Apple TV Specs?

[MacRumors]

AppleInsider claims to have nailed down the specs of the recently-announced Apple TV. Along with previously known specifications, the Apple TV is said to include the following hardware assortment:

- 1 GHz Pentium M, 2 MB L2 Cache
- 350 Mhz Front Side Bus
- nVidia G72M with 64MB DDR2 VRAM (GeForce Go 7400)
- 256 MB DDR2 400 Mhz RAM

Also mentioned is that the unit does in fact contain a cooling fan.

[iSee]

It's a Mini Mac Mini.
Hmmm..... There's got to be somethingnI do with that...

[Evangelion]

Originally Posted by iSee

It's a Mini Mac Mini.
Hmmm..... There's got to be somethingnI do with that...

Those specs are nowhere near Mac Mini. Nor do they have to be.

[iW00t]

It is actually quite a beefy little computer for what it needs to do.

[obeygiant]

For this thing to work you have to have 802.11n right?

[longofest]

Originally Posted by obeygiant

For this thing to work you have to have 802.11n right?

No. any of the 802.11 b/g/n protocols, or it also has wired 10/100 networking as well. But you need g or greater for video streaming.

[ChrisA]

Originally Posted by obeygiant

For this thing to work you have to have 802.11n right?

No. It will work with "g" or a wired connection

I actually expect almost 1/2 the unts will use the wired connection. People who get their Internet connection over the cable TV would have a router near the TV set. Would need only a two foot cat-5 cable

The device can work by either playing from the internal disk or streaming over the network. To play from the HD a slow network would be OK.

[plinden]

Originally Posted by ChrisA

No. It will work with "g" or a wired connection

I spoke to one of the demoers at MacWorld on Friday, who confirmed this with one of their Apple TV engineers. Although G will work, you'll notice dropped frames. And I've been away from MacRumors for a week, so don't know if this has been mentioned already, but standard definition TVs definitely will not work. It must be an ED or HD TV.

[uNext]

say what?

I know we can hack this and install mac os x on it or windows for a full blown media horse. PLay any type of video holy **** i might just buy it


The possibilities are endless-those specs actually make the apple tv a little more attractive

[Chaszmyr]

Originally Posted by uNext

say what?

I know we can hack this and install mac os x on it or windows for a full blown media horse. PLay any type of video holy **** i might just buy it


The possibilities are endless-those specs actually make the apple tv a little more attractive

They really don't. If you hack it to run OSX or Windows, it then won't run the Apple TV software. Why not just buy a media center PC from Dell that would have vastly better specs? The lack of 802.11n streaming? Don't count on being able to do that if you just install Windows, but I guess you could wirelessly transfer it to the hard drive. Is that really worth a crippled machine? Or the price? You can buy an older PC for the price of the Apple TV.

[capone2]

that makes me not want it. too bad

[Doctor Q]

For reference: Apple's tech spec page

Intel processor
40GB hard drive
HDMI (video and audio)
Component video
Optical audio
Analog RCA stereo audio
10/100BASE-T Ethernet
USB 2.0 (for service and diagnostics)
802.11n wireless networking
Built-in IR receiver (works with included Apple Remote)

[quagmire]

Originally Posted by capone2

that makes me not want it. too bad

Eh. Core Solo would of been preferable, but at least the Pentium M is better then the any of the Netburst architecture.

[Performa]

Originally Posted by quagmire

Eh. Core Solo would of been preferable, but at least the Pentium M is better then the any of the Netburst architecture.

Core Solo "would of" been preferable? I think you meant "would have" or "would've".

http://wvde.state.wv.us/tt/2002/gram...artip0039.html

sorry.....couldn't help myself.

[SPUY767]

Originally Posted by Performa

Core Solo "would of" been preferable? I think you meant "would have" or "would've".

http://wvde.state.wv.us/tt/2002/gram...artip0039.html

sorry.....couldn't help myself.

Wow, I don't even think that I'm that much of a dick.

[agentdavo]

The choice of graphics card is most interesting. Why not a GMA? Here are my thoughts.

I can smoothly decode BBC-HD with an Athlon 64 3000+ and Geforce 6600 with Power DVD Ultra 7.2 at 60% CPU. That is with nvidias superb hardware acceleration (purevideo) support enabled. Without we're looking at 15-20fps max at 100% cpu.

BBC-HD broadcast high profile 1080i H264 with MBAFF interlacing and 422 colorspace. It's pretty much the most difficult and processor intensive stream to decode/deinterlace you will find. Far more complex than the baseline profile Apple use for HD trailers.

I wonder if Apple are working hard with nvidia to bring purevideo support to the ATV/Mac. The movie trailers apple have are 1080p h264 baseline. With the 7400 GO and some driver/decoder optimisation the iTV would have no problem at all in decoding 1080p trailers.

I'm going to try underclocking my PC later to 1Ghz and try playing a 1080p trailer and watch the cpu usage. It would also be interesting to follow up on Accellent and see what framework is now available to 10.4.8 for decoding HD-DVD codecs.

http://www.defyne.org/dvb/accellent.html

Also of note is that nigel on the mythtv dev team has been working for the last year to add mpeg2 accellent to MythTV. Compile with --enable-mac-accel. :-)
http://cvs.mythtv.org/trac/ticket/1279

[Silentwave]

Originally Posted by capone2

that makes me not want it. too bad

Why?

The Core Solo/Core Duo chips used in the first gen of intel macs are all based on the Pentium M architecture, and the Core Microarchitecture in C2D and Woodcrest is for all intents and purposes the direct male-line descendant of that.

It's probably the Pentium M ultra-low-voltage Dothan 723, or something like that. It'd be interesting to see if it's socketed or soldered. Probably soldered, but if it were socketed....

I'd also look see if RAM could be jacked up

[Lord Blackadder]

Due to the relatively low price, it might be attractive as a base for modifications and hacks. Time will tell...

[nagromme]

It seems to have the lowest-cost chips that do the job. Makes sense to me.

Don't count on being able to hack it do do much more... but then again, they have iPods dual-booting Linux these days!

[Zatko]

I love most Apple products. I am also the target market for this device. I will most definately not purchase it... it's a complete dud from what I can see. Hopefully they go back to the drawing board and give me a reason to replace my Tivo or prevent me from getting a Slingbox.

[evilgEEk]

Originally Posted by Zatko

Hopefully they go back to the drawing board and give me a reason to replace my Tivo or prevent me from getting a Slingbox.

It's not meant to replace your TiVo. From what I see it's just another piece of hardware to work seamlessly with your iTunes library.

If it had DVR capabilities, great, but why would Apple include DVR software when most the TV shows that would be recorded are on the iTunes Store.

Apple's approaching this the say way they approached the iPod. They're just trying to pitch the iTunes Store, not necessarily the hardware that runs the media.

I think these specs are just fine for what the Apple tv will do for me.

[Scarlet Fever]

Originally Posted by Zatko

I love most Apple products. I am also the target market for this device. I will most definately not purchase it... it's a complete dud from what I can see. Hopefully they go back to the drawing board and give me a reason to replace my Tivo or prevent me from getting a Slingbox.

I'm not just refering to you here, but would you have bought it before you knew the specs?

[twoodcc]

Originally Posted by capone2

that makes me not want it. too bad

yeah, not impressed with pentium-m

[Evangelion]

Originally Posted by capone2

that makes me not want it. too bad

Why? AppleTV doesn't do anything CPU-intensive to begin with, so it doesn't need a fast processor. The only thing the processor and the GPU does is to display the GUI and play back files that are in the HD. Do you want it to have faster processor "just because"? I heard that the iPhone only has some crappy Arm-processor instead of quad-core Xeon. That makes me not want it. Too bad.

[Xyl]

Originally Posted by Evangelion

I heard that the iPhone only has some crappy Arm-processor instead of quad-core Xeon. That makes me not want it. Too bad.

WTF?!?! And I thought it had TWO quad-core Xeons.

I think all those complaining about the Pentium M processor must have absolutely no common sense at all. Obviously, the processor is good enough for what it's being used for. Would Apple sell a product that when used, will lag for 2 minutes every 20 seconds? I don't think so, and this is common sense. All those complaining thus need to start getting some common sense (if that's even possible ).