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no on board storage. how does it make you feel?

goobot

goobot

macrumors 604
Original poster
Jun 26, 2009
6,725
5,070
long island NY
this annoys me very much. if it had just 8 gigs i would be very happy. but none kinda annoys me. the fact is i have a laptop and i dont really want to have it open and on just to use my tv. i thought steve said no one wants a computer connected to their tv? then my computer looses its battery. then even if i hack it and add a hd i probably still cant sync cause that option was never there to begin with. :(

any one else feel the same way?
 
does not make a difference, seeing I stream from a central itunes account. I have over 1TB of content, the internal drives are 2 small, plus I have 3 :apple:TVs
 
goobot said:
this annoys me very much. if it had just 8 gigs i would be very happy. but none kinda annoys me. the fact is i have a laptop and i dont really want to have it open and on just to use my tv. i thought steve said no one wants a computer connected to their tv? then my computer looses its battery. then even if i hack it and add a hd i probably still cant sync cause that option was never there to begin with. :(

any one else feel the same way?
Click to expand...

Bah. what is 8 gigs going to gain you? nada.

If you were going to hack it then get another box from another company.

btw, I think ATV can wake up newer Macs through newer Airport Extreme router if they are sleeping.
 
munkees said:
does not make a difference, seeing I stream from a central itunes account. I have over 1TB of content, the internal drives are 2 small, plus I have 3 :apple:TVs
Click to expand...

+1

I have about 600 Gig in content. I went to streaming only after just three months of ATV ownership.

Syncing has always been buggy for me. However, I have never had a problem with streaming. It is always there.

So to me, there isn't any change.
 
I have been using Mac mini in my living room for quite some time. One day I borrowed my friend's AppleTV to try it out, I found the AppleTV is not just a hobby. With the introduction of the 2nd generation yesterday, it really becomes a serious commodity in the living room. Of course some of you may be surprised with the omission of the storage. Given the streaming features, it doesn't really need any storage at all. I have close to 1TB of TV shows and videos, it will never be able to fit in the AppleTV anyway. And the 802.11n is already fast enough to stream or you prefer a wireline mode. (This version of AppleTV does not have gigabit ethernet built-in.)
And the AirPlay is really a good plus and looking forward to the iOS 4.2 in November.
 
goobot said:
any one else feel the same way?
Click to expand...

Personally, I'll be pleased to have a solid-state device with no moving parts. I stream all my content from a Mac mini in my office. The new Apple TV has exactly the features I need (HDMI, Optical out, 802.11n).

A.
 
The lack of local storage is a big deal for those of us who don't like to leave our computers on all the time. I use my AppleTV as a music server. I do not want to always leave my MacPro (with dual monitors) on all the time, with iTunes running, just so we can listen to music.

I have all my music, photos and home videos synced. I use streaming for most video (movies, etc.), but that's a relatively small percentage of our use.

I understand that many people will be fine with the new AppleTV. However, they have taken an existing product that did quite a few things very well, and deleted one of its key features. There's no need for this. All they need to do is to enable to USB port for adding local storage (or offer a larger device with HD) and everyone can be happy.
 
Don't forget you can stream from iOS devices too.

Everyone I know that has an AppleTV gave up on trying to contain their content in the device and has gone to streaming anyway. This is also in line for when you can have your content all online anyway and just point your AppleTV to your iTunes account rather than a computer. Hell, it's only version 2.
 
It HAS onboard storage

The new :apple:TV runs off the A4 (1GHZ ARM CPU) so it's obviously running a stripped down variation of iOS4 (leaving out features such as the Touch UI, GSM Baseband controller software, etc). It must have some onboard storage in order to boot the operating system. Steve specifically mentioned no storage 'management', not 'no storage'. The question is, how much storage? iOS4 can probably run off as little as 512MB, and a stripped down version could be maybe smaller. We won't know exactly how much storage is available until someone pulls one apart or jailbreaks it, at which point I can foresee a new community of jailbreakers around the :apple:TV variation of iOS4. Eventually, they'll allow more apps, but the truth is, Apple wants everyone using their '1-Click to Buy' iTunes ecosystem for now.

...What it is...
 
goobot said:
this annoys me very much. if it had just 8 gigs i would be very happy. but none kinda annoys me. the fact is i have a laptop and i dont really want to have it open and on just to use my tv. i thought steve said no one wants a computer connected to their tv? then my computer looses its battery. then even if i hack it and add a hd i probably still cant sync cause that option was never there to begin with. :(

any one else feel the same way?
Click to expand...

Yep. Steve is wrong. What he should have said was - "We are trying to figure out a way to gain control over the networks like we have the music industry and this is the first incremental step towards it."
 
I'm quite happy to not pay for a hard drive that I never use. I got the original aTV at release and I only use it in streaming mode.

I've tried other devices in my home theater setup (HTPC, PS3, etc...) as 'digital hubs' that my wife and kids can understand and use, and the only one that has been consistently used is the aTV.

In theory, I like the direction Apple has taken here. Once I have it in my hands and see how it works in practice I'll know if the theory plays out or not.
 
I stream everything now, so the presence or absence of local storage would not affect my use of the device. I have a Windows Home Server running a full iTunes client to which my two Apple TVs are bound. My iTunes library is somewhere over 1TB in size. One Apple TV is connected via terrestrial Ethernet while the other is connected via 802.11n. No issues with streaming.
 
munkees said:
does not make a difference, seeing I stream from a central itunes account. I have over 1TB of content, the internal drives are 2 small, plus I have 3 :apple:TVs
Click to expand...

How did you get all of your media in iTunes (I am guessing you have some video in there...)? Did you re encode all of your data?

I am thinking of doing it myself, but I have ~670 GB of data that I would have to be re encoded. And I own a MBP :(.
 
The new AppleTV must have some form of flash storage, after all, it gives you 3 days to watch HD Movies, so the data has got to live somewhere. I wouldn't expect Apple's shiny new data centre to be able to serve all that content via streaming! (imagine the bandwidth needed for entirely on demand HD streaming... :eek: ) Plus the device would have to buffer incase of network interruptions, so I'm guessing 4-8gb of 'invisible' storage maybe?

Anyway, we'll see when iFixit get their (exceptionally skilled) hands on one and reduce it to it's base elements... ;)
 
iNeko said:
The new AppleTV must have some form of flash storage, after all, it gives you 3 days to watch HD Movies, so the data has got to live somewhere. I wouldn't expect Apple's shiny new data centre to be able to serve all that content via streaming! (imagine the bandwidth needed for entirely on demand HD streaming... :eek: ) Plus the device would have to buffer incase of network interruptions, so I'm guessing 4-8gb of 'invisible' storage maybe?

Anyway, we'll see when iFixit get their (exceptionally skilled) hands on one and reduce it to it's base elements... ;)
Click to expand...

Good idea.. I wouldn't be surprised if there is memory in there, and a hack quickly comes out to take advantage of that ;)
 
houdinize said:
Don't forget you can stream from iOS devices too.

Everyone I know that has an AppleTV gave up on trying to contain their content in the device and has gone to streaming anyway. This is also in line for when you can have your content all online anyway and just point your AppleTV to your iTunes account rather than a computer. Hell, it's only version 2.
Click to expand...

I will be interested to see how everyones wireless networks hold up when johnny is streaming movies to his ipad while suzy is streaming a movie from the cloud to her iphone and mom is trying to watch an hd movie streaming on the appletv. Of course this scenario does not include anyone actually trying to use the internet on the pc. Oh, and I almost forgot the poor folks that keep their iTunes library on a time capsule so that the media has to stream wirelessly from the time capsule to the pc then back out to whichever device is asking for it. Should be interesting if the ios device household really catches on.

As has been said before, the existing atv still streamed fine but at least allowed for the syncing option (read laptop owners not having to have their laptop on all of the time) . I just don't see how taking it away (local storage as at least an option) was an improvement. Just my .02

Edit: Oh and at only $99 bucks if it goes over well, ya gotta figure it would not be out of the question for a family to have 2 appletv's ... all streaming wirelessly in most cases.
 
I'm fine with it. I just ordered one today.

I have no desire to hoard away a bunch of films on a hard drive somewhere. I'm sure many people do, so this device is not for them. My wife and I watch about 1-2 movies per week. I don't watch movies over and over. It's just something to do on a Sunday night, not an obsessive lifestyle choice.

I've been wanting to start streaming Netflix and this is a nice option. I'd bet there's an awful lot of folks out there like me.
 
Ovenall said:
I'm fine with it. I just ordered one today.

I have no desire to hoard away a bunch of films on a hard drive somewhere. I'm sure many people do, so this device is not for them. My wife and I watch about 1-2 movies per week. I don't watch movies over and over. It's just something to do on a Sunday night, not an obsessive lifestyle choice.

I've been wanting to start streaming Netflix and this is a nice option. I'd bet there's an awful lot of folks out there like me.
Click to expand...
No doubt the way to go in your scenario. Perfect. I guess I was more running the whole idea of the "IOS device ecosystem" in a house scenario which seems to be where apple would like to head ... and who can blame them? heck I have two eSata modded 1TB atv 1s and just ordered an Atv 2 to check it out.
 
No issue for me. I have a Mac mini I use as a media server already so it'll work great. Means no issues with waiting for stuff to load to the hard drive as with the previous Apple TV.
 
iNeko said:
I wouldn't expect Apple's shiny new data centre to be able to serve all that content via streaming! (imagine the bandwidth needed for entirely on demand HD streaming... :eek: )
Click to expand...

I would. The demand arising from AppleTV users pales when compared to Youtube's data volumes, and that is completely cloud-based. I doubt the AppleTV has much more than 256MB-512MB of streaming buffer.
 
Come to think of it, Steve is right. You dont really want to download those movies on your Apple TV but stream them instead. If you had to copy them to watch them it would take even more time because you would have to copy the movie(assuming it as a successful transfer the first time) and then you could watch it.

Most people are going to have there computer or iPad or iPhone on anyways and click a button and watch a movie.
 
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