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Apple Introduces Updated Apple TV with Netflix Integration, TV Show Rentals
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And again... International Taxes. It comes from the US. As for anything you buy from the US and you are not in the US you pay taxes on it. This applies to some other countries too.
You're wrong in assuming that viewing distance is only related to the screen's size. You're wrong in stating that a 1280x720 image is 'fundamentally' the same as a 1920x1080 image delivered using two interlaced fields. Educate yourself.
720p at 4Mps looks better then 1080p at 4Mps
This argument doesn't seem relevant to the topic of Apple TV and internet delivered content. You can not decouple the bandwidth from the resolution. Realistically streaming video over today's networks tops out at 3-5Mps. I find this bit-rate to be insufficient for heavy motion scenes in 1080p resulting in substantial macroblocking. Lowering the resolution to 720p provides the extra headroom for a subjectively clearer experience.
The fact that services like Vudo look better in their 1080p offerings has more to do with doubling of the bite-rate (2Mps vs 4Mps) then the increase in resolution. It is a shame that public demand for 1080p is actually resulting in less quality from these online services.
This argument doesn't seem relevant to the topic of Apple TV and internet delivered content. You can not decouple the bandwidth from the resolution. Realistically streaming video over today's networks tops out at 3-5Mps. I find this bit-rate to be insufficient for heavy motion scenes in 1080p resulting in substantial macroblocking. Lowering the resolution to 720p provides the extra headroom for a subjectively clearer experience.
The fact that services like Vudo look better in their 1080p offerings has more to do with doubling of the bite-rate (2Mps vs 4Mps) then the increase in resolution. It is a shame that public demand for 1080p is actually resulting in less quality from these online services.
Will there be any way I wonder for the folks at Fire Core to update ATV Flash for this? I hope so....Will there be the internal space for them to stick Boxee and the browser and the tools to connect an external drive?
Podcasts?
Also it looks like they removed the ability to play Podcasts. This one of the most used features on my current Apple TV. Disappointing! Hopefully, someone will tell me I'm wrong about this..
Also it looks like they removed the ability to play Podcasts. This one of the most used features on my current Apple TV. Disappointing! Hopefully, someone will tell me I'm wrong about this..
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
There's always the cheerleaders here trying to justify Apple regardless of whether it's good or bad. Had Apple rolled out a 1080p version today, these same people would not be identifying it as a big mistake, griping about what a waste it will be to download the bigger files, crying about bandwidth constraints, etc. They would be gushing how great it is that we have a real head-to-head competitor for the "bag of hurt". Always positive- whatever Apple says is THE way forward... until Apple says something else.
Instead, Apple rolled out 720p MAX (again. In 2010!!!) And this same group will play all cards to justify why it makes sense, as if convincing others to be happy with 720p somehow benefits them in some way too.
I own several
TVs. They're great! But they had 720p limitations on hardware that was new in 2006. I have a 1080HDTV that I bought about 4 years before that. Apple gives us all these tools to easily make and play and store 1080i/p content. 1080p home movies, etc. will even go right into iTunes. But the last link in the chain between iTunes and our 1080HDTVs is still handicapped at 720p max. In 2010.
My money was so ready to flow to Apple. Now I only see "smaller", "netflix", and probably a more robust UI as the reasons to replace 2006 hardware. Is "smaller" relevant at all for a box you put in place once and probably don't move for years?
Netflix and a faster brain is nice. $99 too. But it is 2010. BD may be a bag of hurt, but it remains the "Joe Sixpack" way to put 1080p content on a 1080p HDTV. A lot of BD players also have Netflix and fast brains. And sell for about $100.
Maybe we'll finally get what everyone wants- not just the "720p is good enough" crowd, with the next version from Apple: the Apple TV micro, the size of the 2010 nano, with even less ports and 1080p.
2014 will be a great year!
Instead, Apple rolled out 720p MAX (again. In 2010!!!) And this same group will play all cards to justify why it makes sense, as if convincing others to be happy with 720p somehow benefits them in some way too.
I own several
TVs. They're great! But they had 720p limitations on hardware that was new in 2006. I have a 1080HDTV that I bought about 4 years before that. Apple gives us all these tools to easily make and play and store 1080i/p content. 1080p home movies, etc. will even go right into iTunes. But the last link in the chain between iTunes and our 1080HDTVs is still handicapped at 720p max. In 2010.My money was so ready to flow to Apple. Now I only see "smaller", "netflix", and probably a more robust UI as the reasons to replace 2006 hardware. Is "smaller" relevant at all for a box you put in place once and probably don't move for years?
Netflix and a faster brain is nice. $99 too. But it is 2010. BD may be a bag of hurt, but it remains the "Joe Sixpack" way to put 1080p content on a 1080p HDTV. A lot of BD players also have Netflix and fast brains. And sell for about $100.
Maybe we'll finally get what everyone wants- not just the "720p is good enough" crowd, with the next version from Apple: the Apple TV micro, the size of the 2010 nano, with even less ports and 1080p.
2014 will be a great year!
maybe so. at least there is no bitrate limitation specified on the
TV this time. so i assume we can playback 40mbit 720p streams. the PSU is only 6watt, cant exactly push LOADS of power out of that A4 chip can we!?1080p compatibility (@40mbit) sure would have been nice, it would have replaced my PS3 + PS3 Media Server.
I'm confused
Netflix has hundreds of movies online....iTunes has hundreds of movies online. Netflix has lots of TV shows online....iTunes has lots of TV shows online. Netflix has a great subscription option....iTUNES DOES NOT.
Why the heck can't Apple work out a deal like the one that Netflix has had for freaking years?! I don't want to pay .99 to watch a stupid TV show. I want to be able to pay a flat fee and watch whatever I want whenever I want. iTunes could provide that if they'd move to a subscription model (even if you had to have an AppleTV to take advantage of it). I'm confused.
As someone who already owns an AppleTV I really have about zero incentive to buy this supposed "upgrade". Sorry Jobs, if this is the best you can come up with after 4 years don't be surprised about another 4 years of lackluster sales.
Netflix has hundreds of movies online....iTunes has hundreds of movies online. Netflix has lots of TV shows online....iTunes has lots of TV shows online. Netflix has a great subscription option....iTUNES DOES NOT.
Why the heck can't Apple work out a deal like the one that Netflix has had for freaking years?! I don't want to pay .99 to watch a stupid TV show. I want to be able to pay a flat fee and watch whatever I want whenever I want. iTunes could provide that if they'd move to a subscription model (even if you had to have an AppleTV to take advantage of it). I'm confused.
As someone who already owns an AppleTV I really have about zero incentive to buy this supposed "upgrade". Sorry Jobs, if this is the best you can come up with after 4 years don't be surprised about another 4 years of lackluster sales.
I have 4 of them and never bricked anything. It seems pressing "Ok" button when new firmware is detected pop up shown on remote control it too much for you to handle...(do not take it personally, it is just so unfortunate, you had so serious issue with firmware updates, especially because of fw updates do not require much of user interactions at all, just a few minutes of patience).
I use NDLA server - it has nice search and organization features, so I could not comment on what issues you have with raw source interface (network shares, iso local USB HD and etc.)
I use "list" mode to browse content and "by date" search feature on NDLA, so I could locate recent movies with a few clicks.
Any large library 500-1000 items will be an issue on any device without special search assistance features...
TV will not be an exception from it.Sorta... it's close to the same max pixels per second, but in most circumstances, this doesn't matter. Assuming that your TV is a relatively new model with a progressive display the odd and even fields are merged before being drawn as a single 1080p frame. The down side to 1080i is that it tops out at 30FPS vs 720p at 60FPS.
That said, most content is at 24-30 frames per second, effectively wasting half of the throughput in 720p.
By and large, on a progressive display 1080i = 1080p so long as the FPS is <= 30.
(in theory 1080p does have a bit more color range, but this can generally be ignored for most TV's)
If you cant tell the difference between 720p and 1080i, it's probably due to compression, not the limits of the spec.
Ok first off I'm gonna go on an off topic rant:
WTF is up with list WD put up,it's a freacking mess and completely confusing,look at mkv "MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1)"
h.264 and avc = same thing and x.264 is an encoder for h.264 (strach that "x.264" doesn't exist,they mean x264,i know it's only a dot but still) so it has no business being listed.It's as if they had said "MKV (h.264, h.264, h.264, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1)"
All through the list they keep switching between "h.264" and "avc" just pick one and stick with it
Some minor stuff (or "stuff most people don't care about"):
"AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4)" AVC in an AVI container is an abomination that shouldn't exist and xvid makes mpeg4 video so it's as if they had listed mpeg4 twice.But if they didn't put xvid and just mpeg4 I guess people would think they couldn't play their files so I can understand.
Rant over
On topic:
In can work because this thing isn't targeted at me (a guy who downloads anime fansubs that are mkv files with .ass subtitles and high profile H.264 codec) but at your average joe that just wants a to rent a movie.And there's a lot more of average joe's than people like me.
If the person is just gonna rent a show from itunes,there's no need to support any other format than those itunes is using,if you want to rip your dvds just use handbrake to create a file that will play on it (hell even handbrake droped avi and xvid support a year ago).
I'm shocked -- SHOCKED!! -- that a hundred-dollar device is aimed at mass market consumers instead of guys with terrabytes of Blu-Ray movies! OMG FAIL!
Hint: if you know enough to be complaining about the Apple TV's lack of codec support, then you are not the target market for this device. You're supposed to spend $700 on a Mac Mini.
There's reason to be a little underwhelmed by what Jobs announced about Apple TV today, but anybody complaining that it doesn't support MKV or 1080p or whatever is ignoring everything that Apple has done since they started making consumer electronics devices as well as computers.
Hint: if you know enough to be complaining about the Apple TV's lack of codec support, then you are not the target market for this device. You're supposed to spend $700 on a Mac Mini.
There's reason to be a little underwhelmed by what Jobs announced about Apple TV today, but anybody complaining that it doesn't support MKV or 1080p or whatever is ignoring everything that Apple has done since they started making consumer electronics devices as well as computers.
Un fxxxking believable, why do we always have to pay through the nose. The world really does only revolve around Apple US..
The problems is that in 2010, the vast majority of internet service in the USA (where Apple hosts there servers) are too slow to provide 1080p content real time w/o severe macroblocking. For the bandwidth available in 2010, 720p provides the best quality. Increasing the limit to 1080p would only serve to REDUCE video quality for the sake of a marketing bullet point.
It's like having a 20MP camera with a cheap lens and poor low light performance.
OMG, someone get this man a cookie!
I think we have a thread winnar
Seriously, well said. These folks talking about the features missing from Apple TV aren't really getting it.
This product isn't for you.
Netflix has hundreds of movies online....iTunes has hundreds of movies online. Netflix has lots of TV shows online....iTunes has lots of TV shows online. Netflix has a great subscription option....iTUNES DOES NOT.
Why the heck can't Apple work out a deal like the one that Netflix has had for freaking years?! I don't want to pay .99 to watch a stupid TV show. I want to be able to pay a flat fee and watch whatever I want whenever I want. iTunes could provide that if they'd move to a subscription model (even if you had to have an AppleTV to take advantage of it). I'm confused.
As someone who already owns an AppleTV I really have about zero incentive to buy this supposed "upgrade". Sorry Jobs, if this is the best you can come up with after 4 years don't be surprised about another 4 years of lackluster sales.
I would have thought that anybody who reads this site would be completely familiar with all the rumors that Apple have been trying to do exactly that, but that the networks and studios have balked because they don't want Apple to have as much power in video as they've gained in music. They've seen how Apple has grown to dominate the music industry and they're terrified.
My math skills are fine, thanks. I was not referring to any specific reference of pricing (and especially not any Apple UK site), but to the seemingly endless UK complaining about every price ever, apparently without any memory of previous discussions that thoroughly spelled out why that price difference might be justified.
Mate, I've got a Masters in Software Engineering and work as a sysadmin. I've got tech-savvy coming out of my arse. I just don't see the point in ripping my entire movie collection - especially if I have to waste money on a drive that Apple should be including in their hardware by now. CDs I get, I can listen to the same album several times in the same day, but my films just don't get that sort of rotation. I also tend to look after them, so that despite having bought DVDs since the late 90s I still don't have a dead one.
Speaking of education...How's this...
The math says it all
1080i = 1920x540 pixels = 1036800 total pixels
720p = 1280x720 pixels = 921600 total pixels
or a difference of 115200 pixels. So per frame 1080i wins with more data / pixel resolution.
Frame rate however tells another story. 720 is often 60p (progressive) while 1080i is 60i (interlaced). One of the reasons ESPN /FOX / ABC use 72060p is due to the high amount of sports programing in those channels. There is a lot less tearing / distortion and better image quality with 60 progressive frames rather than 60 interlaced. Also if you combine the 2 fields of the 1080i signal together to form your complete picture you reduce the effective data stream to 30 progressive frames per second. So in the end during a 1 second period you have the following amount of data / actual pixel information available:
1080i = 540p30 or 1036800 x 30p/s = 31104000 pixels of data
720p = 921600 x 60p/s = 55296000 pixels of data
720p wins with 24192000 more pixels if data (77% more pixels)
So it depends on what you want Frame Rate of Resolution. For me more data = better picture.
So in the end 720p60 provides more actual data and information to process for a "better" picture but with lower resolution. One caveat...if the Apple TV is only 720p24 obviously 1080i60 would be better.