I have no problems streaming from my computer to my TV with XBox 360 over the network.
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XBOX 360 kicking the aTV's butt
- Thread starter radiogoober
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I have no problems streaming from my computer to my TV with XBox 360 over the network.
I had no problem connecting my apple tv to a power outlet!
What does streaming have to do with Xbox 360 not being silent?
Agreed, in some ways...
In my opinion, Roku is a more fair comparison. XBox is not aimed at the same type of usage situation. >200 vs. 99 dollars is not a fair comparison. If you don't factor in price, then yes, XBox kicks ATV's a**. On the other hand, Watson (supercomputer w/ ≥15TB RAM) kicks the Macbook Air's a** if you don't count price.
Final conclusion: patience. Apple has WWDC coming up, just wait until then!
In my opinion, Roku is a more fair comparison. XBox is not aimed at the same type of usage situation. >200 vs. 99 dollars is not a fair comparison. If you don't factor in price, then yes, XBox kicks ATV's a**. On the other hand, Watson (supercomputer w/ ≥15TB RAM) kicks the Macbook Air's a** if you don't count price.
Final conclusion: patience. Apple has WWDC coming up, just wait until then!
Please...
Xbox Glass is just Microsoft's answer to the Wii U having a touch-screen built in. And nobody knows anything about Xbox Glass. They gave a very brief demo of it at E3 yesterday (which could have been a purely pre-rendered video for all we know) and made it seem like they've got such a great idea... which is that ANY touch screen device can connect to and control the Xbox 360.
Here's my prediction on that idea: not EVERY touch screen device will be able to connect to the Xbox 360. A handfull will probably work flawlessly, but certain models will probably have connectivity issues and problems with lag. It's not like the Wii U where the console and the controller were designed to work together.
...and it's certainly not like the Apple TV because that's comparing two very different devices. You could say it's like comparing...
Apples and Oranges!YEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!
It wasn't until the last 2-3 years that I even really owned any Apple devices. Now I've got a MacBook Air as my primary work/personal computer, several iPhones, a couple of iPads, several AppleTV's (gen 2 and one gen 3 1080p). I've also got an AirPort Extreme (the original AirPort was actually my first Apple device). I've also got a Windows 7 desktop/tower running Windows Media Center in the bedroom hooked up to a SiliconDust HDHomeRun Prime, along with a few XBox 360's which serve as Media Center Extenders. And previously I messed around with the original XBox hacked to run XBMC.
I've been doing the rip-my-movies-and-play-them-on-the-network thing for longer than most, and I've played around with various streamers (including the WDTV), and IMHO they all have certain things they do well and they all fall short at doing everything I want them to. The XBox 360 and Apple TV 1080p both still fall into that category. Here are some pros/cons for my usage:
XBox 360:
- Work great as DVR extenders with my Windows Media Center 7 desktop / HDHomeRun Prime recording everything. With the XBox 360, even wirelessly, I can surf the guide, play live TV, play back my TV recordings.
- The new 360 Slims are pretty quiet, but compared to the ATV they're still pretty loud, hot, big, and power-hungry. And you have to turn them on/off. They boot up pretty quick, but they're still a good deal slower than getting an ATV out of sleep mode. Both the unit itself and the huge power supply have fans in them.
- Mentioned above but this one deserves its own dot-point: It's big and the power supply is big. With an ATV you could velcro it to the back of your TV if you wanted to, making it completely invisible. The XBox will require some shelf space and the power supply will be hard to keep out of sight.
- The DVD drive comes in handy for my daughter, but in this day and age, I figure it should either have a Blu-ray drive or no drive at all (and trade that for smaller size, less power needs, and lower price).
- All the super-great extras that are being offered these days for streaming (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Comcast) need to be run on the XBox side and require Gold membership, so there's a recurring monthly fee for that. For now, I've decided that I prefer to have mine boot directly to the Media Center mode, which costs me nothing extra to use, and stream Netflix with my ATV.
- Games. I hardly ever play them, but I'd like to find the time to do that on occasion. It's definitely a nice extra, and I prefer having a gaming controller to play games vs the Apple approach of using an iPad/iPhone as the controller.
- Can't stream Blu-ray ripped MKV files, so you'll have to convert your movies using something like Handbrake. So now real advantage over the ATV there.
ATV:
- This thing is tiny. And makes no noise. And you don't have to power it off ever since it's so low-power (plus it will go into an even lower-power sleep mode on its own).
- The XBox 360 has been around so long whereas the ATV 1080p is using relatively new tech. Does anyone know how these things compare graphics-power wise? I have to think that if Apple decided to really push this as a gaming platform that it wouldn't be lacking compared to the 360 in many ways.
- If you jailbreak it and install XBMC you can play some Blu-ray MKV rips (as long as their MPEG4) but the 1080p model hasn't been jailbroken yet, so I've been using an Acer Revo nettop to play my Blu-ray rips. Eventually I may convert all my movies to MP4 files using Handbrake.
- Since I've become an Apple device household, I use the ATV with AirPlay to play background music (usually bebop Jazz) I'm streaming from my iPhone with the Pandora app at dinnertime. It's also become my preferred Netflix streamer (XBox is a non-option currently since I've held off from paying the XBox Gold tax). And on rare occasions when my family wants to watch a movie I don't already have, I sometimes give in and rent from iTunes. A bit of a rip-off at $5 (or whatever it is). I guess the 360 would offer the same thing, but don't I still need to pay for Gold to even do that?
A lot of people are drooling about SmartGlass, which I personally see as MS playing catch-up to AirPlay. I think SmartGlass sounds great and I personally welcome healthy competition, since it will cause Apple to keep their game up. But SmartGlass is a future product. Does everyone really think that Apple won't make some great new announcements/releases between now and when SmartGlass actually gets released?
Here's what I'd love to see Apple do, though I think they'll do neither:
1) Release an updated AirPort Extreme / TimeCapsule running iOS with DVR server software which integrates with the HDHomeRun Prime and has companion iPad/iPhone apps for scheduling the recordings, records the shows directly as MP4 files onto a hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme and allows you to watch those shows on your iPhone/iPad/ATV.
2) Release a dedicated gaming controller for the Apple TV and announces a push for gaming, and an SDK for developers to release games for it. Because of the limited storage space on the ATV, the way it would work is that the games purchased would be stored in iCloud and they could be downloaded to your iPhone/iPad when needed, and then streamed to the ATV, with the iPhone/iPad still serving as a controller, but with that dedicated gaming controller also being supported for games that would benefit from it.
Here's what I think might be more realistic:
1) Apple announces new partners for the ATV (e.g., NFL Sunday Ticket).
2) Apple makes some tweaks/improvements on movie/TV show rental/purchase pricing (much of this is probably outside of Apple's control, but they have lots of leverage).
3) Apple makes a bigger push for getting developers to make apps that run on the iPhone/iPad but which push stuff onto the ATV. Maybe there are some hardware tweaks they snuck into the ATV 1080p, yet to be exposed to 3rd party developers, that allow them to reduce latency.
I've been doing the rip-my-movies-and-play-them-on-the-network thing for longer than most, and I've played around with various streamers (including the WDTV), and IMHO they all have certain things they do well and they all fall short at doing everything I want them to. The XBox 360 and Apple TV 1080p both still fall into that category. Here are some pros/cons for my usage:
XBox 360:
- Work great as DVR extenders with my Windows Media Center 7 desktop / HDHomeRun Prime recording everything. With the XBox 360, even wirelessly, I can surf the guide, play live TV, play back my TV recordings.
- The new 360 Slims are pretty quiet, but compared to the ATV they're still pretty loud, hot, big, and power-hungry. And you have to turn them on/off. They boot up pretty quick, but they're still a good deal slower than getting an ATV out of sleep mode. Both the unit itself and the huge power supply have fans in them.
- Mentioned above but this one deserves its own dot-point: It's big and the power supply is big. With an ATV you could velcro it to the back of your TV if you wanted to, making it completely invisible. The XBox will require some shelf space and the power supply will be hard to keep out of sight.
- The DVD drive comes in handy for my daughter, but in this day and age, I figure it should either have a Blu-ray drive or no drive at all (and trade that for smaller size, less power needs, and lower price).
- All the super-great extras that are being offered these days for streaming (Netflix, Amazon Prime, Comcast) need to be run on the XBox side and require Gold membership, so there's a recurring monthly fee for that. For now, I've decided that I prefer to have mine boot directly to the Media Center mode, which costs me nothing extra to use, and stream Netflix with my ATV.
- Games. I hardly ever play them, but I'd like to find the time to do that on occasion. It's definitely a nice extra, and I prefer having a gaming controller to play games vs the Apple approach of using an iPad/iPhone as the controller.
- Can't stream Blu-ray ripped MKV files, so you'll have to convert your movies using something like Handbrake. So now real advantage over the ATV there.
ATV:
- This thing is tiny. And makes no noise. And you don't have to power it off ever since it's so low-power (plus it will go into an even lower-power sleep mode on its own).
- The XBox 360 has been around so long whereas the ATV 1080p is using relatively new tech. Does anyone know how these things compare graphics-power wise? I have to think that if Apple decided to really push this as a gaming platform that it wouldn't be lacking compared to the 360 in many ways.
- If you jailbreak it and install XBMC you can play some Blu-ray MKV rips (as long as their MPEG4) but the 1080p model hasn't been jailbroken yet, so I've been using an Acer Revo nettop to play my Blu-ray rips. Eventually I may convert all my movies to MP4 files using Handbrake.
- Since I've become an Apple device household, I use the ATV with AirPlay to play background music (usually bebop Jazz) I'm streaming from my iPhone with the Pandora app at dinnertime. It's also become my preferred Netflix streamer (XBox is a non-option currently since I've held off from paying the XBox Gold tax). And on rare occasions when my family wants to watch a movie I don't already have, I sometimes give in and rent from iTunes. A bit of a rip-off at $5 (or whatever it is). I guess the 360 would offer the same thing, but don't I still need to pay for Gold to even do that?
A lot of people are drooling about SmartGlass, which I personally see as MS playing catch-up to AirPlay. I think SmartGlass sounds great and I personally welcome healthy competition, since it will cause Apple to keep their game up. But SmartGlass is a future product. Does everyone really think that Apple won't make some great new announcements/releases between now and when SmartGlass actually gets released?
Here's what I'd love to see Apple do, though I think they'll do neither:
1) Release an updated AirPort Extreme / TimeCapsule running iOS with DVR server software which integrates with the HDHomeRun Prime and has companion iPad/iPhone apps for scheduling the recordings, records the shows directly as MP4 files onto a hard drive connected to the AirPort Extreme and allows you to watch those shows on your iPhone/iPad/ATV.
2) Release a dedicated gaming controller for the Apple TV and announces a push for gaming, and an SDK for developers to release games for it. Because of the limited storage space on the ATV, the way it would work is that the games purchased would be stored in iCloud and they could be downloaded to your iPhone/iPad when needed, and then streamed to the ATV, with the iPhone/iPad still serving as a controller, but with that dedicated gaming controller also being supported for games that would benefit from it.
Here's what I think might be more realistic:
1) Apple announces new partners for the ATV (e.g., NFL Sunday Ticket).
2) Apple makes some tweaks/improvements on movie/TV show rental/purchase pricing (much of this is probably outside of Apple's control, but they have lots of leverage).
3) Apple makes a bigger push for getting developers to make apps that run on the iPhone/iPad but which push stuff onto the ATV. Maybe there are some hardware tweaks they snuck into the ATV 1080p, yet to be exposed to 3rd party developers, that allow them to reduce latency.
Different horses for different courses.
Despite the complaint ATV does have it's place within the ecosystem of video playback
Despite the complaint ATV does have it's place within the ecosystem of video playback
I don't know a single person that owns an Xbox360, but maybe a friend of a friend has one. As far as PS3's go I know 2 people who bought them with the intention of using them for blu-Ray but have never bought or rented a Blu-Ray disc.
I have both ATV3 and Xbox 360 and choose ATV over Xbox for everything where they overlap functionally (movie rentals, Netflix etc). 360 may be a more capable all rounder, but it's certainly not better at what ATV is designed to do. Xbox also requires an extra subscription to MS for no obvious reason, plus it's large and noisy which is fine for games but not for watching movies. ATV is a fraction of the price, tiny and efficient, and designed to do a smaller number of things very well. All it really lacks is more apps for additional media content.
As far as the OP is concerned I actually agree a bit. As long as smart glass works with ios, the apple tv will pretty much become redundant.
Netflix is a much better streaming service than itunes - itunes is overpriced, doesnt have a subscription model for unlimited streaming, and has millitant restrictions on rental times
Appletv barely supports any codecs (xbox isnt much better in all fairness), but to make my apple tv's usable I've had to jailbreak. Xbox supports more standardised codecs now.
Xbox has installable apps, including bbc iplayer, 4od etc......
appletv has issues syncing with time servers after restarts (you restart a lot when you are jailbroken).
Unless appletv brings out an app store, without jailbreaking, appletv's are worthless now unless you're the type who loves a quiet fap whilst undertaking pointless adoration of the apple walled garden.
Netflix is a much better streaming service than itunes - itunes is overpriced, doesnt have a subscription model for unlimited streaming, and has millitant restrictions on rental times
Appletv barely supports any codecs (xbox isnt much better in all fairness), but to make my apple tv's usable I've had to jailbreak. Xbox supports more standardised codecs now.
Xbox has installable apps, including bbc iplayer, 4od etc......
appletv has issues syncing with time servers after restarts (you restart a lot when you are jailbroken).
Unless appletv brings out an app store, without jailbreaking, appletv's are worthless now unless you're the type who loves a quiet fap whilst undertaking pointless adoration of the apple walled garden.
Apples and oranges (no pun intended). I have a Netflix subscription (streaming and disc rental) and we use Netflix streaming for some old TV shows and other odd movies/documentaries, but if we want to rent a new movie (that I couldn't get at Redbox) or a recently-run TV show (that my DVR missed) iTunes is useful for that.
The XBox can't play my MKV rips of Blu-ray movies, so the fact that it can play a bunch of other codecs that I don't have means little to me. In either case, I'd need to convert these MKVs using something like Handbrake to make them compatible with either the ATV or XBox.
And you have to pay the XBox Gold tax to use that functionality. If you, like me, have multiple TVs in your house, you have to get a different Gold membership for each one or get the family Gold membership, which brings you over $10/month.
That's a jailbreak issue, not an ATV issue.
Bottom line is that if you're someone who is already somewhat entrenched in the Apple ecosystem (which one would think most people participating in this forum are) and have a Mac and/or iPhone and/or iPad, the ATV is a useful accessory. Because I do like to rip my own movies, I don't currently get a lot of use out of using the ATV to stream my movies, but I expect that when time allows I'll eventually start transcoding my MKV files to M4V format using Handbrake. Until then I use an Acer Revo running XBMC for my in-house movie streaming.
The ATV brings other things to the table for us iOS users, though. During dinner I start up a Pandora stream on my iPhone and AirPlay it to the ATV in my living room hooked up to my stereo so that we can have some background music. The ATV also works fine as a photo viewer. And since I'm not willing (yet, anyway) to pay the XBox Gold tax, it's my only option for Netflix, and it works well for that anyway since I can use the iOS remote app / keyboard to expedite searches.
SmartGlass is pretty much like AirPlay, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's not available yet, and if it requires Gold then it may remain a feature I'm unable/unwilling to take advantage of.
I'm on my 3rd xbox due to red ring of death failures. That plus 3 extra controllers that I bought with the first plus wireless adaptor takes my total investment in xbox HARDWARE (no games/content) to $1100.
Aka $1001 more than my $99 ATV.
... not to mention the $50 per year that I pay for xbox live that I barely play with.
... and I always watch movies on the ATV because the controller is a crappy interface to interact with media menus. Not to mention that the XBOX runs LOUD-- highly annoying when watching a movie. And it uses power like nobody's business.
In fact, my $99 ATV gets used pretty much every night, while my $1100 xbox investment gets fired up about once every month or two to play a round of halo.
I know which is giving me better returns on investment!
Neither plays MKVs natively, which is the only format other than H.264 that I want to watch... but at least the ATV can be jailbroken to do so.
Aka $1001 more than my $99 ATV.
... not to mention the $50 per year that I pay for xbox live that I barely play with.
... and I always watch movies on the ATV because the controller is a crappy interface to interact with media menus. Not to mention that the XBOX runs LOUD-- highly annoying when watching a movie. And it uses power like nobody's business.
In fact, my $99 ATV gets used pretty much every night, while my $1100 xbox investment gets fired up about once every month or two to play a round of halo.
I know which is giving me better returns on investment!
Neither plays MKVs natively, which is the only format other than H.264 that I want to watch... but at least the ATV can be jailbroken to do so.
However its actually cheaper to go to blockbuster in the UK (we get charged more for rentals on itunes in the UK)
Neither can appletv....... I use MKV on my apple tv by having it jailbroken with plex on it. The problem is that apple tv predominently likes .avi files, something I never ever use, all of my stuff is .mp4 which is just fine on xbox. Xbox also supports h264 which apple tv doesnt, h264 is very common.
Annoyingly even my £40 blu ray player can play MKV's, i cant believe neither xbox or appletv can
Thats not an issue in my house, however xbox live gold membership for a year is the equivalent of renting 8 films of itunes...... Say I watch 2-3 films a week, in a year I'm looking at around £400 plus just to get those films of itunes...... Xbox live and lovefilm is a much more cost efficient way of doing it. Im a battlefield 3 obsessive too, so i have gold anyway, but in all fairness £28 is no real skin off my nose for the gold membership
Not its a known appletv issue
Its not like im not entrenched in the apple ecosystem, i have 2 iphones, 1 imac, 1 mac pro, one powerbook and an ipad in the house. What gets my goat about the apple tv though is the atrocious lack of support for any other streaming than through itunes. They wont even allow DLNA to run on it, and I hate using videos in itunes (i dont really like itunes that much to be fair). Airplay is a benefit and is the only real reason I bought an apple tv, but I've been forced to jailbreak simply to get standard things that should be on an apple tv to work, like mkv's etc.
I dont think they'll make it an xbox gold thing only, I cant see how they'd be able to do it and justify it.
Did you ever try the aTV without jailbreaking it?
Here are the supported video format specs for the aTV:
• H.264 video up to 1080p, 30 frames per second, High or Main Profile level 4.0 or lower, Baseline profile level 3.0 or lower with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
• MPEG-4 video up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats
• Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format
I swear they didnt when I bout it, and yes I did use it unjailbroken for a while.
Then I discovered HD MKV's
I have an Xbox slim on currently streaming MLB.TV, and just tried to hear the box while on one of their silent commercial breaks. Nope. I do agree you can tell when you're right by the box, but on the couch it really shouldn't be an issue with the newer models.