Upgrading the HD in AppleTV

[markfc]

okay so it hasn't arrived yet, but what are the chances of being able to upgrade the Harddrive in the apple TV?

I was kinda hoping to be able to sync all my iTunes library over so I can access to all my music from the TV.

Will the OS be held on the HD, if so how much space are we likely to lose?

If the OS is held in flash, I imagine upgrading the hardrviewill be a lot easier!

any thoughts?

 

[Roy Hobbs]

okay so it hasn't arrived yet, but what are the chances of being able to upgrade the Harddrive in the apple TV?

I was kinda hoping to be able to sync all my iTunes library over so I can access to all my music from the TV.

Will the OS be held on the HD, if so how much space are we likely to lose?

If the OS is held in flash, I imagine upgrading the hardrviewill be a lot easier!

any thoughts?

Why not just stream the music from your Mac? Seems silly to have you music in 2 places.

 

[wwooden]

Because there are a lot of people who don't leave there computer on constantly. I personally put my computer to sleep anytime I leave my office and head to my living room, I don't see a need to waste electricity when I am not using it. If I was to get an AppleTV I would want to transfer over most of my iTunes library.

 

[markfc]

Because there are a lot of people who don't leave there computer on constantly. I personally put my computer to sleep anytime I leave my office and head to my living room, I don't see a need to waste electricity when I am not using it. If I was to get an AppleTV I would want to transfer over most of my iTunes library.

exactly, why leave my iMac on when I just want to lie on the couch and chill!

 

[markfc]

Why not just stream the music from your Mac? Seems silly to have you music in 2 places.

Does it? Right now I have all my music on my iMac and also on my iPod, is that silly?

Why not have it all on the AppleTV too?

 

[kavika411]

While I don't know the answer to the OP's question, I share that concern. I am looking forward to the Apple TV more than most people, but the idea of future upgrades of Apple TV bothers me more than iPod and Mac upgrades. In other words, I don't mind buying an iPod or a Mac to find that they immediately upgrade it. The Apple TV, however, has a finite number of functions/capabilities, and a single upgrade, perhaps even that very first upgrade, may make the first generation Apple TV antiquated (sp?).

Regarding the 40gig hard drive, I do think it is an odd amount of hard drive space. I'd just assume it have only enough hard drive space to run the OS and it be a streaming machine. If Apple TV is indeed going to have space to 'move' your content in advance of viewing/listening, it needs a whole lot more than 40gigs.

 

[ftaok]

Regarding the 40gig hard drive, I do think it is an odd amount of hard drive space. I'd just assume it have only enough hard drive space to run the OS and it be a streaming machine. If Apple TV is indeed going to have space to 'move' your content in advance of viewing/listening, it needs a whole lot more than 40gigs.

My 2 cents.

The hard drive is intended to store a few videos and movies. While I'm sure that you could sync a few music playlists on the hard drive, it's main purpose is to house a few movies on it to reduce the amount of bandwidth required to stream videos. Steve Jobs basically said this at the Keynote.

Imagine, if you would, trying to stream an iTMS movie while someone else is on the network downloading a few torrents (or something). How much tolerance would you have if the movie you're trying to watch skips and glitches out. Probably zero tolerance.

So you sync the TV to store a specific files in a "smart playlist" sort of way. Let's say that you want it to store locally the last 4 episodes of Heroes, any unwatched Jerrytime podcasts, and the last 10 movies that you've bought and haven't watched. So when you're ready to watch, it's all there waiting. Don't have to worry that someone else is tieing up the network bandwidth with a huge file transfer.

Music is different. Streaming music uses much less network bandwidth than movies and videos. You may be able to sync your music to the tv, but I suspect that it wouldn't be quite as useful.

As for not having your library available if the host Mac is off, well, that's a problem. However, I would expect that Apple would have thought about this and has a feature to wake a sleeping Mac/PC if the tv needs to access content. I guess a small XML file on the tv would be stored (and sync'd in the background) that kept track of which host Mac/PC had a particular file.

ft

 

[Roy Hobbs]

Does it? Right now I have all my music on my iMac and also on my iPod, is that silly?

Why not have it all on the AppleTV too?

No that is not silly becuase the iPod is portable. The TV isn't

 

[Roy Hobbs]

Because there are a lot of people who don't leave there computer on constantly. I personally put my computer to sleep anytime I leave my office and head to my living room, I don't see a need to waste electricity when I am not using it. If I was to get an AppleTV I would want to transfer over most of my iTunes library.

If you were streaming from the Mac to the TV you would be using the Mac and therefore not wasting electricity.