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Apple Launches Apple TV 3.0 Software and iTunes 9.0.2

Sky Blue said:
Plex > Apple TV 3.0
Click to expand...

Absolutely! Except for me I am more interested in XBMC.

No way I will be updating to a "sleeker UI" while loosing all of the functionality that I actually use my AppleTV for - a media extension for all of my media - movies, tv shows, music, photos, etc in any format/codec i wish.

once a 3.0 hack is available...then i'll download...
 
As much of an Apple Fanboy as I am, I don't get the Apple TV. It is just not worth $225 for very limited functionality. After much debate I bought 2 old IBM Thinkcenter PCs from ebay for about $80 a pop including shipping. These are built rock solid and came with 512MB RAM and 80GB HD. Spent a little $$ and got nice HDMI video cards, additional memory (Upgraded to 2GB), remote control with USB IR receiver, wireless keyboard/mouse. All in all for about $220 a piece I have nice HTPCs running Vista Home Premium in my living room and bedroom. I can stream blu-ray disks over my LAN to my living room and bedroom apart from all my DVDs, home videos, photos, music and most importantly I have the Media Center Netflix plug-in. Basically soup to nuts including iTunes and Amazon Video purchases. Since I have a wireless keyboard I can browse, watch HuLu content, YouTube and whatever else I want.

I simply rip my DVDs and Blu-ray discs in ISO format and have MyMovies plugin for Windows Media Center. As much as I hate Windows I have to admit there is no better setup than this out there today. And it has been working reliably for a few months now. I don't want to be restricted just to the iTunes store and I want to play DVD and Blu-ray discs. These PCs came with DVD drives so I can play a physical DVD disk if I want to. These are Pentium 3.2 Ghz PCs 4 year old PCs. They play Blu-ray just fine. Never had a problem. I use PowerDVD to play Blu-ray and DVD and it integrates well into Media Center. I love the freedom it gives me. No need to worry about unsupported codecs and Blu-ray support. It is all there.:D
 
mambodancer said:
I'm going to make a prediction here:

Apple will release the Slate/Tablet in 2010

It will support in App purchase via iTunes as will AppleTV

Current Apps can be scaled to work on the new device (and AppleTV)

The Apps will be playable over LAN via Tablets or AppleTV

The slates can be used as wireless controllers to control the AppleTV or as control surfaces to play games head to head or connect via Bluetooth to iMacs and used as Touch Keyboards and Pads.

A more Far out prediction:

AppleTV will finally see a hardware update. It will (obviously) include faster processors, more RAM and a bigger hard drive.

It will include Display port and display port sharing.

It will not have Blu-Ray.

Netflix will be included when Apple announces a strategic alliance with Netflix in 2010. You will be able to Stream (netflix), Rent or Buy movies through iTunes and the AppleTV. There will be a Buy link to iTunes if the movie in your netflix queue is available to purchase from the iTunes store.

Apple will announce the purchase of a major production company and begin producing content for a new service dubbed the Apple Channel. It will include Movies and TV shows produced by Apple/Pixar/Disney and Independent film makers.

Apple and Google announce a free Nation wide high speed internet service with unlimited voice and data in 2011. They begin by rolling out WiMax (or some better derivative) in the largest market places and then begin to blanket the country by 2012. Qwest, ATT, Comcast, etc. lobby congress to forbid the creation of this joint company citing unfair competitive advantages.

Singularity on December 31st, 2012
Click to expand...

You almost got it all right. But everyone knows that singularity hits on Dec 20.
 
DVD Content?

cmendill said:
This is a really great idea. I actually wrote apple feedback this morning suggesting ATV App Store. Apple needs to really step in and change the way we watch TV -- and not just by adapting the itunes music store model to video. With an ATV App Store, Apple would sell way more ATVs.

Lets get going here future.
Click to expand...

I've done the same. Hopefully if enough people start asking for and ATV App Store, they might actually do something about it.

For those who don't have time to find the feedback page, here it is

Something curious to note, on that page the very last option for the "What do you use your Apple TV for?" section is
Watch content from DVDs
Click to expand...

See screenie attached. Red Annotation Added

Does anyone know if there is a "supported" way to do this?
 

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If you go into Parental settings you can now hide the iTunes store on the apple TV, at last. Its worth updating just to get it back to how it was with Apple TV 1.0.

If I'd wanted to turn my apple TV into an itunes store extender box, I would have asked for it Apple !! Thank you for allowing me to turn it of at last !! :)
 
itu & audiobooks

It'd be nice if iTunesU content was not placed in the same place as movies are.
 
Apple, just do the right thing with the Pre and have itunes brick the device.

I don't know why that's so hard for them to do.
 
Speedy2 said:
It's actually a Pentium-M (the D would be a power hungry dual core)

The next hardware iteration will most likely have an Atom CPU paired with Nvidia's Ion platform. At least that would make the most sense.

Core 2 is too expensive and too power hungry, and in fact , if you have a GPU chipset that supports HD decoding in hardware, you won't need that much more CPU power than the current device has.
Click to expand...

Yes, I had the wrong CPU there.

I think you might be missing my point. ATV needs to evolve into more than something that plays music and videos. I think it needs to turn into more what the PS3/XBox 360 is with integration with the iPhone/Touch.

The older C2D chips aren't all the expensive. I'm basically proposing they turn the ATV into a slimmer MacMini. Maybe Atom/Ion would work instead of C2D/9400M, but I know that combo will run most of the games that are available for the Mac at this time and I'm not sure if Atom/Ion will run it as well. If it can and it's cheaper, then by all means use that instead.
 
thecypher said:
As much of an Apple Fanboy as I am, I don't get the Apple TV. It is just not worth $225 for very limited functionality. After much debate I bought 2 old IBM Thinkcenter PCs from ebay for about $80 a pop including shipping. These are built rock solid and came with 512MB RAM and 80GB HD. Spent a little $$ and got nice HDMI video cards, additional memory (Upgraded to 2GB), remote control with USB IR receiver, wireless keyboard/mouse. All in all for about $220 a piece I have nice HTPCs running Vista Home Premium in my living room and bedroom. I can stream blu-ray disks over my LAN to my living room and bedroom apart from all my DVDs, home videos, photos, music and most importantly I have the Media Center Netflix plug-in. Basically soup to nuts including iTunes and Amazon Video purchases. Since I have a wireless keyboard I can browse, watch HuLu content, YouTube and whatever else I want.

I simply rip my DVDs and Blu-ray discs in ISO format and have MyMovies plugin for Windows Media Center. As much as I hate Windows I have to admit there is no better setup than this out there today. And it has been working reliably for a few months now. I don't want to be restricted just to the iTunes store and I want to play DVD and Blu-ray discs. These PCs came with DVD drives so I can play a physical DVD disk if I want to. These are Pentium 3.2 Ghz PCs 4 year old PCs. They play Blu-ray just fine. Never had a problem. I use PowerDVD to play Blu-ray and DVD and it integrates well into Media Center. I love the freedom it gives me. No need to worry about unsupported codecs and Blu-ray support. It is all there.:D
Click to expand...

$220 each and that includes Blu-ray drives?
 
Okay, iTunes syncs 720p content but returns an error message if you try to sync 1080p. Seems like a future upgrade to me.
 
I just hope the streaming wifi bug has been fixed in 3.0, everything else is just a nice update.
 
thecypher said:
As much of an Apple Fanboy as I am, I don't get the Apple TV. It is just not worth $225 for very limited functionality. After much debate I bought 2 old IBM Thinkcenter PCs from ebay for about $80 a pop including shipping. These are built rock solid and came with 512MB RAM and 80GB HD. Spent a little $$ and got nice HDMI video cards, additional memory (Upgraded to 2GB), remote control with USB IR receiver, wireless keyboard/mouse. All in all for about $220 a piece I have nice HTPCs running Vista Home Premium in my living room and bedroom. I can stream blu-ray disks over my LAN to my living room and bedroom apart from all my DVDs, home videos, photos, music and most importantly I have the Media Center Netflix plug-in. Basically soup to nuts including iTunes and Amazon Video purchases. Since I have a wireless keyboard I can browse, watch HuLu content, YouTube and whatever else I want.

I simply rip my DVDs and Blu-ray discs in ISO format and have MyMovies plugin for Windows Media Center. As much as I hate Windows I have to admit there is no better setup than this out there today. And it has been working reliably for a few months now. I don't want to be restricted just to the iTunes store and I want to play DVD and Blu-ray discs. These PCs came with DVD drives so I can play a physical DVD disk if I want to. These are Pentium 3.2 Ghz PCs 4 year old PCs. They play Blu-ray just fine. Never had a problem. I use PowerDVD to play Blu-ray and DVD and it integrates well into Media Center. I love the freedom it gives me. No need to worry about unsupported codecs and Blu-ray support. It is all there.:D
Click to expand...

Thanks for sharing your setup - I may have to play around with some of the extra PC hardware I have and look into something similar. Using XBMC on the appleTVs throughout my home (some wired and some wireless) gives me access to everything on my HP MediaSmart 4TB WHS. What I am lacking though compared to your setup would be the netflix plug-in (on my xbox 360s) and blu-ray (standalone players) - but all in one box like you. Great home entertainment setup - thanks again for the ideas.
 
thecypher said:
As much of an Apple Fanboy as I am, I don't get the Apple TV. It is just not worth $225 for very limited functionality. After much debate I bought 2 old IBM Thinkcenter PCs from ebay for about $80 a pop including shipping. These are built rock solid and came with 512MB RAM and 80GB HD. Spent a little $$ and got nice HDMI video cards, additional memory (Upgraded to 2GB), remote control with USB IR receiver, wireless keyboard/mouse. All in all for about $220 a piece I have nice HTPCs running Vista Home Premium in my living room and bedroom. I can stream blu-ray disks over my LAN to my living room and bedroom apart from all my DVDs, home videos, photos, music and most importantly I have the Media Center Netflix plug-in. Basically soup to nuts including iTunes and Amazon Video purchases. Since I have a wireless keyboard I can browse, watch HuLu content, YouTube and whatever else I want.

I simply rip my DVDs and Blu-ray discs in ISO format and have MyMovies plugin for Windows Media Center. As much as I hate Windows I have to admit there is no better setup than this out there today...
Click to expand...
Yes, but an option like you describe is only viable for computer geeks and hackers (no offense, those aren't derogatory terms). Plus, I guess you're not including the cost of that Vista Home Premium upgrade for each of those systems (but perhaps that came with the original Thinkcenter PCs?). That would drive the cost of your systems to about 2X what you'd pay for the Apple TV.

Frankly, for $225 the Apple TV is probably the best media center you can buy. Of course, if you already have an XBox 360 or a Sony PlayStation you can probably stay with those and save some money. But both of those products are price subsidized and you really can't expect Apple to sell a product for less than it costs to build.
 
redfirebird08 said:
$220 each and that includes Blu-ray drives?
Click to expand...

No. I don't have Blu-ray drives in them. I bought one Blu-ray drive from Newegg for $55. I have it in another PC which I use to rip the Blu-ray discs. I just put the ISO image on my LAN storage and I access it from both my living room and bedroom. When Blu-ray drives become cheap enough $20-$25 I will buy 2 drives for each of these. Until then the setup I have works great. I can't watch a blu-ray disk as soon as I buy it and bring it home. It takes about 45 mins to rip it. But then it is accessible through MyMovies from both my HTPCs.
 
goobot said:
seems like some of you hacked your :apple:tv

can some give me a link to the best website that makes the hack?
Click to expand...

www.patchstick.ca for a completely automated tool incl. on-line updates and flexible plugin management and additional software (vpn integration for Boxee, Flash etc.)

http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/ Free tool without support

It depends on the level of your OS X knowledge. I would not recommend the free tool if you have no technical background.
 
spice weasel said:
Oh noes, you mean the ATV won't play my torrented movies? What am I to do....?

People, stop dreaming of more native codec support for the ATV. It's not going to happen. Ever.
Click to expand...

fine Apple doesn't want to support MKV as it is a torrent format for HD content... but MKV outstrips Apple's ****** MP4 iTunes videos by a considerable amount!
 
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