i see a lot of people agreeing with this.. but if can't download ANY hi def movie torrent with an avi or mkv extension and stream it to my tv then it won't be the media device for me. i'm looking to replace my xbmc here, not line apple's pockets with this 'rental' bs.
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Apple Introduces Updated Apple TV with Netflix Integration, TV Show Rentals
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i see a lot of people agreeing with this.. but if can't download ANY hi def movie torrent with an avi or mkv extension and stream it to my tv then it won't be the media device for me. i'm looking to replace my xbmc here, not line apple's pockets with this 'rental' bs.
This is one of the reasons my Rev A
TV always felt a bit "wrong". I have to run iTunes on my computer and type in some long number to "pair" it with my iTunes libary? WTF. I don't need to do that with my iPods/iPhones. Maybe with the advent of home sharing from iTunes 9+ that has improved.I also don't "get" why they didn't just make the Airport Extreme/Time Capsule capable of being used as cheap network storage for the original 40 GB
TV. Requiring a computer, running iTunes 10, to stream your own content from is just silly. There needs to be a no-GUI server version of iTunes, but the more bloated iTunes gets the harder it is to have that come to fruition.Again, I will get one of these. I have too much video in the iTunes ecosystem not to, but it still feels like a bit of a hobby.
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I also don't "get" why they didn't just make the Airport Extreme/Time Capsule capable of being used as cheap network storage for the original 40 GB
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Unfortunately, Apple is obstinate in using their own proprietary DAAP solution instead of the open, industry standard DLNA.
except the old ATV cost more than twice as much and did NOT allow you to stream from you iWhatever..
the thing about all the people miss saying why its not better than their ATV is that Apple is not selling this to them... that market has already failed... people were not buying ATV... I love mine, wouldnt have minded a faster better more storage space version of what I have, but my marketing group if you will did not step up to the plate.... most of us ignored the ATV.
this is being pitched to a totally different group that does not want to sync that does not want complicated (not that the ATV was), they know how to hook up wifi and hdmi and thats it.
my guess is this was developed with modest resources, if this business model shows sign of working then we will get a new better one next year.
as for wanting Apps on your tv.. just how would that work exactly? aps work on IOS4 by touch... would you have to have an ipad as a touch remote for it? Steve already ridiculed Flash as not working with touch.. he sees touch as the future... so perhaps in a software update the new apple tv becomes the wireless video output for the apps you have on your iDevice. not here yet.
for $99 it will be worth a play for a lot of people. Its going to do well.
So, like any PS3 or Xbox 360 or other DLNA client appliances out there ? Oh wait, those actually support more than just DAAP/MP4...
Nope, I this is aimed at people who don't know any better.
only 24hours
Am I the only one that has a problem with Apple TV having only 24 hours to finish a movie? If I start watching something at 10pm and I don't finish it, and then the next night I go to start watching it at 10pm, too bad, so sad, it's expired... Why can't they make it 30 hours, or even 26. So if I start watching it for 30 mins one night, I at least have a chance to finish it the next night.
Am I the only one that has a problem with Apple TV having only 24 hours to finish a movie? If I start watching something at 10pm and I don't finish it, and then the next night I go to start watching it at 10pm, too bad, so sad, it's expired... Why can't they make it 30 hours, or even 26. So if I start watching it for 30 mins one night, I at least have a chance to finish it the next night.
Does anybody know if the new Apple TV will support streaming iTunes and/or photos from an Apple TimeCapsule NAS drive instead of a Mac/PC with iTunes having to be turned on all the time?
I'd be very dissapointed if they don't allow this as I could see them launching a firmware update for the drive that allows this. So I'm very surprised there is no info yet about it supporting a TimeCapsule, will be very dissapointed if its not supported otherwise its not very good customer recognition of customer brand loyalty.
For me, I'm not even that bothered about iTunes as I tend to store that on my MacBook, but all our photos are stored on the TimeCapsule and I'd like to run them through a slideshow on my projector using the new AppleTV plugged into the projector and getting my photos off the TimeCapsule upstairs over WiFi
I'd be very dissapointed if they don't allow this as I could see them launching a firmware update for the drive that allows this. So I'm very surprised there is no info yet about it supporting a TimeCapsule, will be very dissapointed if its not supported otherwise its not very good customer recognition of customer brand loyalty.
For me, I'm not even that bothered about iTunes as I tend to store that on my MacBook, but all our photos are stored on the TimeCapsule and I'd like to run them through a slideshow on my projector using the new AppleTV plugged into the projector and getting my photos off the TimeCapsule upstairs over WiFi
you aren't getting 1080p OTA or from cable. Satellite has some 1080p ondemand rentals, that's it.
24 hours is STUPID
Rent it a 7pm on Friday and have till Sunday Midnight to finish it Duh!
That is 53 hours, so how about 60hr rentals.
Sometimes when you rent a movie something happens and you can't get back to it for a while. I have often not rented because of this. Or even had to go to torrent to get the movie I just rented so I can see how it ended without paying again for it.
After doing that a few times, guess what I started doing. Now look how much those stingy movie execs get from me. Nuttin! It's their own damn fault. I wanted to play fair but nooooooo!
Rent it a 7pm on Friday and have till Sunday Midnight to finish it Duh!
That is 53 hours, so how about 60hr rentals.
Sometimes when you rent a movie something happens and you can't get back to it for a while. I have often not rented because of this. Or even had to go to torrent to get the movie I just rented so I can see how it ended without paying again for it.
After doing that a few times, guess what I started doing. Now look how much those stingy movie execs get from me. Nuttin! It's their own damn fault. I wanted to play fair but nooooooo!
Rental period
Not so fast. The rental period is for 30 days. Once you press PLAY, it is unlimited viewings for 48 hours, so, no, it isn't exactly new and unfortunately, does not let you have unlimited views for the 30 days. :-(
Not so fast. The rental period is for 30 days. Once you press PLAY, it is unlimited viewings for 48 hours, so, no, it isn't exactly new and unfortunately, does not let you have unlimited views for the 30 days. :-(
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I don't think anyone knows for sure yet. The guess is probably not, just like the existing
TV. If it did have a built-in feature to connect with a NAS drive, that would nail a very popular wish for a way to have lots of on-demand storage without having to have the Mac turned on all the time. That probably would have a been a big enough feature to tout in the presentation, instead of trying to sell everyone that nobody wants to worry about storage/storage management... and that everybody wants to stream. My guess is the best hope for storage is that USB port. If the hackers can hack that port, maybe they can bring back local storage through it. I think yesterday's presentation would have been just as impressive if Steve had pitched something like:
"...some customers said they don't want to pay for a hard drive inside and other customers said they wanted much greater storage than we shipped in the original version. If we choose the storage size, we can't get it so that it is right for everyone. So the new
TV comes with a USB port so that you can attach any amount of storage desired by those that want storage. And if you don't want to attach storage, the TV will stream everything from your computer. That way everybody can get what they want."A NAS solution would have taken a few more sentences, and maybe added some techie confusion. But it could have been left out of the pitch, yet still been there. If there could have been endorsed USB storage, it would only be a bit of software to support local storage via network.
Still doesn't explain why they don't implement a lightweight DAAP server on their network appliances. Many NAS units include Firefly to do just that, but unhacked HDD based
TV won't stream from Firefly's DAAP due to the extra handshaking required. B
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I appreciate your bias in favor or "720p is good enough", but those wouldn't be the only 2 choices. There is no rule that says had it come out with 1080p hardware, it would have been a requirement to over-compress the 1080p video files. Instead, the 1080p file could have been just as optimized as the the "lesser compression" 720p files that you prefer. Yes, that would have resulted in bigger files to download, slower downloads, etc, but it makes little sense to justify 720p as the right choice because the ONLY alternative would have been thoroughly (over)compressed 1080p.
First, there is no 1080p over the air- that's 1080i. Your cable company may broadcast some 1080p, but probably only as a selection of VOD movies.
Second, if you really can't see the difference, odds are good that:
- your HDTV is optimized for 1280 x 720 (720p)
- you have a small screen where resolution differences are not that big of a deal
- your sit far enough away from the set that your eyes can't make out the added detail
- you have bad eyes- get them checked
Trying to convince the 1080p'ers that they should be happy with the hardware limitation because you are happy, and using illogical reasoning like the ONLY option for 1080p content would have had to be heavily (over)compressed content makes no sense at all.
IMHO the missed opportunity continues to be (ever since the 40 GB
TV was introduced) is a simple tie in to the Time Capsule/Airport Extreme. No need to support generic NAS or DLNA or anything like that. "You want local always-on storage? Just use your Time Caspule or connect a drive to your Airport Extreme."
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Nevermind the fact that most OTA HD is still MPEG2 which requires more bandwidth than MPEG4 (H.264) to look as good.
Yeah, except ....
If I'm understanding this right, you could still purchase whatever iTunes content you wanted from iTunes on a Mac or PC, and just store it there. Then the new AppleTV would be able to stream those shows, on demand, from the Mac or PC as long as it was left on with iTunes running.
That sounds like a really good arrangement to me, because having purchased content stuck on an AppleTV box isn't nearly as safe/secure a place for it as on a regular computer that can do nightly backups and/or even be configured with 2 hard drives in a RAID mirror.
If I'm understanding this right, you could still purchase whatever iTunes content you wanted from iTunes on a Mac or PC, and just store it there. Then the new AppleTV would be able to stream those shows, on demand, from the Mac or PC as long as it was left on with iTunes running.
That sounds like a really good arrangement to me, because having purchased content stuck on an AppleTV box isn't nearly as safe/secure a place for it as on a regular computer that can do nightly backups and/or even be configured with 2 hard drives in a RAID mirror.
Leading up to the announcement, I said I was going to replace the living room
We have that same ability now, plus we can buy stuff from the AppleTV to later sync back to our computer. How is the new way superior to that?
In my opinion, I don't think any normal person has any idea what DLNA is. Normal people (meaning non-techies) may have DLNA devices, but they probably don't run a DLNA server. And anyone that participates in this forum (and others like it) are not normal people (excepting those with tech problems and have stumbled on via Google).
I agree that the aTV is geared towards folks with iTunes media. There's no arguement there.
However, I do want to bring up some issues with DLNA that I've come across in my quest for the perfect media device. Perhaps it's a sony thing, but DLNA is as cut and dry as I might like it to be. For example, the Sony BD player that I'm looking at (BDP-S570) is DLNA capable, but the codecs supported via DLNA is not the same as the codecs supported via USB. It's very confusing. Also, it seems as though running a DLNA server isn't easiest thing to setup, at least on Macs.
Still doesn't explain why they don't implement a lightweight DAAP server on their network appliances. Many NAS units include Firefly to do just that, but unhacked HDD based
It wouldn't matter if they implemented DLNA. You wouldn't need them to then implement a lighweight iTunes server on things like Time Capsule or Airport, because you'd have your pick of any DLNA streaming solution out there, which includes most NAS and software media servers to things like Pogoplug.
Uh ? Get an easier one to setup then*. It's not like there's only one.
I'd wager a lot of people do have DLNA servers and don't even know about it. It shows up just fine on their PS3 that auto-discovers all of it and they stream movies/music without a clue about even what it is that enables them to. That's what DLNA was designed for, normal folks without a clue.
Well, the market consisting of folks that "don't know any better" is much larger than the market consisting of folks that do. I'm guessing Apple knows exactly the market they're tapping and they think they can make more money by going after the average consumer.
IMHO ftaok's experience/comments is exactly why Apple stays away from DLNA. The MP4/M4V/M4A/MP3 walled garden guarantees compatibility and thus just works and is less confusing. DLNA is like AVI it means little if you don't have the right codec.
it's the "Keep it Simple, Stupid" approach.
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re: missed opportunity
I completely agree, but the more I ponder WHY Apple keeps dodging this obviously useful product idea -- the more I think they're just not confident they have anything to offer that positions itself uniquely in the market as a "game changer". With Apple, if they don't think they've outdone everyone else with a given device, they don't release it.
A lot of people are fairly happy with those HP media server systems, especially since they added OS X compatibility for such things as Time Machine backups and iTunes/iPhoto.
Apple probably feels that currently, it's still only the "power user" types who express interest in having a media server computer in their home. And if it's for a departmental server of some sort in an office? They'd rather "upsell" those people on an XServe server or even a Mac Mini Server.
To get the "Average Joe" interested in actually buying a dedicated machine to serve content to other computers in the house, it'd have to be "drop it in and go" easy to use. That probably means not even so much as making the user learn how to connect to "shared network drives" or anything like that. It needs to just "appear" as more storage, and things like Time Machine on a Mac would ideally just see it was there and proactively prompt the user "Would you like to start putting your backups on this media server now?"
Not sure Apple has the available manpower to construct and QA test such a thing at the moment? (They still have a lot on their plate squaring away things like the latest iOS for the iPads and already seem to have borrowed developers from OS X to get that and the new iPhone going 100%.)
I completely agree, but the more I ponder WHY Apple keeps dodging this obviously useful product idea -- the more I think they're just not confident they have anything to offer that positions itself uniquely in the market as a "game changer". With Apple, if they don't think they've outdone everyone else with a given device, they don't release it.
A lot of people are fairly happy with those HP media server systems, especially since they added OS X compatibility for such things as Time Machine backups and iTunes/iPhoto.
Apple probably feels that currently, it's still only the "power user" types who express interest in having a media server computer in their home. And if it's for a departmental server of some sort in an office? They'd rather "upsell" those people on an XServe server or even a Mac Mini Server.
To get the "Average Joe" interested in actually buying a dedicated machine to serve content to other computers in the house, it'd have to be "drop it in and go" easy to use. That probably means not even so much as making the user learn how to connect to "shared network drives" or anything like that. It needs to just "appear" as more storage, and things like Time Machine on a Mac would ideally just see it was there and proactively prompt the user "Would you like to start putting your backups on this media server now?"
Not sure Apple has the available manpower to construct and QA test such a thing at the moment? (They still have a lot on their plate squaring away things like the latest iOS for the iPads and already seem to have borrowed developers from OS X to get that and the new iPhone going 100%.)
IMHO the missed opportunity continues to be (ever since the 40 GB
"You want local always-on storage? Just use your Time Caspule or connect a drive to your Airport Extreme."
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