NT1440
macrumors P6
The a4 has been shown to be fully capable of 1080p. It's not that it can't, its just if it DID it eat bandwidth like crazy.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Confirms No Software Update for Original Apple TV
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The a4 has been shown to be fully capable of 1080p. It's not that it can't, its just if it DID it eat bandwidth like crazy.
How about the hardware design sucked as well as the marketing? The first generation Apple TV has been a Red Headed Stepchild from inception. Sell it off on eBay and move on!
madmax_2069
macrumors 6502a
WTF no netflix for the old Apple TV.
They are acting like its some sort of hardware limitation. come on Apple it should be rather easy to port over the software to allow Netflix.
They are acting like its some sort of hardware limitation. come on Apple it should be rather easy to port over the software to allow Netflix.
DMann
macrumors 601
And what, exactly, do you presume Xerox was going to do with that all-but-abandoned PARC project?
Do you believe that it would ever have seen the light of day, had it not been for Apple, who bartered it for a substantial quantity of pre-IPO shares of stock, developed it, and made something out of it?
This hardly constitutes stealing.
No more than it would be considered stealing that Jobs picked up Pixar from George Lucas, for a song, and lead it to the success that it is today.
Business agreements do not necessarily equate to stealing, nor do ideas become successful based on the merits of their concepts alone.
ovrlrd
macrumors 65816
Easy to port the software to allow Netflix? You realize the new Apple TV is a completely different hardware platform. The move to x86 to ARM based (like the iPhone) is not exactly an easy transition, I am sure having iOS already pretty well developed helped a lot in making Netflix work on the new one.
As for the old Apple TV, they would essentially have to write the Netflix app from scratch, rather than just asking the Netflix people to change their iOS app slightly to make it work with the new one.
Sure it is possible. Is it easy? Not really. It could be done, but it would cost Apple development time and money. Considering they consider the Apple TV a "hobby" I really doubt they want to invest in something like this when they clearly see the new Apple TV as the future and the old one as the past.
If they said they were going to keep selling the old Apple TV despite dropping support, that would be messed up, but they have clearly stated that the old Apple TV is being discontinued, both in software and hardware.
Want to do a bit of research first?
The old Apple TV did not have a Core 2 Duo, it had a Pentium M chip Source
As the article states it is a 1Ghz chip which is under-clocked for the Apple TV. Last time I checked, 1Ghz A4 chip has a faster clock speed than an under-clocked 1Ghz Pentium M.
ovrlrd
macrumors 65816
Not just that but anyone who compares two chips with completely different architectures (one being x86, and one being ARM) as if they are even comparable is completely full of it. I am not saying your comparison isn't valid, because you are just trying to prove a point which shouldn't have to be necessary in the first place.
The bottom line is that the A4 processor is already known to be capable of 1080p, the more important question is if the video chip in the Apple TV is capable of handling it. Considering the old one can output 1080p, but not playback 1080p video (extremely important distinction), it seems likely to be the case.
Ultimately none of this is important anyway, Apple picked 720p as their specs, whether you can hack it to do 1080p video playback or not doesn't matter.
eye
macrumors 6502a
I ordered an new $99 apple tv yesterday. I hope this sucker is gonna be good. Its a no brainer since i have and Ipad, Iphone 4 and and a third gen itouch....gonna ebay that itouch...and get a new itouch.
By stole, I assume you mean bought. I think it was 100,000 shares in Apple for 1,000,000 dollars for access to all of PARC's work.
Hacking the ATV is not the ideal solution. I had Boxee and Netflix running on my hacked ATV for about a month then the menus would lock up. Had to do a full restore and I have not hacked it again. Quite different from my macMini PC in the home theater set up running Boxee, Plex and Netflix without these annoying hiccups.
MagnusVonMagnum
macrumors 603
By "stole" I mean as in "artistically ripped off" as in "it's not original". But if you want to talk about something much more legally blurry, those Blue Boxes that Jobs and Woz made for money in college weren't original either. They imitated the phone company's operator tones (although I don't think they had Bell's permission in that case). I've heard that's where Steve and Steve got the money to first found Apple in the garage. I just find that ironic. Even if that's not literally true (where the money came from for that particular venture), it's still the moral foundation Apple is based upon. I guess as you get older, the world looks much greener, as in ripe for the picking and as in do as we say and not as we did.
I'm pretty sure Apple's developer tools take care of most of the work seeing as the developer kit for iOS can run a simulated iPhone right on your Mac including the apps you develop for it. OSX is still OSX, so it's probably just a bit more than a recompile. I doubt it would take one of Apple's developers more than a few days to update the old software to run something. But the problem is that Apple hasn't been updating Apple's OS at all. It's still based on TIGER, two operating systems later. And I think if Apple had supported older GPU hardware acceleration as Microsoft did, there's at least a good chance, 1080p might have worked on the original AppleTV (seeing as 1080p will play on Intel's lackluster bare-bones GMA on-board video on a $250 netbook these days with some hardware acceleration used to reduce the CPU load.)
But since Apple TV was just a "hobby" that they decided to sell, so it got no major updates and no major OS core support and no major anything really since V2.0 added rentals. And as we know from the lack of early iOS device support in the current iOS operating system and the current lack of iTunes 10 support for Tiger users (and Safari 5 as well), while an operating system known as WindowsXP that is 2x older than Tiger keeps getting updates. Yes, Apple treats their own user base like crap while they treat Windows users like the honored guests to a party. That bank commercial where the new kid gets the ice cream, but the kid that was there slightly longer does not comes to mind in how Apple treats people. Look! Check out a Mac PC users! WOW! Check out the iPhone! WOW! Oh wait, you already have one and it's 2 years old. Go buy a new one already! 🙄
green86
macrumors 6502a
Want to do a bit of research first?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_rate
1Ghz is 1Ghz. The have the same clock rate. One chip maybe faster then the other at the same, but the 1Ghz A4 chip is the same clock speed lol.
And where did you get the A4 > Pentium?
eye
macrumors 6502a
Mine runs like a champ. Might be inconsistencies with different Apple TV's or some software.
No, I don't need to do any research, I have a degree in computer science.
The magic word you don't seem to understand is underclocked.
Seeing as you see Wikipedia as the font of all knowledge, here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underclocking
As both my post and the article I linked to mentioned, the Pentium M chip in the original Apple TV is underclocked.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M It's clear that the low end 1Ghz chip has a FSB of 400Mhz.
From the article I linked to: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/01/15/pentium_m_based_intel_chip_at_heart_of_apple_tv.html
So if a chip is underclocked from running on a 400Mhz bus to a 350Mhz bus, based on the multiplier, the clock speed of the Apple TV is 875Mhz.
And in case you need it spelt out for you, 875Mhz < 1000Mhz.
Shame, but...
I am one of the 1st gen Apple TV owners Steve Jobs referred to in his keynote, ie. I love mine.
That said, I love it mostly because I hacked it and get lots on there Apple wouldn't give me. Mine gets used most days, so I'm not crying about the new one, especially as Apple has the cheek to charge the same in £ as they do in $ for it!
I am one of the 1st gen Apple TV owners Steve Jobs referred to in his keynote, ie. I love mine.
That said, I love it mostly because I hacked it and get lots on there Apple wouldn't give me. Mine gets used most days, so I'm not crying about the new one, especially as Apple has the cheek to charge the same in £ as they do in $ for it!
GamecockMac
macrumors 6502a
Bingo. You've figured out what most regular members of this forum have known for a long time. You can't use reason or logic or facts in an argument with a dedicated Apple hater who has so little social life that they can spend the majority of their free time trolling MacRumors spreading FUD.
Well, it must be because Microsoft is spending so much cash buying puppies for poor kids and running soup kitchens for the homeless around the globe, right? Because they are the nice multinational corporation. 🙄
green86
macrumors 6502a
This. Is. All. Wrong.
Did you even read the articles you linked to? If not, I'll copy and paste for you, saving you from the trouble of reading all those words:
"Underclocking" also known as "Downclocking" is the practice of modifying a synchronous circuit's timing settings to run at a lower clock rate than it was specified to operate at.
And I don't think wikipedia is the font of all knowledge, I guess linking to one page means I uses it as my only resource right? That makes sense.
What this means, since I have to spell it out, that if the Pentium M is rated to run, say, at 1.8Ghz, it only runs at 1 Ghz in the Apple TV.
The Pentium definitely runs runs at 1 Ghz on a 400Mhz bus btw:
http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/04/01/mac-os-x-running-on-apple-tv/
People have got OS X to run on Apple TVs, and there is a picture of system profiler running, which clearly states that the ATV is operating at 1 Ghz on a 400 Mhz bus... so your completely wrong about the 350Mhz/875Mhz thing.
And in case you need it spelt out for you, 1000Mhz = 1000Mhz.