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Consolidated AppleTV Wishlist

P

petteri

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 4, 2006
72
0
There seem to be a few posts inquiring about features that they'd like to see on the :apple:TV so I'd though we might get a list started here. Mods: Do you think we could get this to be a sticky?

1: On the fly playlists
2: Shuffle within an album
3: Enable USB port (keyboard, additional HD storage, bluetooth, external Blu-ray, HD-DVD)
4: 4:3 support
5: Better control of what syncs and what doesn't (ie. sync all my music except...)
6: Internet Radio
7: No cropping of the top and bottom edge of a playback
8: Ability to sort movies by genre
9: Subtitles support
10: Option to turn off "most popular stuff on iTunes store" from the menu
11: iTunes visualizer
12: Ability to play multiple music videos in a row, either by shuffle or playlist
13: Song ratings
14: 5.1 (or multichannel) audio support
15: Streaming photos
16: Group TV shows by season
17: RGB output option
18: A - Z flip (better management for large music collections, select by first letter)
19: Volume control
20. Search and/or Filtering
21. Stretch or zoom 4:3 content to 16:9
22. Streaming internet video (NASA TV, Joost...)
23. Unshuffle (I'm listening to a song, and decide I want to hear the rest of the album)
24. Direct purchaes from iTMS
25. Add more screen savers (based on opening theme?)
26. Direct support for podcasts

I'll update the list with your suggestions. I'd like to keep this focused on the :apple:TV. HD content at the iTunes store is a separate issue as is additional codec support.
 
7: No cropping of the top and bottom edge of a playback
8: Ability to sort movies by genre
9: Subtitles support
10: Option to turn off "most popular stuff on iTunes store" from the menu.

Anybody knows if it is possible to turn off the blue bullets in front of unwatched episodes?
 
Here's the big one for me...

11. Ability to play multiple music videos in a row, either by shuffle or playlist.
 
petteri said:
3: Enable USB port (keyboard, additional HD storage?)
4: 4:3 support
8: Ability to sort movies by genre
9: Subtitles support
Click to expand...

3. External USB drive support would be awesome. Keyboard support would only make sense with Safari, which I see as a potential future update.

4. My TV has component inputs, can display 480p and 1080i. But it's a 4:3 CRT without a widescreen mode. I absolutely need 4:3 support, I'm dissapointed in Apple with this (even though they did list "widescreen TV" as a requirement, I thought they only said that so people wouldn't complain about "the black bars" on movies).

8. Sorting movies by genre is a must, however they also need to fix the metadata editing mess in iTunes. It's too mixed-up between music and video tags right now. The columns view is even missing the "episode number" column!

9. I'm not sure how it would work when ripping movies, but yes subtitles support would be nice, especially when you see all the Universal Access functions in OS X.


petteri said:
7: No cropping of the top and bottom edge of a playback
Click to expand...

7. AFAIK there's no cropping done whatsoever on any content. There's pillarboxing for 4:3 content and letterboxing for content that's more than 16:9 (say, 2.35:1).

And here's my suggestions:

13. Ability to rate songs! That's a serious omission if you ask me. Those [+] and [-] buttons aren't for volume, they're for rating the songs!
 
petteri said:
5: Better control of what syncs and what doesn't (ie. sync all my music except...)
Click to expand...

You could uncheck them in iTunes. That's what I do. Of course, that does keep them from playing in iTunes as well. I've always wished they had two columns of checkboxes.
 
Heavy Doody said:
You could uncheck them in iTunes. That's what I do. Of course, that does keep them from playing in iTunes as well. I've always wished they had two columns of checkboxes.
Click to expand...

Yes, you can do plenty from the iTunes side of things, but I'd like to see more control from the :apple:TV side of things. They are marketing this thing as an interface to your iTunes collection, so why do we need to run to our iTunes computer to muck about with things like this?
 
Yvan256 said:
AFAIK there's no cropping done whatsoever on any content. There's pillarboxing for 4:3 content and letterboxing for content that's more than 16:9 (say, 2.35:1).
Click to expand...

Is it only me then? Problem with my TV maybe? I noticed this while watching 4:3 content with subtitles. The subtitles appeared a lot closer to the edge of the screen when played on :apple:TV compared to the same file played on my Mac.
 
petteri said:
Yes, you can do plenty from the iTunes side of things, but I'd like to see more control from the :apple:TV side of things. They are marketing this thing as an interface to your iTunes collection, so why do we need to run to our iTunes computer to muck about with things like this?
Click to expand...

I'm not trying to argue. Just letting you know one way it can be done, in case you didn't already know.

However...

Personally, I prefer managing from the iTunes side. Eventually, I plan to have 4 AppleTV units in my home. Updating via iTunes makes it easier for me to be sure I have all the same content on every unit.

Then again, not everybody may want the same content on every unit. Particularly if you're putting them in kids' rooms, etc., so I understand where you're coming from.

Having the option certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.
 
Yvan256 said:
4. My TV has component inputs, can display 480p and 1080i. But it's a 4:3 CRT without a widescreen mode. I absolutely need 4:3 support, I'm dissapointed in Apple with this (even though they did list "widescreen TV" as a requirement, I thought they only said that so people wouldn't complain about "the black bars" on movies).
Click to expand...

I can only hope Apple doesn't waste their time with 4:3 support. If you can afford an Apple TV, then you can afford a widescreen TV. I bought a Westinghouse 720p HDTV from Best Buy for $400, and it looks beautiful with the ATV. This is like complaining that Leopard won't install on your 5 year old iMac.

My wishlist:
1. 5.1 - It is just silly that the ATV doesn't support surround sound.
2. Streaming photos - With this feature, my ATV hard drive size would mean nothing. I would be able to stream everything.
3. Why can't I organize my shows by season? This should be a simple fix.
4. Movie Rentals - There are just too many movies out there I only care to see once.
5. HD iTunes Content - Thanks for the HD support on the ATV Apple. Now how about you actually utilize it.
6. Volume control - It is great to have such a simple remote, but I have to have my TV remote in the other hand to manage the volume....especially while viewing YouTube content, and material I have uploaded. It is very hard to maintain a constant volume level throughout my iTunes media (even with 3rd party software sollutions).

FWIW: I have never really cared for YouTube, and didn't really use it. Now that it is on the ATV, I love it. Its really simple and easy to use, and I can only hope Apple keeps releasing this level of quality apps for the ATV.

-TC
 
A very minor tweak I 'd like to see is the ability to go from artists beginning A in the list to those beginning Z etc. Pain to get having to go all the way through the list to get to the T's where a lot of artists are...
 
Browse and buy stuff from iTunes store from the Apple TV

Option to output RGB component video rather than YCbCr component (using the same three cables) as this is much more common in Europe

Bluetooth (e.g. via USB dongle) for keyboard/mouse/iPhone remote control

Ditto on subtitles support
Ditto on streaming photos
Ditto on groups TV shows by season
 
20. Search and/or Filtering
21. Stretch 4:3 content to 16:9

Already said, but worth repeating
Video playlists
better Video cataloging/management
External drive support
 
Anybody knows if it is possible to turn off the blue bullets in front of unwatched episodes?
Click to expand...
There is no preference for this but you can workaround it by either marking all episodes as watched in iTunes or select your iTunes host as paired for streaming only (no syncing).

Kevin
 
tcoop25 said:
I can only hope Apple doesn't waste their time with 4:3 support. If you can afford an Apple TV, then you can afford a widescreen TV. I bought a Westinghouse 720p HDTV from Best Buy for $400, and it looks beautiful with the ATV. This is like complaining that Leopard won't install on your 5 year old iMac.
Click to expand...

Adding 4:3 support would take less than an hour, it's a software issue only. The box can already pillarbox 4:3 content for 16:9 output, it can letterbox 16:9 content for 4:3 screens (and stop pillarboxing 4:3 content on 4:3 screens, too).

I paid about 2500$CAD for my 36" CRT TV about 5 years ago. If I get a widescreen TV that means that even a 42" would result in a smaller display for 4:3 content (2" smaller). A good 42" TV (even only 720p) is still around 1500-1800$CAD, while the :apple:TV was 350$CAD. There's no comparison between the price of the two.

And I'm also not about to switch from a 36" to a 19" TV, especially when a simple software update would fix the problem completely, for free.

My DVD player, Xbox 360 (it's only for Final Fantasy XI), Nintendo Wii and cable set-top box all have a "TV aspect ratio" setting. I think even the iPod has such a setting when outputting video to a TV. Why is it missing from the :apple:TV, I have no idea.


kingjr3 said:
21. Stretch 4:3 content to 16:9
Click to expand...

Why would you want such a thing? You are asking for a setting to mess up the aspect ratio!
 
Yvan256 said:
Why would you want such a thing? You are asking for a setting to mess up the aspect ratio!
Click to expand...

I'm assuming that was sarcasm...But just in case - My reasons are simple, I don't enjoy pillarboxing. Instead, I would rather see the picture stretched so people look fat, filling out the screen just as my TV signal does.

As for adding 4:3 support, are there really that many 4:3 TVs out there that have component or HDMI? This seems like such a small minority of TV owners that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
 
tcoop25 said:
My wishlist:
1. 5.1 - It is just silly that the ATV doesn't support surround sound.
Click to expand...

Actually, it does do surround already (5-channel), just not LFE. Handbrake will take an AC3 5.1 and convert it to Dolby Pro Logic II. This allows L, R, C, Ls, Rs signals to be sent from the R and L audio ports on the back of the ATV. If you have an amplifier than can decode DPLII you can have 5-channel. But that LFE really makes a difference. Let's hope that Apple figures out a way to get it onto their media (or a third-party solution) since the ATV already has the chip and it has digital audio out (for passthrough).
 
kingjr3 said:
As for adding 4:3 support, are there really that many 4:3 TVs out there that have component or HDMI? This seems like such a small minority of TV owners that it wouldn't be worth the effort.
Click to expand...

Yes, there are a lot of 4:3 tvs out there that have component in. I have one. Eventually I plan on upgrading the TV, but in the meantime I sure would like to get an AppleTV and use it on my otherwise-perfectly-functionable tv.
 
I think you missed adding one of my suggestions to the list petteri:
pjac said:
Browse and buy stuff from iTunes store from the Apple TV
Click to expand...
I'm a little surprised no-one else has mentioned this on the thread, I have seen this idea suggested elsewhere though.
 
Turn the boot-up screen of the 1000 videos into a visualizer with the covers zooming in and out like the boot-up screen does.

Joost support
 
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