work with the iPhone OS. Extend that philosophy to the aTV and I'm there.

Totaly agree. This would add so much value to this allready very nice device. (Apple must be working on this, not?)