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You're contradicting yourself here. Many of them don't have fans either.

AppleTV has an internal CPU that generates a lot more heat than a standalone Firewire drive will. But for that matter, you can get external Firewire drives that are better ventilated and have more capacity for the buck.

If you stick a larger drive in the AppleTV, I guarantee you the markup is going to increase the price more than the cost of the same capacity standalone drive.
 
So looprumors gets it wrong again. Big surprise.

Anyway, I would love an :apple:tv once I have a HD TV, but that will be a few years yet I suspect. By the time I have both, I would prefer to have 1080p as well as internet access, bigger hard drive and the option to plug in a tuner for recording. This last feature would be great if you could use it to record from an eyeTV and either watch later on :apple:tv or sync back to your Mac. That would be the killer for me, but I feel Apple will not want this.

DVD functionality to me is a dud. For many it would be great, but long term I would prefer to have several TB of networked storage with all my DVDs stored on them and access from any Mac or :apple:tv in the house. Most of the time I would be willing to wait a few minutes first to transfer the content and store locally, (say a few movies/TV shows onto my MBP before I went on a trip or a movie to :apple:tv to watch that evening).
 
I think that the reasoning behind no 1080p right now, is that if the :apple: tv had 1080p capability, the hardware would have to be a lot closer to what is inside an xbox360 or a playstation3. It would pretty much have to have an intel core processor or cell processor, plus more ram, an even better video card, etc. And if Apple built this hypothetical :apple: tv, the price point would also have to be in the range of the xbox360 or ps3- you'd basically be looking at a mac mini type price point. So you can see where this is going, it probably would not be worth doubling the price of the device to support 1080p at this time. But, in a couple years, it will be a different story, and this will be a nice upgrade for revision 2 or 3.
 
I think that the reasoning of the apple store page layout is specious, at best. If you look at all the other products, like the airport extreme they compare it to, it's in a different part of apple's product map, basically an accessory, where the Apple TV fits into one of the main categories and is listed with computers on the main page. I have a feeling if there was only one mac mini or iMac then its page would look like that as well.
I agree 100%. If there will be size upgrades, I doubt that the page layout is trying to prove anything other than that it's a mainstream product.
 
My APPLE TV ALREADY DOES ALL THAT!!!

I installed full Mac OS X on my Apple TV, and it already does all of this stuff. I am running Safari on it right now... :) Widgts... check. Weather? That too. Caltrans highway cameras? Of course..

It's just a matter of applying existing OS X applications to the existing hardware. Nothing about this rumor is out of line as I see it. My AppleTV-centric blog for those interested:

http://web.mac.com/macos_on_appletv/iWeb/Site/Blog/Blog.html
 
If this true and there are to be future Apple TV models, I wonder if they could hash out something like this: No DVD player, but... you can use the Apple TV to stream video content directly from your mac or pc's physical DVD, using the new "Virtual DVD player" app.
 
Apple will not put a DVD player OR add DVR functionality to the Apple TV. Why? Because they want you to buy all your content off the iTunes store.

I'm not so sure about that. I doubt apple makes a large margin on media, but we know they make a killing on hardware. Apple is a hardware company. I think apple would be just as happy to sell twice as many Apple TV's as sell movies they don't make much on...which they might if the device had more functionality (DVD player, new codecs, DVR...) Just my $.02.
 
Obviously bigger hard drive but I would also like to see a unit that has DVR capabilities that allow for DV video input and very basic editing directly on the AppleTV.

I was really concerned about the HDD size too before I got my :apple:TV a coulpe of weeks back. It really hasn't turned out to be a problem at all. Check out my blog (in the sig). I did a little write up of my experiences with it.
 
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