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I'm downloading an Apple TV update
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Hehe, make that three eSata updates. Did you expect anything else ?
Nah, not really.
I don't have the firmware 2.0 for my iPod Touch yet but I did download the latest iTunes and AppleTV updates. It LOOKS like you have to 'pair' an iPod Touch to a particular AppleTV. Well, I have TWO AppleTV units and ONE iPod Touch. This is a WiFi remote so being in the room upstairs compared to downstairs isn't going to stop it from operating the unit downstairs like an IR remote set up to control the same device on two different floors or rooms. The question is does the iPod Touch (or iPhone) software side of things let you select WHICH AppleTV you're controlling at a given moment?
Upstairs I don't have a monitor currently. I purely have been using the device for now as a music AirTunes receiver from my iPod Touch using Signal and Remote Buddy. Downstairs I have my home theater and usually use the AppleTV's own interface to look at photos and watch movies. But if I can browse the photos with the iPod Touch, I might want to use that thing downstairs once in awhile, but I don't want to depair it from the upstairs system that I would normally be using. And what about controlling iTunes instead of the AppleTV directly and just using AirTunes?
I cannot fit my entire music collection on the AppleTV's hard drive either unless I used a compressed version instead of the Apple Lossless version I normally use so I'd want to stream music. I read somewhere else that it won't let you do this when controlling the AppleTV directly. It HAS to be on your AppleTV hard drive. Is that true? If so, that's just plain stupid. It defeats the entire point of streaming and only underscores how tiny AppleTV's hard drives are.
Upstairs I don't have a monitor currently. I purely have been using the device for now as a music AirTunes receiver from my iPod Touch using Signal and Remote Buddy. Downstairs I have my home theater and usually use the AppleTV's own interface to look at photos and watch movies. But if I can browse the photos with the iPod Touch, I might want to use that thing downstairs once in awhile, but I don't want to depair it from the upstairs system that I would normally be using. And what about controlling iTunes instead of the AppleTV directly and just using AirTunes?
I cannot fit my entire music collection on the AppleTV's hard drive either unless I used a compressed version instead of the Apple Lossless version I normally use so I'd want to stream music. I read somewhere else that it won't let you do this when controlling the AppleTV directly. It HAS to be on your AppleTV hard drive. Is that true? If so, that's just plain stupid. It defeats the entire point of streaming and only underscores how tiny AppleTV's hard drives are.
Tomorrow they're releasing Ménage à Remoté for people like you.
Sounds like you need eSATA....
AppleTV does not have eSATA or even support USB 2.0 hard drives without hacking. I could, of course, take it apart and put in a larger hard drive, but streaming from my PowerMac (which has two 500GB hard drives internally) has thus far been the better choice.
Meanwhile, some testing with AppleTV 2.1 has shown me that the photo previews talked about earlier are on AppleTV itself. I thought people were saying the iPod allowed them to preview photos (maybe so maybe not but AppleTV certainly now has a preview of all photos with the ability to view just the photo you're looking for instead of just defaulting to a slideshow like all previous versions of AppleTV. Photos show the date marked on the photo file in preview mode, which is nice. The preview mode is much appreciated and finally lets one look for specific picture to show. Showing a specific picture also overrides the moving 'zoom' effect (whatever it's called) if it was selected for slideshows and shows you the whole picture which is nice since sometimes that's all you want to see.
I just tested some other bugs, one of which I already reported to Apple a couple of weeks ago and clearly they don't listen since it's still broken and should be a simple bug to fix. If you have your screensaver set to come on in say 2 minutes and then start a slideshow of your photos and pause/freeze on one and then wait 2 minutes until the screensaver activates, it'll go to a black screen and then the AppleTV will not respond to any remote key clicks. You then have to force a reboot to get access back, which is especially irritating considering there's no power button, which means you have to pull the power plug (or use a power strip) to reset it.
At first, I thought it was fixed since it looked like it was going to the screensaver (started to fade) and then didn't; it just stayed on the picture I was frozen on and I could exit, but then I discovered this was part of yet ANOTHER overall bug. Namely, I've got 1400 photos or so on my AppleTV and if I select the OVERALL "Pictures" (as in everything) as the screensaver selection, it simply doesn't function properly PERIOD. In the photos case, the screensaver fails to kick in and thus avoids the above bug (if I select a single folder of photos...say 200 photos, it'll cause the above bug). Meanwhile, if I listen to "My Music" and the 2 minutes comes up (music setting ON), the screensaver kicks in and shows photos from my overall collection (also set to random), but it also cuts out the audio! In other words, the song stops playing! If I select a smaller sub-folder (like the 200 one suggested in the previous example), it then behaves like it should showing the song title in the corner and showing photos while playing music. So clearly, there's a screensaver issue in regards to having a large number of overall photos in addition to the blackout problem above with freezed frame photos. These are all repeatable problems and have existed in prior versions of the AppleTV 2.x software.
Internet Radio was working in 2.0.2 but it wasn't advertised. It didn't work in 2.0. In 2.1 as already mentioned by someone, it actually says "Internet Radio" for a station and shows a radio tower and in the list mode it shows broadcast type icons for radio stations and new purple and green icons for special folders and regular music files. Sadly, Internet Radio stations don't appear to give the SONG name for the song or show currently playing. This IS available in iTunes and will also appear in SIGNAL if you use that program to playback Internet Radio over Airtunes. SIGNAL will also attempt to find album art for Internet Radio songs playing, which is really cool, IMO. Apple should consider such options in a future AppleTV update. They could easily show the 'radio tower' on one side of the screen display and the album cover on the other side. At the very least, they should show the current song name, if broadcast, IMO.
There's still no "Year" data given for music files when selected in My Music. That's kind of annoying, really. There's no reason why AppleTV shouldn't give the full meta data available for a given song or album. At the very least, it should give the year for an album or song, IMO.
There's STILL no search for your OWN music, just Apple's iTunes store (like you don't ever need to find music in your own collection quickly?). I've heard there IS one for the iPhone/Touch interface, but if they can include an AppleTV interface search for their own iTunes store for music, why can't I search my own music library for songs? I have 375+ CDs in my library and therefore 4700+ songs so a search would be helpful.
I noticed in Photo mode that the "up" and "down" pushes of the remote don't DO anything at all. It seems to me that would be a perfect place to have 'zoom' functions for the photos. You could then push the play/pause button to enter a 'cursor' mode to move around the zoomed picture and again to go back to a normal view. That's a basic sort of function in something like XEE (although obviously not with those controls) so why not in AppleTV? Let's make this a GREAT photo viewer, not just an after-thought! The photo preview is at least one step closer.
Wish Lists for movies are nice, but I can't help but notice that in the little review/summary section that there is a RATING and that there are COMMENTS indicated. Well, how about a way to READ those comments on AppleTV Apple??? I don't want to have to go upstairs to read them on my Mac when I'm browsing for a movie to rent.
Still no visualizer for music.
Yes. In the iPhone/Touch Remote.app, you go into Settings and there you build a list of units to control. You can set up multiple ATVs and iTunes machines, and choose which one you want to control now. If a copy of iTunes is in your list, but not running, it'll be greyed out. I assume an ATV that's unplugged would do the same.
In that settings pane, you have an "Add Library" option... If you want to add an iTunes machine, you click on the iPhone/Touch that suddenly appears in the "Devices" block, where you'll see the familiar "Enter the code" boxes (which are displayed on your iPhone/Touch).
To add an ATV at this point, you would click the appropriate button (In Settings, near "Pair Remote" setting) and enter the code showing on your iPhone/Touch.
So yeah, you should have no problem using one Touch with multiple ATVs / iTunes machines.
WooHoo!!!
I just tested some other bugs, one of which I already reported to Apple a couple of weeks ago and clearly they don't listen since it's still broken and should be a simple bug to fix. If you have your screensaver set to come on in say 2 minutes and then start a slideshow of your photos and pause/freeze on one and then wait 2 minutes until the screensaver activates, it'll go to a black screen and then the AppleTV will not respond to any remote key clicks. You then have to force a reboot to get access back, which is especially irritating considering there's no power button, which means you have to pull the power plug (or use a power strip) to reset it.
Sadly, Internet Radio stations don't appear to give the SONG name for the song or show currently playing. This IS available in iTunes and will also appear in SIGNAL if you use that program to playback Internet Radio over Airtunes. SIGNAL will also attempt to find album art for Internet Radio songs playing, which is really cool, IMO. Apple should consider such options in a future AppleTV update. They could easily show the 'radio tower' on one side of the screen display and the album cover on the other side. At the very least, they should show the current song name, if broadcast, IMO.
There's still no "Year" data given for music files when selected in My Music. That's kind of annoying, really. There's no reason why AppleTV shouldn't give the full meta data available for a given song or album. At the very least, it should give the year for an album or song, IMO.
There's STILL no search for your OWN music, just Apple's iTunes store (like you don't ever need to find music in your own collection quickly?). I've heard there IS one for the iPhone/Touch interface, but if they can include an AppleTV interface search for their own iTunes store for music, why can't I search my own music library for songs? I have 375+ CDs in my library and therefore 4700+ songs so a search would be helpful.
I noticed in Photo mode that the "up" and "down" pushes of the remote don't DO anything at all. It seems to me that would be a perfect place to have 'zoom' functions for the photos. You could then push the play/pause button to enter a 'cursor' mode to move around the zoomed picture and again to go back to a normal view. That's a basic sort of function in something like XEE (although obviously not with those controls) so why not in AppleTV? Let's make this a GREAT photo viewer, not just an after-thought! The photo preview is at least one step closer.
Wish Lists for movies are nice, but I can't help but notice that in the little review/summary section that there is a RATING and that there are COMMENTS indicated. Well, how about a way to READ those comments on AppleTV Apple??? I don't want to have to go upstairs to read them on my Mac when I'm browsing for a movie to rent.
Still no visualizer for music.
These are all great comments/suggestions and along with my wishes of video playlists (music videos) and a better way for us to navigate our own content, I hope Apple addresses them some day. And here's my theory on why Apple hasn't yet.... Some updates came quick and small but no update by itself has been earth shattering (I'm not a renter so 2.0 didn't do anything for me). During this timeframe development resources were competing against the original iPhone development then Leopard and then iPhone 2.0 and the iPhone Dev Kit. Now that those are pretty much behind us, and Snow Leopard is way down the road, I'm predicting they really throw some muscle at AppleTV and do a major upgrade and maybe even overhaul.
Whomever said the iPhone/Touch 'Remote' app cannot play streamed music when controlling an AppleTV directly is just plain wrong. I've got 2.0 installed on my iPod Touch now and 2.1 on both AppleTVs and have Remote set up to control both my iTunes library and both AppleTV units directly. If I select an AppleTV unit, it presents the SAME music list I'd get when I click on "My Music" directly from AppleTV and when I play a song, it streams it (none are stored on my AppleTV units given their tiny 40GB hard drives).
Really, though, if you're going to stream music, you don't really need the AppleTV remote pairing (unless you're going to use it for movies, etc. in which case I'd just use my AppleTV remote as I mainly want an iPod Touch remote so I can leave the display off). You can just select an AppleTV as an Airtunes unit from the iTunes Library.
Clearly, though, I see a larger hard drive WOULD be useful now as you could sync your entire library to each AppleTV unit instead of streaming and then I believe you would be able to play music in each room independently (i.e. different music on each unit at the same time) whereas streaming will only stream one feed/song (be it to one unit or many). Sadly, I never even had an option locally as Best Buy only carries the 40GB models so I would have had to order the larger unit. Even then, they're not very big. The only alternative is to open them up and replace them with larger drives yourself.
Really, I suppose it's nit-picking since unless I'm having a party or something, I personally don't need to play two different things in two different rooms at the same time, but I could imagine families might like that option (certainly Sonos can play different music in different rooms and I think it can stream them at the same time when it does it too).
Beyond that, I think 'Remote' pretty much just made 'Signal' obsolete. The only thing I'd wish it had was an icon to change speakers on the "now playing" screen (Signal and Remote Buddy both do) instead of having to go back several levels. The scroll album list and overall speed is almost as fast as the iPod Touches own music list and blows Signal and Remote Buddy away. Remote Buddy, though, still has some usefulness as it can do more than just control iTunes (e.g. I can view my webcam and even my Mac's screen display remotely on the iPod Touch). It remains to be seen whether either Signal or Remote Buddy will have their own 'app' versions for the iPhone/Touch, which might then put them back in the running (seeing as I already bought both I'd hope I wouldn't have to pay for the upgrade or not as much as a new user; otherwise I wouldn't even bother at this point given how good Remote is).
Really, though, if you're going to stream music, you don't really need the AppleTV remote pairing (unless you're going to use it for movies, etc. in which case I'd just use my AppleTV remote as I mainly want an iPod Touch remote so I can leave the display off). You can just select an AppleTV as an Airtunes unit from the iTunes Library.
Clearly, though, I see a larger hard drive WOULD be useful now as you could sync your entire library to each AppleTV unit instead of streaming and then I believe you would be able to play music in each room independently (i.e. different music on each unit at the same time) whereas streaming will only stream one feed/song (be it to one unit or many). Sadly, I never even had an option locally as Best Buy only carries the 40GB models so I would have had to order the larger unit. Even then, they're not very big. The only alternative is to open them up and replace them with larger drives yourself.
Really, I suppose it's nit-picking since unless I'm having a party or something, I personally don't need to play two different things in two different rooms at the same time, but I could imagine families might like that option (certainly Sonos can play different music in different rooms and I think it can stream them at the same time when it does it too).
Beyond that, I think 'Remote' pretty much just made 'Signal' obsolete. The only thing I'd wish it had was an icon to change speakers on the "now playing" screen (Signal and Remote Buddy both do) instead of having to go back several levels. The scroll album list and overall speed is almost as fast as the iPod Touches own music list and blows Signal and Remote Buddy away. Remote Buddy, though, still has some usefulness as it can do more than just control iTunes (e.g. I can view my webcam and even my Mac's screen display remotely on the iPod Touch). It remains to be seen whether either Signal or Remote Buddy will have their own 'app' versions for the iPhone/Touch, which might then put them back in the running (seeing as I already bought both I'd hope I wouldn't have to pay for the upgrade or not as much as a new user; otherwise I wouldn't even bother at this point given how good Remote is).
I've just discovered some more changes in AppleTV 2.1 which I consider undesirable. Notably, before 2.1, you could search an artist and see all their songs. Now, if the song is part of an album that is tagged as a compilation, it will NOT show up under that artist on AppleTV!
Here's an example. I've got "The Best of Leonard Cohen" CD and I've also got the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, which has two songs on it ("Waiting For the Miracle" and "The Future"). Before, if I looked under "Artists" and scrolled down to Leonard Cohen, it would show two albums. The NBK soundtrack when opened would only show the two songs by Leonard Cohen on it, but it would show up under artists. NOW with 2.1, it only shows ONE album under Leonard Cohen (the Best of CD). His songs on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack are nowhere to be found under Artists. Instead, you either have to search by the album name or the song name (too bad if you don't remember either but know there's a song by Leonard Cohen on there). You CAN find those albums listed under compilations, but there is no compilations selection to be found in iTunes itself (say if I wanted to remove that designation quickly and easily).
Really, I consider this a bad change in AppleTV. If I select Leonard Cohen under Artists, I want to see all his songs, not just albums designated as non-compilations. I was also surprised to see how many albums were designated as compilations, including some that I don't consider compilations. I can change that in iTunes, but given the Compilations selection doesn't exist there, I have to go by memory (maybe there's another way to search for them, but I don't see it offhand).
Here's an example. I've got "The Best of Leonard Cohen" CD and I've also got the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, which has two songs on it ("Waiting For the Miracle" and "The Future"). Before, if I looked under "Artists" and scrolled down to Leonard Cohen, it would show two albums. The NBK soundtrack when opened would only show the two songs by Leonard Cohen on it, but it would show up under artists. NOW with 2.1, it only shows ONE album under Leonard Cohen (the Best of CD). His songs on the Natural Born Killers soundtrack are nowhere to be found under Artists. Instead, you either have to search by the album name or the song name (too bad if you don't remember either but know there's a song by Leonard Cohen on there). You CAN find those albums listed under compilations, but there is no compilations selection to be found in iTunes itself (say if I wanted to remove that designation quickly and easily).
Really, I consider this a bad change in AppleTV. If I select Leonard Cohen under Artists, I want to see all his songs, not just albums designated as non-compilations. I was also surprised to see how many albums were designated as compilations, including some that I don't consider compilations. I can change that in iTunes, but given the Compilations selection doesn't exist there, I have to go by memory (maybe there's another way to search for them, but I don't see it offhand).