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Price drop on 160GB AppleTV... 40GB model discontinued
- Thread starter VirtualRain
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No they weren't. The initial discs were MPEG2, and of dubious quality, but as soon as the H.264 mastering processes were done everything switched to that. Some of the earlier movies used the HD-DVD media file, which is also lower quality than a dedicated BluRay stream which has a higher bitrate.
Old movies on film don't translate well, but anything that's been nicely digitised/restored/modern looks great.
I hope they update 
TV in the October event, if there is one this year, that way the January event can be all Tablet and LCD's!
TV in the October event, if there is one this year, that way the January event can be all Tablet and LCD's!Hmm... my guess is that it will still work, and you will be satisfied because you agreed to pay that price at the time of purchase.
No, it's too expensive for the class of device, although it can do everything that is required. You'd need to connect it up to an Atom chip (relatively expensive when bought to use with Ion) or a more expensive Intel chip. It's not on, the current AppleTV is expensive because of its horrible Intel CPU + NB + SB + NVIDIA GPU configuration.
The modern ARM SoCs run fast, offload media processing and more to dedicated units, and more. I just think that Apple are waiting for PA Semi's first designs to come out of the oven, although a full-speed version of the iPhone 3GS SoC could suffice.
ARM SoC: ~$20
Atom + Ion: $80+
Surely Apple want to hit that $199 price point they talk about a lot? AppleTV has to mature some day and come out of hobby status, and the hardware switch will be the right time, so the price has to be right.
A DVR for what? An SD analog DVR? Not really useful since the AppleTV connects to HD TVs and most people who own HD TVs want HD content. A digital DVR? That works with what? Dish Network? Comcast? Rogers? Bell ExpressVu? CableCard? Cable companies either poorly or just don't support cablecard.
Until there's a universal TV decoding standard with provider buy-in, there will never be a module that Apple would put in the AppleTV. I wish people would understand this.
Or, do what I do - connect an EyeTV to my Mac and do the recording there, and watch it on my AppleTV. It's SD only but I don't mind.
Yep, but Apple's not going to spend R&D to support old Mac models. Eventually, you'll get a new Mac and won't have that problem any more.
Congrats on listening to your compressed (and heavily degraded sonic quality) music library on your "high-end analog speakers."
While I agree that listening to .mp3 music files through a decent hi-fi stereo system is an upgrade over listening to your iPod via bad earbuds, it still leaves a lot to be desired. At the very least, we should be listening to music using the lossless format. As memory prices continue to drop, lossless should become the standard. What's really pathetic is that now college-aged people prefer the sound of compressed music over lossless. There was a college professor who has been polling his students' music quality listening preferences for the last 10 or so years. At the beginning of each semester, he would take a CD and play it to the class. He would then take an .mp3 version of that same CD and play that. He would then ask his students which version sounds better. In past years, his students were pretty much split down the middle over which one they preferred. However, the last few years, the vast majority preferred .mp3. When asked why they thought .mp3 sounded better, they said that they couldn't hear the "hiss" (aka noise) on the CD versions, so it didn't sound as good. WTF???
While I don't disagree with you, you yourself admitted that currently-available music sounds a lot better on a decent system. However, digital music is improving, and I have the capability to rip my old LPs at a significantly higher bit rate and -depth, preserving some, albeit not all, of the original fidelity. This means that at least a fair portion of my music is at a higher resolution than mere mp3 or even Aiff. I will admit that the average CD and mp3 is poor quality, but at the time CDs at least sounded decent in portable devices (with good headphones) and mp3 let you carry significantly more music in the device than a single CD or compact cassette could carry. I expect eventually you won't be able to tell the difference from listening in the studio or the recording made from that studio session. Vinyl showed what could be done then; digital is finally catching up.
What the RIAA needs to do is get back into setting the recording standards--the purpose for which they were created--rather than spending all their money trying to sue individuals for copyright infringement. If they feel they have to go after pirates, go after the ones making money off the pirated recordings, they're the ones profiting right now.
The value for me of the TV is that I only encode the movie once and I can use it for all my ipods/iphones and TV. Sure cuts down on replacing scratched DVD's when you have kids, plus you can just give them the remote and have them choose the movie.
TV is that I only encode the movie once and I can use it for all my ipods/iphones and TV. Sure cuts down on replacing scratched DVD's when you have kids, plus you can just give them the remote and have them choose the movie.Home Sharing only support automatic transfer for purchased content. You can still manually copy unpurchased content through the Home Server mechanism. There's a setting to view uncopied content only so you can see what hasn't been copied.
Except that Rogers doesn't support CableCard and encrypts all of their digital channels. There's no way to record HD content from Rogers except through their own PVR box which is $600.
I am very interested in a device like the Apple TV, but will never buy it in the current state of configuration. This coming from someone who recently spent $2,400 on a loaded iMac! If they would make it with 1 or 2 of the following, I would buy it this upcoming holiday season:
The smart play for Apple is to have a premium device for your television that lets you do everything, or at least a few things. I think the cable card issue is in better shape than it was previously (correct anyone?) making that an option or something consumers can plug in after purchase. The same way people load up their iPods with music they already have on CD, people want to use a TV appliance mainly to consume content they have already paid for through a cable TV provider. The ability to record and view on demand is already there and it is decent, but, I want a better experience managing it and getting on-demand content for an additional fee. More storage would be a great thing too. I think there is a lot of potential here.
If Apple would convert their TV product to something that we could really use, I bet they would sell a lot of them. Apple could also make a few bucks when people do purchase premium content or other services on the Apple TV. Plus there would be potential for growth in the digital living room.
- DVR
- Cable Card/ability to watch free tv
- Blu-ray (unlikely to ever happen, would add too much $$ to the device)
The smart play for Apple is to have a premium device for your television that lets you do everything, or at least a few things. I think the cable card issue is in better shape than it was previously (correct anyone?) making that an option or something consumers can plug in after purchase. The same way people load up their iPods with music they already have on CD, people want to use a TV appliance mainly to consume content they have already paid for through a cable TV provider. The ability to record and view on demand is already there and it is decent, but, I want a better experience managing it and getting on-demand content for an additional fee. More storage would be a great thing too. I think there is a lot of potential here.
If Apple would convert their TV product to something that we could really use, I bet they would sell a lot of them. Apple could also make a few bucks when people do purchase premium content or other services on the Apple TV. Plus there would be potential for growth in the digital living room.
Merge with Time Capsule? I would think the worst place to put your wireless router would be in a cabinet surrounded by electronics and wires.
The only thing I'd like to see from the AppleTV is for it to become the iTunes Home Server. Put all your media there and let other Macs sync to that. That's the only reason to put a giant hard disk in it that I can see.
EyeTV already supports automatic export of its DVR recordings to AppleTV format and it automatically puts it into iTunes library. So you can easily stream or sync it TV recordings with your Apple TV.
There is no need for Apple to include DVR into Apple TV's directly.
have been thinking about an ATV for a few years now. originally planned on buying the small model and installing a new HD, but maybe now i'll just get this.someone please jog my memory. if i have shows that are not in itunes can i play them on ATV? for example, i have a lot of shows that are in .avi format. typically i connect my MBP to my tv using HDMI cables, but this would be more convinient. can i just drag and drop things onto ATV and play them without an internet connection? pretty sure i'd have to hack it to play avi files, but so be it. i don't think i'd really use it to stream anything, just watch what i've already downloaded.
Apparently you overlook one point--you don't need to have both machines running full-time. I'll grant that doing so keeps both libraries accessible all the time, but you're not a couch potato, are you? If you want your wife's library accessible, then simply boot up her laptop and start iTunes; the ATV will take care of the rest as soon as it finds her signal. At 160 GB, you can store a lot of music or video on the ATV itself, but don't forget, you also have the ability to synch only specific portions, too. Why play with libraries that overlap 65% of their content when you could pick and choose the videos and audio content between them?
RoughlyDrafted this morning talks about how the new TuneKit features were likely designed to leverage tv and lay the groundwork to increase future adoption of the product.
tv and lay the groundwork to increase future adoption of the product.
The AppleTV should just not exist.
Not only is that more likely than it ever getting a true update or it ever being worth it's price, but it would avoid all of this disappointment I see with the product.
Not only is that more likely than it ever getting a true update or it ever being worth it's price, but it would avoid all of this disappointment I see with the product.
I'm with you on every other point, but the SoC in the iPhone could only replace like for like with the current AppleTV ie. only 720p decoding, even then i think it would struggle with some of the faster scenes, which is one of several reasons why the iPhone 3G S is not advertised as supporting HD.
I'm fully expecting 2 chips out of PA Semi next year. One for iPhones/iPods and another for AppleTV/Tablets. Just hoping it's nearer the start of the year rather than than the 2nd half. March would be nice.
That's interesting, I didn't know you could do that, really? So I could get an EyeTV and stream all of my recordings to the Apple TV? The only problem I would have then is I don't have a cable box upstairs where the office/computer is. I know I could just get another one, but that is more $ per month that I don't want to spend ($144 per year now that I check). Is there another solution that might address that scenario? I haven't researched this yet, but now I want to look into it in light of this new information.
Thanks!
Good question. I just bought one two days. Guess I'll head back to the Apple store and see what they're willing to do.
All of this talk about DVR and CableCARD makes no sense. Apple is in the business of selling you content from the iTunes store. Why would they make a device to let you get your content from someone else? There is absolutely no way they would consider adding a DVR/CableCARD. Furthermore, why would they add a Blu-Ray player? So you can buy your Blu-Ray discs from Walmart instead of buying/renting from iTunes?
Apple will never add these features. What you can expect, however, is higher quality of content from the iTunes store in the future. Remember the music video quality when the store first opened? 320x160? Audio quality has also improved. Apple will be obligated to keep the quality of its media on iTunes up to par (or close to it). While 1080p isn't realistic today, it will be in the future. Whether you will be able to play 1080p using an updatedtv or some other new device remains to be seen.
Apple will never add these features. What you can expect, however, is higher quality of content from the iTunes store in the future. Remember the music video quality when the store first opened? 320x160? Audio quality has also improved. Apple will be obligated to keep the quality of its media on iTunes up to par (or close to it). While 1080p isn't realistic today, it will be in the future. Whether you will be able to play 1080p using an updated
tv or some other new device remains to be seen.I agree. It makes total sense to merge with a TC, but it doesn't need to be a router. My guess is that apple tv is dead. Apple will most likely release (at some point), some kind of home server that will incorporate the ATV and TC into one unit, with very cheap, plug and play extenders for each TV. They would probably design it so current ATV's will work as these extenders, and the new extenders will have no hard drives and stream everything from the server.
I'm pretty sure apple has realized they essentially went down the wrong road with the ATV...whatever is coming next, will not resemble much at all of what we currently know as the ATV...
I hope they update
What and when is THE October event? I haven't heard one advertised.
I've read in other post that Apple sometimes has a media event in October. I believe last year they introduced the unibody macs. If i am incorrect please let me know.