Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

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

Thumbs down for AppleTV as another i/Phone/Pad/Podtouch

The suggestion that AppleTV go in the direction of the mobile platforms is opposite from where I would want it to go.

I want new AppleTV = old AppleTV + MacMini + TimeCapsule running Mac OS X 10.6 + iPhone SDK 4.0, with iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad apps as display/entry controller.

Don't expect the above to be $99!
 
Gotta Hankerin said:
Ok, so you want the ATV to play a file format you don't currently use? For what purpose?
Click to expand...

Thanks for your committing me to the ignorance pile without either understanding what I said, or not reading what I said. Not sure where your misunderstanding lies...

MKV - that's what we're talking about specifically. The ATV doesn't play them well. It can play them, but lots of sputtering and pauses in the playback. These hi-res MKV files would be preferable to play on the ATV but it won't play them.

Now, if the new ATV would play them I'd be thrilled and I would begin to use those files.

The purpose would be higher resolution video played on my wonderful device.
 
Mark my words.. This will become a gaming console... It's going to have the iPhone OS4 already onboard. They are going to sell all kinds of peripherals for this thing.

Keyboard so you can use twitter apps etc from it...Surf the web, etc..

There will be a controller for it as well to play the games. (some kind of blue tooth device (itouch and phone will work as well)

they will introduce streaming content like Netflix (subscription based)

If they sale this at $99 and Im not sure of that yet NOTHING apple sales is this low even mice and Keyboards cost more...

If they hit $.99 and can say 10,000 apps already ready for your TV than WOW BANG the iTV is now a Major force..
 
WilliamLondon said:
Thanks for your committing me to the ignorance pile without either understanding what I said, or not reading what I said. Not sure where your misunderstanding lies...

MKV - that's what we're talking about specifically. The ATV doesn't play them well. It can play them, but lots of sputtering and pauses in the playback. These hi-res MKV files would be preferable to play on the ATV but it won't play them.

Now, if the new ATV would play them I'd be thrilled and I would begin to use those files.

The purpose would be higher resolution video played on my wonderful device.
Click to expand...

Matroska (MKV) is a container format, think of it as an empty sack. MP4 is also a container format, also an empty sack.

Neither MKV or MP4 have restrictions on the resolution of the video contained within them. Both support AC3 audio streams, and comprehensive metadata, such as artists etc. MKV (currently) has an advantage in that it supports DTS audio whereas MP4 doesn't (officially).

So both containers are pretty much the same technically.

Where the difference lies is in community support, and player support.

MP4 has a lot more player support, and a large community support amongst Apple product users.

MKV has a larger community support amongst Windows users and file sharers. It has a similar set of software player support as MP4, but less for hardware players. MKV is quite limited in its metadata taggers at present as well, so MKV files typically are quite "bare" compared to MP4 files which are generally populated with metadata from TagChimp and the like.

For you to say that you want MKV support in an ATV device, I must assume that you fall into the file sharing camp. Since if you were producing the files yourself you'd simply use MP4 right from the outset (or as close to the outset as possible if working with BD, which is still an area that needs work when using MP4, due to tooling, not the container format).

Cheers, Ed.
 
Shintocam said:
Because in my experience, even with a fairly fast (6MB+) connection streamed video is nowhere near the quality of the content off my DVR. I bought a high def TV not to deal with tonnes of compression artifacts etc... I don't want to see all those blocks (especially in the dark parts of the scene) in high def. So for me a DVR is still best. Even a 720p rip that I download (1.2GB+) does not look as good.

Add to that, that internet connections are far from stable and reliable. Sure I have pretty good "up time" but still I don't want to be dealing with dropouts while trying to watch something. Now assuming Apple is smart, at least this issue may be dealt with by the use of a healthy buffer (16gb is more than enough) that may not be relevant.
Click to expand...

I am not sure you are familiar with the techniques and products that are used that really make this much less of an issue.
 
A couple of things I've worked out.

Wireless N wifi has a throughput of 300 Mbps. In reality this will be around 100 Mbps.

BluRays tend to have bitrates of 20-30 Mbps.

A DVD ripped with Handbrake gives a picture that I can't distinguish from the original at a bitrate of 1-1.5 Mbps (including AC3 audio).

As far as I can see, this means anyone with a broadband connection of 2 Mbps and over should be able to stream DVD quality videos without too much buffering, Wireless N should be plenty to stream several 1080p films unless something else is eating the bandwidth.

If you calculate down from 1080p to 720p (has 2.25x less pixels) it comes out that you would need ~9-13 Mbps to get a comparable picture. At present, Apples 720p content maxes out at 5 Mbps.
 
allmIne said:
Agreed completely. We have a connection that's averaging 1.6mb, but we get god-knows-how-many channels of perfect HD over two Sky boxes in two rooms - I can only imagine trying to stream the same amount from a cloud. It just wouldn't work for us, and I can only imagine, an awful lot of other people in the same situation, internet wise, as ourselves. Add to that, in the UK only, Sky's total domination of HD and SD programming, and it can't really take off here. I'm only talking about our little old country, by the way.

Sky's new box looks good too - 240 hours of HD storage! No more running out of room thanks to an HD series link you've forgotten about, lol.
Click to expand...

Sounds like England is about 5-10 years behind the US. You will catch up some day and understand the relevant issues better. I know it seems implausible to you where you are, but it really isn't and won't be, for you, eventually.
 
Only 16GB? That is pathetic. Can flash memory even read fast enough for 1080p? I can't stream my content since the ATV will have to be on a different network to my MacBook.
 
Why Apple TV?

What will your use Apple TV for? I am not sure how we would use this hardware. We have TV sets, cable connected, we use computers for email, news, etc., got a cell phone and land line. For us an iPad would be more practical for connecting to the web.
 
DARKJ3DI said:
Only 16GB? That is pathetic. Can flash memory even read fast enough for 1080p? I can't stream my content since the ATV will have to be on a different network to my MacBook.
Click to expand...

Reading is not an issue with SSD, it is FASTER than a HDD. Writing is slower, but not slow enough that it will be impacted by the speed at which you can copy data to it over a network connection.

Cheers. Ed.
 
As videos and data speeds increase in size and bandwidth this A4 cpu (SOC silicone on chip is NOT a new technology in the mobile smartphone space; its actually 5yrs old really) is going to be heavily burdened.

I have a feeling this Illinois data centre for Apple will be used for:
Everything iTunes
- Music
- Movies
- TV Shows
- iTunes U (even as a backdrop to Universities centres)

Time Machine Space or Time Cloud
- Moving Time Capsule into the Cloud. This means Airport Extreme will remain in the product space, Time Capsule will evolve to 2TB/4TB (maybe an 6/8 TB) solution but with Apple's iTunes with Time Machine intregration in the cloud and upcoming OS X 10.6.4 ... oh yeah baby we're talking SERIOUS cloud backup storage and me.com; starting with 20GB for everyone - FREE (watch the sales grow exponentially yet again) and $100/yr for 10TB.

Apple TV will have local storage beyond 16GB ... imagine having a whole season (or series) of BSG/V/Fringe/Lost or any combo of them in 720P/1080p ... yeah 16GB doesn't NEARLY cut it ... especially if you have LIMITED BANDWIDTH use policy with your provider on a monthly basis! Also 16GB for storing it when they DO cut you off or charge you TOO much to use - a horrible common practice in Canada & USA - and you decide to give them the middle ... the finger that is ... where are ALL your TV shows/Movies/Music if its ON-The-Cloud and you want to entertain yourself, guest, family, etc.?! Also remember that providers "may" see this as P2P via torrent illegally.

We're STILL not there yet.
 
DARKJ3DI said:
Only 16GB? That is pathetic. Can flash memory even read fast enough for 1080p? I can't stream my content since the ATV will have to be on a different network to my MacBook.
Click to expand...

Why would it have to be on a different network ?

lanceh5 said:
What will your use Apple TV for? I am not sure how we would use this hardware. We have TV sets, cable connected, we use computers for email, news, etc., got a cell phone and land line. For us an iPad would be more practical for connecting to the web.
Click to expand...

That reasoning can be said about the Google TV also then.
 
Streaming from the cloud will chew up bandwidth pretty fast right? Each movie is ~1.5GB so, every ten movies I watch will use about 15GB of usage.

Is that right? If so, I prefer streaming them from my Mac to the ATV.
 
winks360 said:
1)

Just as digital Music took off, Digital Movies and TV Shows will
Click to expand...

While I'm sure that digital movies and TV *will* take off, eventually, the big question is when and how.

I.e., the fact that digital music was going to be big did not mean that I should have bought a Creative Nomad II (with 64 meg smart media card) in 2000. As I did. :(
41BMPEYVVXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
 
Cougarcat said:
The AppleTV was called iTV originally, but they had to change the name because of the iTV channel. So, not going to happen.




Doubt it. There are few sessions on Mac OS X and the marketing suggests this is clearly going to be the "iPhone OS" conference. Would love to be wrong, though. Mac OS X is the reason I love Apple; everything else is periphery. :)
Click to expand...

I remember when Apple said the project name was called iTV, and then ITV started whinning, they obviously didn't understand the "project name" part.

ITV is pretty **** anyway - the majority of their content was / ( maybe still is ) - soap operas and police dramas. Totally predictable. No wonder they've tanked.
 
Did anyone ever think that this is not a new piece of ATV hardware, but instead a software update for the iPhone/iPod touch or even a downloadable app from the app store? That would make the most sense given that Apple still sees the ATV as a hobby.

How do you get an ATV into as many homes as possible? Well, you look at what you already have first and that is a vast iPhone/iPod user base. You don't spend nearly the amount of money doing that compared to developing a piece of hardware from scratch, develop the software, announce it, advertise for it, ship it, and provide customer support. I don't think people have a grasp of what it really takes to successfully introduce and sell a product on the magnitude Apple is aiming for.

This would also be a way to beat other companies to the punch, so to speak, and leap waaaay ahead in the "set top box" market (even though this wouldn't be a true set top box), with nominal overhead. Apple can put this out there relatively quickly and use it to gauge customer reaction. This would buy Apple time to decide if they want to pursue new hardware with extra functionality that consumers will buy.

The only hardware needed would be a simple video adapter, such as HDMI, which I'm thinking there is already some out there, and possibly a small adapter that allows you to use your existing TV remote or ATV/Mac remote.

From what I've read so far, it is about the same size as an iPhone, same storage capacity, and is about the same size physically so why can't it just be that? If it walks like a duck...

Also, the iPhone/iPod are already attached to an iTunes library so you already have a means of streaming video to the device and it wouldn't be much harder to incorporate that into streaming from over the cloud, thru iTunes.

You've already got great hardware and software in everyone's home so why not just leverage that until you can create the ATV that is going to be a hit with the average consumer, not just the Apple fan boys like me?

I'm no marketing pro or anything but that is probably where I'd start.
 
I think this concept of the new Apple TV is entirely feasible. I believe Apple can easily get this down to the $99 price point so that they can get it into as many hands as possible. The current Apple TV actually has better specs minus the 1080p which Im not even so sure is a hardware limitation. The key is the price. $225 is tough to swallow when you probably need an external drive to really make it worth while. At $99 with internet streaming, pc/mac to tv streaming, pc/mac streaming of your iTunes library to TV, the possibility of adding an external hard drive with USB/Firewire if you need more space.

I own a current Apple TV and the streaming from mac to tv is top notch. With more internet/cloud streaming possibilities, it makes it a slam dunk at $99.
 
Prom1 said:
We're STILL not there yet.
Click to expand...

Perhaps.

The reason, however, that none of these data networks play nice with the requirements of cloud media is because presently there are very few (any?) services that need it. And certainly not any that have reached critical mass.

A $99 device that does all that and more will give users a reason to shout out to these data providers to get off their butts and upgrade their pipes.

One thing I am sure of is that any company that sits around until these networks ARE ready will have missed the paradigm shift and become irrelevant. Apple knows this.
 
cjthebest said:
This sounds great however it is not a competitor to Google TV because Google's idea is to deliver content from multiple sources (some free) to people's TVs. Google is able to do this because they have no worries of losing money because they don't have a media store such as iTunes. Apple on the other hand, would not allow you to (easily) access free media because of the need to protect iTunes' sales.
Click to expand...

Well that theory certainly explains the why they won't let ABC or Netflix or pandora or Kindle or any other content that isn't theirs on iPhone and iPad. Oh, wait.

Seriously, that refrain is starting to get a little worn out. Apple is in the hardware business. Their content stores exist to sell hardware, but as long as you buy the box,they don't care.

If they open it up to developers at all, I don't see them locking out third party content providers they let on to the existing market.
 
Thoughts:

1. The price is perfect, $99 and this becomes a mass, mass, mass, mass market item that will be in homes everywhere.

2. Apple clearly will NOT limit this Apple TV to only their media choices. They will open it up to the app store for custom apps like Hulu, Netflix, ABC, Pandora, Last.Fm, Twit, and more.

3. The big differences between this and Google TV are A) it likely won't support searching for content across platforms (ie. finding House on Hulu, your cable, and iTunes instead relying on individual apps) and B) it likely won't support DVR or cable/satellite box control. For the price it won't be an issue and Google's box may be hampered by the myriad of cable boxes out there that might not work well with it etc.

At $99 and with a "free market" app store connected base this will be a huge, huge hit.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back