Price drop on 160GB AppleTV... 40GB model discontinued

[HobeSoundDarryl]

well then have fun putting that in a atv then if its so easy, because you might not know this but sometimes it is about height and not just weight!

What? Isn't just about every other piece of home AV equipment taller than TV? If you walk through a Best Buy or similar, and tour all of the home theater components, I challenge anyone to find even 15% of all the related stuff with less height than TV.

Obviously, I think the idea of a slightly taller (and next-gen) TV to accommodate up to 2TB SATA now (bigger soon) would be a big positive. While they're at it, why not also make it a bit wider like the vast majority of other AV hardware, so there would be room for more than ONE 3.5" hard drive inside? Apple could still get their thinner & slimmer jollys by coming in below the vast majority of widths & heights of much AV equipment, while making it possible for many BUYERS to do things they want to do (such as store it all on TV, and maybe make it the Apple-friendly media hub for all computers in the household).

Tiny size for a device that one rarely picks up- just for the sake of being small- doesn't seem to have a lot of practicality.

While they're at it, much cheaper devices have the hardware that can playback 1080p video. Much cheaper devices have gigabit ethernet. Etc. And hackers of the current version show that Apple could- if it wanted to- enable massive external storage, enable access to content from other sources (boxee, etc), etc.

Yea, yea, I understand that Apple wants to sell iTunes content. But Apple keeps saying that iTunes is about selling HARDWARE. So if true, making the existing device more functional (as the hacker solutions do) and/or making a next-gen device with a few more of the most requested features of BUYERS seems like a no brainer. Hobby or not, there seems to be an awful lot of posts that say: "if it just had..." "...I would buy one". Many of those "just hads" are features in the market place in other devices priced well below TV. So, Apple can make many dreams come true if only they would choose to do so.

 

[Gregintosh]

******** THIS MEANS NO HARDWARE UPDATE IS IMMINENT ********

Chances are because of this price drop, Apple will wait several months for inventories to deplete before upgrading the hardware.

That means the soonest we can see a new AppleTV will probably be after the holidays. We may see a software upgrade soon though so they can take advantage of the new iTunes features like the LP and movie extras.

My guess is the next hardware revision will come after the new year, include the software upgrade, but also throw in an extra feature or two though I doubt it. Probably nothing groundbreaking because I don't see Apple doing major revisions to the software in such a short span of time. Most likely it will be a speed upgrade to allow 1080p and more storage.

Unless they hold off on the software upgrade until the new hardware is announced.

 

[rcha101]

Apple TV is great

I had a PS3 for a few weeks however streaming functionality was not good enough so I sold it and got the Apple TV.

Now I can sync my dvd resolution movies to Apple TV and stream photos, music and ipod formatted movies (these still look great on the HDTV so I assume there is some upscaling) from both my mac and my GFs vista laptop.

I've recently hacked my apple tv to add transmission (with web interface) and a web client. This has given me everything I need (though I may look at mounting shared drives when I get a time capsule).

I hope to see another update to bring extra features however I have everything I need for now.

 

[LazersGoPEWPEW]

I enjoy reading all the posts that say that this "device isn't worth buying." Classic. I find that I'd get little value out of a gaming console, since I don't play games. However, I'd be an idiot to run around saying that a PS 3 isn't "worth buying."

I have an Apple TV and did plenty of research on it before buying. It satisfies these major goals:

1) Delivers my entire iTunes library into my living room. Long ago I ripped my CD and DVD collection and put the physical media in storage, so having access to my iTunes lib is a must-have.

2) Integrates well with my other hardware/software. I run all Macs at home, and have an iPhone and iPods. Sure, I could go with a set top box from another vendor, but why?

3) Experience is totally painless. Syncs occur automatically and without any effort on my part.

Honestly, after having the ATV for a few months, it makes the act of swapping physical DVDs seem like my memories of my dad futzing around with 8-tracks in the car when I was a kid. Having quick access to your entire video library is great when you have kids.

Of course the device does a lot more and I intend to try renting a flick when we finally have time to watch one. But you might pay a couple hundred bucks for a cheap BluRay player or good DVD player... and they do pretty much one thing.

If the ATV would take a cable card and had a DVR and Blu Ray player, it would be a killer. However, it is still a very useful device without those things.

I don't know about that one. I have this really awesome piece of equipment called a PS3 and it's essentially a computer and it plays blu-rays.

 

[alent1234]

I had a PS3 for a few weeks however streaming functionality was not good enough so I sold it and got the Apple TV.

Now I can sync my dvd resolution movies to Apple TV and stream photos, music and ipod formatted movies (these still look great on the HDTV so I assume there is some upscaling) from both my mac and my GFs vista laptop.

I've recently hacked my apple tv to add transmission (with web interface) and a web client. This has given me everything I need (though I may look at mounting shared drives when I get a time capsule).

I hope to see another update to bring extra features however I have everything I need for now.

unless you rip a DVD for full quality, the streaming will always be subpar. I've seen blu-ray play in the store and it kills DVD in video quality so i'll probably be buying a PS3 slim later this year. and supposedly Netflix is going to come to it as well as the X-Box

 

[ob81]

At least we know that they are at least bringing the Apple Tv up in meetings. Really hasn't gotten much attention.

 

[Maury]

I'm personally waiting for the day when apple include a damn tv tuner in the thing, so it actually lives up to the name "apple tv". C'mon, how hard could it be?

I'd personally prefer they just support EyeTV. I don't know exactly how they would do this, but I imagine something like a daemon that looks for known devices appearing on the USB2, and when those appear a stub installer runs that downloads and installs the latest version from the EyeTV web site. Basically just use the "there is an update available" code that everyone already has, but embed it into a program that has nothing else in it, so that you don't actually have to ship anything with the system.

If you did that, then anyone out there could build a tuner. One with dual tuners, built-in compression, and CableCARD gets you the same thing as a normal HD cable box, which costs $200 street here in Toronto. I'd happily pay that, or more, if it meant that I could ditch the POS General Instrument box that Rogers hands out and use the ATV for everything from channel surfing to downloading movies.

Maury

 

[seedster2]

Hobby fail bag of hurt. Sold four in two years.

Indeed. The device has always been a joke for what it costs.

Sales will only tank further with the PS3 price drop. They need to kill this "hobby" or merge it with something else like a mini or time capsule

 

[FoxHoundADAM]

I'm still trying to understand what the point of Apple TV is. Why not just spend an extra $300 and get a mini? Gets you the same thig but much more.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

 

[Maury]

Obviously, I think the idea of a slightly taller (and next-gen) TV to accommodate up to 2TB SATA now (bigger soon) would be a big positive.

Actually I'd prefer if they would also include a separate Flash "drive" for the OS and apps. It doesn't have to be that large, the entire system fits into 900MB so a 2GB Flash would be more than enough. Apple gets those for pennies.

That way they can leave the HD turned off, which would make the system practically silent when it's not actively being used. As it is, I can hear it across the house when it's "sleeping", and I find it very annoying. It would also lower the power use in idle, a massive 13W as it is.

SATA is a no-brainer, but I hope they'll think outside the box on this one.

Maury

 

[alent1234]

Of course the device does a lot more and I intend to try renting a flick when we finally have time to watch one. But you might pay a couple hundred bucks for a cheap BluRay player or good DVD player... and they do pretty much one thing.

If the ATV would take a cable card and had a DVR and Blu Ray player, it would be a killer. However, it is still a very useful device without those things.

good DVD players are less than $100 and play a variety of formats including DIVX. YOu can get a cheap Blu-Ray player for under $150, good ones with features like BD-Live for $250 or the PS3 for $299.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

unless you rip a DVD for full quality, the streaming will always be subpar. I've seen blu-ray play in the store and it kills DVD in video quality so i'll probably be buying a PS3 slim later this year. and supposedly Netflix is going to come to it as well as the X-Box

This reads like you're addressing 2 entirely separate issues. A DVD should pretty much always be subpar to BD video, because DVD is SD resolution while BD is HD. Even the DVD itself (unripped) can't make up for it's resolution limitations vs. BD.

Streaming on the other hand works just fine as long as the stream can reach the rendering engine fast enough to keep up with what should be rendered to the TV right now. More simply, streaming works like buffering internet video- if you get enough into the buffer so that you never "catch up" to what should be showing on screen right now, the internet video plays back smoothly and as intended.

Streaming video on the TV yields a lower quality of video vs. a dedicated BD player because TV is limited to "handicapped" 720p HD at best, while a BD player can render 1080p video. While both can be marketed as HD, 720p can send about 921K pixels to your HDTV screen, and 1080p can send about 2M pixels to your HDTV screen. While other factors such as bandwith, bitrate, etc also come into play, the 1080p format obviously sends a LOT more picture detail information than 720p.

Stepping that on down to DVD rips- which aren't even 720p, and it's even less picture detail getting pumped to your HDTV. This is true whether you rip it and play it back via TV or just play the DVD in a DVD player.

TV needs a hardware upgrade so that it can completely compete with the modern playback standards of HD. Since there are many devices much cheaper than TV with playback hardware capable of this, this is well within Apple's reach, and shouldn't jack up the price of TV.

Besides a purely competitive and future-proofing reasons, Apple does "include" iMovie with all their systems, and it is capable of rendering 1080p video such as what you might shoot with HD camcorders readily available (for several years now). So even if iTunes doesn't get 1080p content for many years (studios, broadband pipe limitations, etc), giving BUYERS the ability to do what they want when it won't really affect Apple pricing, margins, etc seems like a reasonable thing to do. How about it, Apple?

 

[Evangelion]

I'm still trying to understand what the point of Apple TV is. Why not just spend an extra $300 and get a mini? Gets you the same thig but much more.

Anyone care to enlighten me?

While mini is more versatile, it's also a more of a hassle. AppleTV is designed to be used with the remote, mini less so .AppleTV is just another device you can sync content to, mini is not. With the mini you need to pull content from the source, with AppleTV you can push content to it. AppleTV can also be used as a destination for AirTunes, min can not.

And, of course, mini costs more. $300 is quite a bit of money.

 

[HobeSoundDarryl]

Actually I'd prefer if they would also include a separate Flash "drive" for the OS and apps. It doesn't have to be that large, the entire system fits into 900MB so a 2GB Flash would be more than enough. Apple gets those for pennies.

That way they can leave the HD turned off, which would make the system practically silent when it's not actively being used. As it is, I can hear it across the house when it's "sleeping", and I find it very annoying. It would also lower the power use in idle, a massive 13W as it is.

Maury

Maury, I'm completely with you on this one. At the same time, why not put a little bigger flash stick inside all Mac computers for the Operating System, and roll out an "instant on" marketing spin? I can see Steve now talking about how long it takes for all computers to boot up. Then, he pushes the on switch for a new Mac to demonstrate the new "instant on" feature.

Why they don't have this (long ago), I just don't know. It's not like they don't have TONS of flash ram inventory for use in iPods & iPhones.

 

[mikes63737]

The Apple TV is getting interesting. Now imagine that Apple does the following :

- replace the hard disk with a 1 or 2 TB
- add the backup functionality of Time Capsule
- increase the price, but in a reasonable way

In other words, merge the Apple TV, Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme into one single product (iServer ?). They would sell it by zillions, and it would not be anymore just a "hobby" for Apple.

If they found a way to do this without having it look like a huge cube or overheat, then I would definitely buy one.

And maybe it could use your iTunes DB files and media files from your time machine backups.

 

[ronwasserman]

Products like ROKU are going to hurt ATV sales if Apple doesn't create some sort of subscription service in the near future. I just got a ROKU and am pretty surprised at how easy it is to use. Looks just as good as ATV (non hd) as well.

Technology certainly keeps us all on our toes.

 

[dernhelm]

The Apple TV should move most of it's back-end functions into a media server (where ALL your media on your home network is placed) and a bunch of small $80-$100 roku-like devices that have just enough guts to stream from the media server to any TV in your home. Connect it to your main "ripping" server via firewire (USB, whatever) for performance via ripping, and let it stream everywhere else using wireless-n. Or simply rip your CDs to your local system, and have this one be updated via "automated copying" in iTunes 9.

The server could accept "plugins" to pull from internet sources (major networks, hulu, youtube, netflix, whatever) as well as your own photo/music/video libraries. Put it on the content providers to write the plugins if Apple doesn't want to mess with it.

The server could use multiple hardened hard drives in a RAID configuration to prevent loss of data.

It could even be used as a time machine backup (although I like to keep my time machine backup separate from my media drives for performance reasons).

 

[Michael CM1]

unless you rip a DVD for full quality, the streaming will always be subpar. I've seen blu-ray play in the store and it kills DVD in video quality so i'll probably be buying a PS3 slim later this year. and supposedly Netflix is going to come to it as well as the X-Box

Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p video. DVD is compressed 480p video. Oh yah, it kicks the pants way off. If you want good movies to check out, try The Dark Knight, The Matrix and other similar stuff. I have a BD player with Netflix streaming, which sounds like basically a PS3 without the game-playing features. Netflix streaming is awesome, although I see a lot of recent TV shows are expiring at the beginning of October. It's still a great service as long as you don't expect new releases on it.

 

[Simon R.]

Maury, I'm completely with you on this one. At the same time, why not put a little bigger flash stick inside all Mac computers for the Operating System, and roll out an "instant on" marketing spin? I can see Steve now talking about how long it takes for all computers to boot up. Then, he pushes the on switch for a new Mac to demonstrate the new "instant on" feature.

Why they don't have this (long ago), I just don't know. It's not like they don't have TONS of flash ram inventory for use in iPods & iPhones.

Because that's not how it would work? Even with flash memory (I'm sure you heard about SSD's) it takes some time to boot up. It still has to run through a truckload of big and small files, negotiate various hardware handshakes etc. so I doubt it'll even be instant. If you want instant on use sleep..

 

[solideliquid]

So I purchased the 40GB model on Aug 22 do I have any options to return for the 160GB?

 

[NightStorm]

Blu-ray is uncompressed 1080p video. DVD is compressed 480p video.

Bluray video is still compressed, but utilizes newer encoding standards like VC-1 or MPEG4/H.264 AVC. DVDs (and actually some early Blurays) use MPEG2. Uncompressed video is still way to large to fit on an optical format.

 

[bergmef]

If they found a way to do this without having it look like a huge cube or overheat, then I would definitely buy one.

And maybe it could use your iTunes DB files and media files from your time machine backups.

My guess is it would sound like a vacuum cleaner. Who wants a server and backups together?

 

[Eduardo1971]

Originally Posted by Dadadada
The Apple TV is getting interesting. Now imagine that Apple does the following :

- replace the hard disk with a 1 or 2 TB

The 2.5" harddisks as used in the AppleTV don't come in anything larger than 500GB at the moment. Nice dreaming though ;-)

Nope : http://www.engadget.com/2009/07/27/wd-ships-industrys-first-2-5-inch-1tb-hard-drive/

May I still dream ?

Oh snap!

 

[dont24]

Glad I waited. Was having issues upgrading the firmware on my 1st gen airport express, so I sold it as is on ebay yesterday. New ones $99, I figured I could get a used 40Gb Apple TV for not much more $$. Glad I didn't pull the trigger yesterday. Will wait to see what happens.

 

[McGiord]

I have one 160GB and would love to see software update to:
1- Resize the You Tube videos to whatever video size I want to.
2- Play games from App Store using my iPhone or any other or 3rd party controller
3- Be able to watch any other streaming content over the internet
4- Browse the web
5- Able to connect external HDD