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Apple Reportedly Prepping Revamped Apple TV: iPhone OS, Cloud-Based Storage, $99 Price Point?

Gotta Hankerin said:
I know a few people who buy DVDs, rip them, then resell the discs and think doing so is not against the law because they once owned the original.
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So what? We shouldn't worry here about the source of the material but rather whether these devices can play it or not.

This device *must* play big MKV files (and other similar ones) which the current one (which I have) does not. Trying to play one on the current ATV just causes it to trip all over itself. Sigh.
 
hmm you know, I don't want to have to stream content to this thing all the time, regardless if it's from my Time Capsule, Computer, or over the internet.
I'd like to see it have more internal storage, or at least an expansion port of some sort (USB, FW800, etc.)
Also, a power button would be nice this time around, unplugging the AppleTV when it freezes up or has other issues is nonsense, and I'd like to be able to turn it off at night.
 
Think of the possibilities if it has an app platform. Netflix and ABC could make an ATV App. Aswell as all the other networks.
 
Peace said:
I have no idea. You will notice on the back of A/V devices you will see a maintenance port. It could be USB or Firewire. But it's there. You can thank Bill Clinton and the DMCA of 2000 for it.
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I'm not sure the intention of it, but it could be a good thing if they're forced to provide one, and it can be used for other purposes.

My ATV has one of course and the only thing I plug in to it is a memory key with FlashATV on it (which works brilliantly). Supposedly, I could use an external hard drive with it, which with this new *potential* device might be more useful if it has limited storage and people don't have anything but a laptop as a central computer.
 
Give it a HDMI port and the ability to connect to any external hard drive (be it through Wi-Fi or directly through FireWire/USB) and I'm in!

Otherwise, hellooo Google TV :)
 
Wow if true for 99 bones call me balls in on this one. 1080p will be nice too since XBOX Live and I think PSN already do it via DL. Not sure on PSN.

Fingers crossed.
 
iPad

Does the iPad hardware support output of 1080p? Assuming they were to produce a dock to hdmi dongle. I found it very odd at launch that they only supported low-res vga. Apple doesn't even sell vga monitors...
 
Benicio10 said:
Also, what about sports? Do you all not watch live sports on TV in HD? I can't drop my satellite/cable subscription for this sole reason. Or else I would a la carte everything through itunes, netflix, etc.

And the satellite/cable companies won't give you the ESPN's and TNT's until you get premium packages, ultimately paying for channels you don't care about.

Apple TV will NOT replace cable/satellite, at least not for me, and a lot of others, i anticipate.
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I suspect ESPN is working on this. I watched almost all of March Madness this year on espn360 because I could watch the games I wanted to watch. I could see ESPN in the future offering packages where you simply pay them to watch live sports streamed over the internet ($100-$200 for a package that allows you to watch any game for a season of a given sport is a steal compared to what cable charges). Will this work for everything? Not yet, but then any sports that end up on network TV you would actually get a better HD picture by using an antenna anyway (HD OTA is much less compressed than the crap Comcast sends you).

At that point all you have left is TNT for some NBA and maybe VS. for hockey coverage. I don't know much about Nascar and the channels it's on.
 
GSMiller said:
Give it a HDMI port and the ability to connect to any external hard drive (be it through Wi-Fi or directly through FireWire/USB) and I'm in!

Otherwise, hellooo Google TV :)
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The AppleTV already does this, albeit the USB access is through a hack (but it's easy, peasy).
 
WilliamLondon said:
So what? We shouldn't worry here about the source of the material but rather whether these devices can play it or not.

This device *must* play big MKV files (and other similar ones) which the current one (which I have) does not. Trying to play one on the current ATV just causes it to trip all over itself. Sigh.
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The source may not be important to you but it is very important to Apple and their content partners.
 
Seems like an easy and natural fit for Apple. The Apple TV has always been embarrassingly poor compared to the HD and blu-ray nettops like ASRock and Acer.

The Apple nickel and dime'ing can expand nicely with this platform, though I'm not sure there will be that many subscribers (yes, it'll also be a service) compared to what you can do now via the nettops, and in the future via what Google have lined up. A perfect platform for those wholly committed to Apple though - and that demographic seems to be increasing all the time.

Eventually evolution will produce a sub-species that is the Applehomo Fanboysapiens who can not consume any media unless it's piped to them (at cost) via an iTunes umbilical cord. The rest of the world will look on, feeling bemused but also vaguely smug.
 
Peace said:
That 720P ( 1.2GB ) video doesn't look as good because it's compressed also. Normal 720P does 1280X720 @ 60FPS making an hour long show 10-15GB. So any "720P" video you downloaded that was only 1.2GB was compressed already.
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Yes, but that is exactly my point. They are hardly going to stream a 10GB file.
 
Silly to rant against Apple for a rumored product they haven't announced. That said, this thing needs an ethernet port. I have terrible wifi signal near the tv due to a fireplace/chimney. I've got it wired with gigabit already for PS3 and mac mini.

Has to have a USB port for an external hard drive. Cable modem can go down, my laptop could be out of the house, etc. Incidentally, I like the itunes sync of the apple TV for music, hate having to manually push new music to the mac mini I have. For video, I don't want it on my laptop, so I'd just want to push it.

I'd love if podcast viewing data was synced over mobile me. I may have a podcast, even in different resolutions, on iPhone, laptop, apple tv, etc. If I watch on one device and/or delete, be nice for that to happen on all devices. (with preference setting to turn off)

Time capsule stores critical information and is not very robust. Bad idea to turn it into a media streamer. If it had a software raid 1 and I could add a USB drive that it backed up to automatically, then fine. As it stands the failure rate of TC is high, so I'm glad the hard drive on it is spun down 95+% of the time.
 
It will not have a DVR. If apple wanted that market they would have bought Tivo pretty cheaply and enhanced the offering. They see DVR as dying over the next decade with everything being internet distribution.

DVR takes system resources much more than apple TV.
 
Gotta Hankerin said:
The source may not be important to you but it is very important to Apple and their content partners.
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Yes, unfortunately I know this, which is why I have to *hack* my ATV to play stuff not sanctioned by the big media monstrosities. I'm pretty sure if the content partners didn't have such control, Apple wouldn't be so controlling in this device.
 
fred_garvin said:
It will not have a DVR. If apple wanted that market they would have bought Tivo pretty cheaply and enhanced the offering. They see DVR as dying over the next decade with everything being internet distribution.

DVR takes system resources much more than apple TV.
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thats retarded. if it wasnt also a dvr that could turn me away.


i also hope that i can at least get 30 gigs.
 
Peace said:
Just a guess here but I'd say this project has been under way for quit a while. During his "tenure" on Apple board Eric Schmidt was probably privy to this information and his huge hatred for Apple shows by his android tv stuff. He knew Apple was going to do this so he decided to throw a wrench in the gears and introduce his version of this. The only problem with him is he does not have the visionary skills that Steve Jobs has.
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I think this is exactly what happened.
 
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