Apple TV still to be a hobby in 2009

Yah, that sucks. I was looking forward to something big at MacWorld... it looks like all we'll get for a little while are incremental updates.

In the meantime, I'm encouraged by the latest developments with Boxee. At least we know that if Apple doesn't add value to tv in 2009, Boxee will.

I wasn't too happy to hear that either. Sounds like there will be no hardware update to the Apple TV next year.

Software updates hopefully will come, and they really need to address stability and performances issues with it. The menu system used to be so smooth on 1.0. The music video lists take FOREVER to sift through.

As long as they keep it alive, I'll be happy with software updates... although they really should update the hardware to have at least a gigabit ethernet port.

This is a bummer.
I've had the Apple tv for awhile now, but only recently really started using it.

I bought a few films from itunes and the image quality is outstanding.
I also shoot home movies with a HD camera. Using a Mac- I have no way to burn a blu ray disc so I down rez to SD and it the HD magic is lost.
So, just for kicks I compressed a few home movie files and downloaded them to Atv. And again- the image is outstanding.
Very close to the original HD file and much better than a SD dvd.

Atv is a great product.
It's a shame it hasn't caught fire like other Apple products.
Put down the silly phone and watch some HD!

Don't fret -- I don't think the AppleTV will be going anywhere anytime soon. At this time, it is the only device Apple has licensed to playback HD movie rentals. It is also arguably the best-selling media extender (excluding Xbox/game consoles) on the market today, and is supported by the #1 player in the digital download game.

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I'm having the same dilema with my HD camera.

What are you using to convert from the HD video files to an MP4?

So I found the following comment by Jobs interesting:

"And actually the experimentation has slowed down. A lot of the early companies that were trying things have faded away."

You think he's talking about the plug-in developers? I think this is kinda a contradiction statement as yeah, some dev's have left for probably the iPhone, and maybe some are just tired of Apple breaking things on them. But then we see the new resurgence of XBMC and Boxee. I mean, who hasn't played with MediaCenter & mods and Aeon & mods (especially HORIZONZ), been wowed and immediately think this is what the AppleTV interface should look like! And now with Boxee being able to play Hulu (and others) fullscreen?! Now that's what I'm talking about! Guess Steve looked the other way because he was embarrassed.

Suppose apple tv becomes a hobby because apple introduces an iTV.. a tv with built in apple tv hardware..

Just pulling it out of a hat but its not that far fetched and this would render the former AppleTV a hobby, no?

A dream I had this am...

When most people have dreams about usual things like sex and monsters, I have dreams of Apple products. I absolutely LOVE my Apple TV. I'm currently watching Hulu on it right now. Being able to watch streaming video from the internet is a dream come true. Maybe it was the giddiness of installing Boxee on the Apple TV yesterday and being able to watch South Park on it now, but I came out of a dream this morning where I swear I was playing a game on the Apple TV and the iPhone was my controller.

Wouldn't this be kick ass?!

The iPhone is already a Wii controller with its acceleratometers and vibrating ability. Not to mention that the iPhone could become any type of virtual controller for the gameplay on the TV set.

But I'm not a hardware god so I don't know what sort of processor is on the Apple TV. Probably pretty basic right ? Plus it'd need a complex graphics chip.

With talk of development for an app store for the Apple TV, I got excited with the prospects of added functionality. Then I got to thinking how all the major game consoles are allowing people to download games now.

An iPhone and Apple TV would be a killer combo.

^ funny ... lol

Well, if it helps you in your future dreams, iPhone is more powerful than a PSP so tv should be able to handle games also.

I just got my TV last Saturday and I'm lovin it
maybe not dreaming about it but it's a fantastic bit of kit, boxee is excellent and I just love sitting on my couch watching the keynotes on my plasma!!!!!!
games would be cool but the graphics would have to be amazing to look good on the tv!

zedsdead said:

The menu system used to be so smooth on 1.0. The music video lists take FOREVER to sift through.

Click to expand...

Yes, I had forgotten how responsive it was. I just recently restored mine to 1.0 and forced it to 4:3 mode so that I can now use it for video on my 4:3 bigscreen tv. I am busy ripping all my dvd's to use on it (most of them are also 4:3 format). I love it now! I never really used the 1.1 and 2.x features anyway.

fermentj said:

Sorry to hijack the thread, but I'm having the same dilema with my HD camera.

What are you using to convert from the HD video files to an MP4?

Click to expand...

I edit in Final cut studio than compress to MP4 in Compressor.

Even if Apple was to abandom the AppleTV, I would still get a ton of use out of it. I would still continue to rip all my tv shows and movies to watch on it. i know I have spent hours looking at random videos on youtube and seeing my families latest pictures on flickr.

Podcast will still continue to grow and become more popular and there are some great ones that I check on a daily/weekly basis.

For a "Hobby" it works pretty ***** good. Just think it it every becomes a "Product".

redgaz26 said:

I just got my TV last Saturday and I'm lovin it
maybe not dreaming about it but it's a fantastic bit of kit, boxee is excellent and I just love sitting on my couch watching the keynotes on my plasma!!!!!!
games would be cool but the graphics would have to be amazing to look good on the tv!

Click to expand...

I just bought AppleTV #2. I've had one since early in rev. 1, but just bought a second for the other room. Its great. I've got about 100 movies (mostly kid stuff) in my iTunes library, and each AppleTV is set to stream off my desktop. Both AppleTVs can run a stream a different movie wirelessly without the slightest network hiccup.

Not sure why people buy the 160GB. Both my 40GB units do just fine, since only the newest couple of TV episodes and movies get automatically stored on them. Otherwise, they both stream off a 500GB drive in my Mac Pro, so the AppleTV's internal storage capacity is essentially meaningless.

I have the 160gig.
IMO- the video files that are downloaded and saved to the Atv unit looked much better than streaming. In fact- it's a big difference.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5F136 Safari/525.20)

I have the 160g. I like to sync everything. Not that I don't like streaming but when I'm at work my gf likes to watch films and I'd rather she played with my apple gear as little as possible!!!!
So much easier for her just to turn on atv and watch something.

Bulldogger said:

When most people have dreams about usual things like sex and monsters, I have dreams of Apple products. I absolutely LOVE my Apple TV. I'm currently watching Hulu on it right now. Being able to watch streaming video from the internet is a dream come true. Maybe it was the giddiness of installing Boxee on the Apple TV yesterday and being able to watch South Park on it now

Click to expand...

How is the quality of Hulu on the Apple TV? I'm interested in installing Boxee as well.

I have the 160 GB, because my only computer is a MacBook, so when I take it out of the house, others can still view all the content.

danny_w said:

Yes, I had forgotten how responsive it was. I just recently restored mine to 1.0 and forced it to 4:3 mode so that I can now use it for video on my 4:3 bigscreen tv. I am busy ripping all my dvd's to use on it (most of them are also 4:3 format). I love it now! I never really used the 1.1 and 2.x features anyway.

Click to expand...

I use version Apple TV 2.x on a 4:3 tv using this adapter. Is there something you gain by downgrading to Apple TV 1.x? Or do you just prefer the software hack instead of plugging/unplugging the adapter on every reboot (admittedly, it's annoying, but I don't reboot the Apple TV that often)?

astrorider said:

I use version Apple TV 2.x on a 4:3 tv using this adapter. Is there something you gain by downgrading to Apple TV 1.x? Or do you just prefer the software hack instead of plugging/unplugging the adapter on every reboot (admittedly, it's annoying, but I don't reboot the Apple TV that often)?

Click to expand...

My tv already has component (not composite) inputs, and so does my a/v receiver, so that is not the issue. The issue is the distortion (squished, slim/tall people) caused by watching the widescreen output of an TV on a 4:3 tv that does not have a widescreen setting. The software hack that I was referring to allows me to set the TV for a 4:3 display format vs. the default widescreen format, so the the images now look correct without the squished slim/tall people; it adds an extra setting in the resolutions page. Unfortunately this utility only works on 1.x, so that is why I needed to restore to 1.0 firmware. I may try sometime to see if I can do the same thing using 2.2 firmware, but currently I do not believe there is a utility to do that.

danny_w said:

My tv already has component (not composite) inputs, and so does my a/v receiver, so that is not the issue. The issue is the distortion (squished, slim/tall people) caused by watching the widescreen output of an TV on a 4:3 tv that does not have a widescreen setting. The software hack that I was referring to allows me to set the TV for a 4:3 display format vs. the default widescreen format, so the the images now look correct without the squished slim/tall people; it adds an extra setting in the resolutions page. Unfortunately this utility only works on 1.x, so that is why I needed to restore to 1.0 firmware. I may try sometime to see if I can do the same thing using 2.2 firmware, but currently I do not believe there is a utility to do that.

Click to expand...

Thanks, I didn't think about component/4:3 TVs. I still find it baffling that 4:3 and composite output hasn't already been added, and we have to resort to "hacks" for such basic functionality.

astrorider said:

Thanks, I didn't think about component/4:3 TVs. I still find it baffling that 4:3 and composite output hasn't already been added, and we have to resort to "hacks" for such basic functionality.

Click to expand...

Yes, I simply got tired of waiting for Apple to come around, so I did my own thing.