Apple TV 2
My Apple TV is black and a bit smaller with a much more swish looking remote controller. Or am I a version behind? or does it not count because I jailbroke it so that it would talk with my Solaris server?
After the iPad Mini rumours turned out to be true, fanboys are eagerly expecting the long rumoured Apple TVs to be announced. After all, we've only been expecting a decent one since 2007 when the current box launched. Apple has been kicking around the idea of revolutionising TV since well before Steve Jobs left the company. …
Before I went to using AppleTV for my media sourcing I looked at a lot of options, including XBMC.
Sure you can download it for free, and it has a lot of great features, such as being able to look up movies against IMDB so you don't have to mess around with metadata, but the issues I saw were in trying to deploy that across more than one TV, since each one required what amounted to a small PC with integrated remote support. I didn't see a lot of people claiming proper Roku support at the time so I confess this may have changed.
I backed up some of my DVD collection to an iTunes, spent $99 on an Apple TV box, turned it on and *it just worked* and I knew that any serious attempt to deploy XBMC in a similar fashion would not be as trivial in my time, and potentially substantially more expensive in hardware required.
And any time I've needed to expand my media to another TV in the house I've just needed an additional Apple TV box. The only time it gives me any grief is when my router is acting up. Not to mention the integrated things like Netflix, Youtube, sports, streaming movies etc.
> I backed up some of my DVD collection to an iTunes, spent $99 on an Apple TV box, turned it on and *it just worked* and I knew that any serious attempt to deploy XBMC in a similar fashion would not be as trivial in my time
Bullsh*t.
iTunes does squat in terms of media management. It doesn't just do BAD media management. It does NO media management.
It does not "just work".
The experience of what you are describing is nowhere near as "polished" as XBMC.
You might have better luck making up bogus nonsense about a $800 or $2400 product. AppleTV's are just too cheap. Plenty of the rest of us can run them for lulz and see how they really perform.
I tried XBMC on my HTPC, and was fairly impressed, apart from the fact that it wasn't able to decipher the basic file information for the 80+gb of TV shows and movies that I have downloaded. It decided that I had 200+ copies of about three episodes of three different shows I had never heard of. Makes finding things I want to watch a little tricky.
Apple can get away with overcharging for computers and tablets, but in this economy, who is going to overpay for an LCD TV with an Apple Logo on it other than celebs and other idle rich? Clearly, they are in the minority. Such an overpriced TV set just isn't going to happen because Cable and Satellite networks just don't need Apple in order to get their content to customers. It serves no purpose given that there are already smart TV's in the marketplace and they aren't moving int he same quantities as regular LCD TVs. Perhaps in the future, it could happen, but the cable and satellite networks are in no rush to do so. They've all seen Apple's control freakery at work and have no intention of allowing it in their industry.
Many, many assumptions there, and there is already a huge price range for existing sets (from your no-name boxes up to top end big screens that cost upwards of £20k. If and until Apple anounce a product we have no idea what it will cost, what it will do or whether it will sell. Ranting about there being no market for it is utterly pointless.
Unless it includes an iMac, and costs the same as an iMac, and has a touch screen, and you can hang on it on a wall. And iTunes suddenly sprouts a App Store-like shop front where amateur and semi-pro content makers can sell their content for cash.
But no - the major networks don't care. So Apple either has no TV, or it has to Think Different (for a change) and invent something new.
I'm guessing the former. But it's going to be interesting if I'm wrong about that.
Apple TV iTV call it whatever you will I can't wait for the final vision of Steve Jobs to see the light of day. I imagine it will have the following features
• 4X3 display screen
• 32 inch screen (no bigger because your eye goes from here to here as does this wonderful 32 inch screen)
• available in black or white
• basic model starting with 16 gig to store all those iTunes HD movies on
Actually i might wait for revision 2 where they backtrack to 16X9 and 37 inch screen
What kind of network really needs to worry about this? If it hooks into the TV infrastructure then it can be a very asymmetric service. Not that is really a problem. Currently trialling Maxdome here and HD films check for a max of a 6 Mb/s connection with an SD card used for buffering so will work with less. The "app" itself has a few problems but connectivity isn't a problem - my provider will happily provide me with up to 100 Mb/s.
Any bandwidth hungry device will come a notice informing the user that they'd better pay to have sufficient bandwidth or they won't be cool; revenue share of course. Worked wonders for mobile. Actually provisioning the bandwidth shouldn't be a problem for any half-way decent provider who has fibre all the way to the DSLASM / splitter.
This post has been deleted by its author
There's too much focus on the device, whether that's a box or an integrated TV, rather than the architecture of the service that it will enable. Apple aren't going to steamroll into the TV market by making a pretty device, it's going to be because the experience is better, easier to use, better content suggestions, multi device integration, sharing etc.
Basically a load of ideas that have been explored elsewhere with varying degrees of execution rolled into one very well executed service that sells profitable devices.
Until they have the deals and backend to make that happen, AppleTV will remain 'hobby' status.