New Apple TV Offers 8 GB of Internal Storage, 256 MB RAM

Sweet, that really means we can put in something useful...

Although some of that space will probably be for buffering streaming videos, I agree that this is the best proof yet that apps will eventually come to the Apple TV.

We've already seen how 256 MB of RAM can constrict apps in iOS (witness Safari on iPad's terrible cacheing). With the Apple TV it would only be worse, as the resolution of the screen, which almost certainly uses RAM for buffers, is larger. There's about 17% more pixels involved in the Apple TV over the iPad. But yeah, I agree, you certainly don't need 8 GB for video stream buffering purposes at 720p.

I guessed it right. For $99, it must have at least an 8gb.

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

And it costs less than the 8 GB iPod Nano but can play video................

Weird.

Naturally that's there... what? You thought there was NO memory and it just streamed directly? Come on. It has to be able to hold at least ONE full movie.

How big are most 90 minute HD movie files? 4 GB?

considering the 3gs is still sold with "only" 8GB, this doesn't seem too limiting for a device meant to stream. Plenty of Apps can fit in 8GB of space. I have over 100 apps, and they take up just over 1GB on my iPhone.

HiRez said:

We've already seen how 256 MB of RAM can constrict apps in iOS (witness Safari on iPad's terrible cacheing). With the Apple TV it would only be worse, as the resolution of the screen, which almost certainly uses RAM for buffers, is larger. There's about 17% more pixels involved in the Apple TV over the iPad. But yeah, I agree, you certainly don't need 8 GB for video stream buffering purposes at 720p.

Click to expand...

The only example of poor performance you provided is a feature that Apple TV doesn't have.

8 GB?

That's wierd. Unless...

HELLO APPLE TV APPS!

Lesser Evets said:

Naturally that's there... what? You thought there was NO memory and it just streamed directly? Come on. It has to be able to hold at least ONE full movie.

How big are most 90 minute HD movie files? 4 GB?

Click to expand...

You only need a buffer, you don't need to store the whole movie.

Lesser Evets said:

Naturally that's there... what? You thought there was NO memory and it just streamed directly? Come on. It has to be able to hold at least ONE full movie.

How big are most 90 minute HD movie files? 4 GB?

Click to expand...

Not really, as it is not meant to work offline. You only need enough to buffer out network glitches and avoid dropped frames or pauses. 8 GB is way overkill for that purpose, probably 1 GB would be plenty. H.264 video at 720p, let's say they encode the video at 10 Mbps (which is high, it's probably half of that), that's about 13 minutes per GB, more than enough buffer for a smooth stream.

Lesser Evets said:

Naturally that's there... what? You thought there was NO memory and it just streamed directly? Come on. It has to be able to hold at least ONE full movie.

How big are most 90 minute HD movie files? 4 GB?

Click to expand...

I don't think anyone expected that. (Where would you put the OS, potential for apps, etc.) In fact, I expected it to have about enough to buffer a whole 720p movie, if necessary, which is about what it has.

"Limited" Geez, 8GB is a lot. But then I guess the author of this pieces is rather young.

Sweet! TV App Store!

paradox00 said:

The only example of poor performance you provided is a feature that Apple TV doesn't have.

Click to expand...

Yet. And the specific app isn't the point, the point is more pixels = more RAM consumed = less room for application data.

Yes, apps don't take that much room, so partial storage of a movie is the biggest space hog, and there's room enough for some apps and their respective configuration data.

8 gigs is a lot. I think you could just download content from the web and store it for streaming later. My T1 is finicky at times and I personally do not like the idea of always depending on either crap stored on my computer or streaming.

karlwig said:

8 GB?

That's wierd. Unless...

HELLO APPLE TV APPS!

Click to expand...

YESSSSSSSSSSSSS can't wait!

paradox00 said:

You only need a buffer, you don't need to store the whole movie.

Click to expand...

I would think that in order to provide a good movie/tv show experience you would want to be able to store at least one complete video.

What if for some reason you want to rewind back beyond whats buffered in ram. "Buffering..." ?? and then if you want to fast forward back to where you were if you just wanted to see if you missed something. "Buffering...."

It would make sense, to me at least, that it would download the entire video to the local storage, and "stream" off of that (as soon as enough was downloaded to start, like how the current ATV works if you purchase via the hardware). Seems that would provide the best overall viewing experience.

While I know many are "App crazy" and it might be a nice thing to have, the 8gb could also be used to cache additional rentals (ie if you rent multiple tv episodes, or multiple movies within your viewing period). It would be both beneficial to the viewer and Apple to cache as much of the video as possible. Less demand on their network for those that don't watch a show strictly beginning to end once (rewinding, re-watching, pausing for a long period of time, etc...). If they do indeed cache much if not all of the video locally, 8gb is not really that much. Considering Star Trek in HD is a 4.24gb file. Consider again multiple movies rented, and/or longer length videos (4gb may have been too little, and 8gb may have been the next reasonable size of storage to include for any number of reasons).

Shouldn't The RAM Be Like This?

iPad > Apple TV > iPhone > iPod Touch

instead of

iPod Touch = Apple TV = iPad < iPhone

Apple has not Spec'd the RAM to go with the functionality of these devices.....

8 GB is not much (at all) for apps.

Corbin052198 said:

And it costs less than the 8 GB iPod Nano but can play video................

Weird.

Click to expand...

But you can't use it on the road as an iPod - it has no build-in battery.
Also, you can't use it as a watch like the iPod Nano. Not only do you need an external display, you also can't bind it to your arm in any way like with the clip on the Nano and a little string.

Other than that... it's light and thin enough to fit into your backpack and take it with you somewhere. Just not thin enough to fit into your wallet, like a Nano does.

My 12" PowerBook came with 256MB, it was even embedded into the mobo, thats how gangsta it was. Chewed through Panther too.

HiRez said:

Not really, as it is not meant to work offline. You only need enough to buffer out network glitches and avoid dropped frames or pauses. 8 GB is way overkill for that purpose, probably 1 GB would be plenty. H.264 video at 720p, let's say they encode the video at 10 Mbps (which is high, it's probably half of that), that's about 13 minutes per GB, more than enough buffer for a smooth stream.

Click to expand...

Maybe, but the buffer starts almost immediately arguing against the idea of pre-loading a lot of content.

karlwig said:

8 GB?

That's wierd. Unless...

HELLO APPLE TV APPS!

Click to expand...

This is a nice idea. But at a certain point you have to wonder why someone just doesn't use a computer?!

HiRez said:

We've already seen how 256 MB of RAM can constrict apps in iOS (witness Safari on iPad's terrible cacheing). With the Apple TV it would only be worse, as the resolution of the screen, which almost certainly uses RAM for buffers, is larger. There's about 17% more pixels involved in the Apple TV over the iPad. But yeah, I agree, you certainly don't need 8 GB for video stream buffering purposes at 720p.

Click to expand...

That's true. Apple has always purposely crippled their devices with limited ram. Otherwise you wouldn't want to upgrade would you?!