New Apple TV Offers 8 GB of Internal Storage, 256 MB RAM

[fpnc]

Another potential gotcha -- you need an Apple ID and an active internet connection in order to make any use of the new Apple TV. It won't even allow you to stream from a computer because it wants to "phone home" to verify your Apple ID and password. The old Apple TV didn't have this restriction because the handshake occurred over your local network between the Apple TV and your computer. However, now with the dependency on Home Sharing it needs to verify your Apple ID and password with the iTunes Store.

Perhaps this is a one time deal (verify once during the setup), if not it will be a real hassle whenever you lose your connection to the Internet.

 

[fpnc]

Ugh... the same wifi as the iPad? That means no 5ghz WiFi N. Great.

The iPad supports 5GHz 802.11n -- I believe that it is the iPhone 4 that does NOT. However, the iPad doesn't appear to support link rates that are much above what you can get with WiFi-G so it's not really any faster than 802.11g, but you can operate in the 5GHz band if you need that frequency to avoid interference from 2.4 GHz devices.

 

[AidenShaw]

Don't get me wrong. I love Bluray and my PS3 but I enjoy it on my 1080p projector with a 125" screen and a mid/mid-high end home theater system. The PS3 audio bit rate can exceed the total bitrate of an iTunes movie. For example, DTS-HD-Ma sound tracks can routines exceed 6Mbit/sec. I have one Jazz disk that has 24 bit x 96kHz sampling x 5.1 channels = 13.x MBit/sec for just the audio!!!

That said, for most people, 720p that Apple provides is good enough.

Proof that "most people" just don't care. Apple is targeting the Walmart demographic, sorry to say.

...but Apple will be burned for charging Bang & Olufsen prices for Walmart quality.

 

[Tor Eckman]

Proof that "most people" just don't care. Apple is targeting the Walmart demographic, sorry to say.

...but Apple will be burned for charging Bang & Olufsen prices for Walmart quality.

Maybe Apple is targeting the crowd that wants convenience even if a little quality has to be given up to get it. I don't have a current model Apple TV and I really just want something that I can use to stream from iTunes so that my kids can watch their DVDs that I have ripped with Handbrake. Being able to rent a Movie on command will be nice occasionally too. And it needs to be really easy to use for my wife and kids. I do not want local storage as my iMac is on all the time and has 3.5 Terabytes of backed up storage. Oh, and I'm not $100 away from being broke so it's really just an impulse buy anyway. Apple TV fits the bill just fine for me.

 

[rhp2424]

No GPS?

Wait, if my TV can't do GPS, clearly this is an ATV FAIL!!!

 

[skeep5]

And it costs less than the 8 GB iPod Nano but can play video................

Weird.

That messes with my head a little.

 

[heisetax]

hat is it & why would we need one?

Apple never put the right things into their Apple TV now they have the name on the device that is a lot closer to an iPod than a TV deice. 8 GB for video is like 1 byte on a 1 TB drive when it comes to video. But I guess with those in power telling us that less is better it should go over well

 

[hchung]

Or like most everything in storage technology, the 8 gigs was probably cheaper than anything less at this time. Yep, 4 gigs was probably more expensive for Apple to purchase and put in these boxes. Hence the 8 gigs.

I agree; I have no idea if Samsung even makes 4GB dies anymore. It could just be that they make 8GB or 16GB ones and then only end up with a small supply of 4GB chips when the full size ones are defective.

 

[wbc]

Been waiting to see what the internal storage was.

Honestly, internal storage isn't a big deal for me. If it steams from my MacPro nicely, that's all I need.

 

[3282868]

Proof that "most people" just don't care. Apple is targeting the Walmart demographic, sorry to say.

...but Apple will be burned for charging Bang & Olufsen prices for Walmart quality.

Isn't the issue of 720P versus 1080P ATV playback due to bandwidth? As 1080P has 2 million pixels and better surround sound, versus 720P's 1 million pixel quality, streaming true 1080P would be impossible for most people (unless they have a dedicated T1 or such). I was dead set against the new ATV, I thought it was a step down from the original w/o the HDD and other features. However, when getting an Apple display today I noticed they had one new ATV in stock (the local Apple Store received a huge shipment that morning) so I grabbed it.

I spent weeks hacking my old ATV, it ran OSX 10.4.9 well, I loaded a patchstick and installed Boxee, Nito, Firefox, etc. but could not get Silverlight 2.0 to load in order to watch Netflix. I gave up and decided to try the new one, hey for only $99, what's the biggie? I was VERY impressed. Lightening fast compared to the old one. I plugged it in, it immediately locates all computers through "Home Sharing" (no need for codes any more), and Netflix was flawless. No hiccups, picked a movie and in less than three seconds it was playing (watch "Star Trek" 2009).

In the end, I'll use it for only the fly 720P Movie and Show rentals and stick with my Blu-Ray DVD player for true 1080P. As it runs iOS it's only a matter of time before the hackers release a jailbroken ATV with many other features (the external mini-USB for an external HDD or mouse/keyboard would work, and there is even room for another SSD).

 

[Vertical]

Advertising...

For the record, I bought one already...

Apple needs to market these things if they want to sell them. Every time I mention an "Apple TV" to someone all I get in return is "How big is the screen?"

Nobody outside the "Tech" crowd basically has any idea about these. If they want to sell them there will need to be commericals like the iPod and iPhone have. But since Apple considers this a Hobby, and the device itself is basically a black square... I'm not sure I see them putting in the $$$.

 

[steviem]

Proof that "most people" just don't care. Apple is targeting the Walmart demographic, sorry to say.

...but Apple will be burned for charging Bang & Olufsen prices for Walmart quality.

Ugh, B&O charge B&O prices for Walmart features. Case in point - the BeoSound 4 doesn't support SDHC cards. Maximum of 2GB cards? Pile of crap feature-wise.

If B&O did something like this, they would charge £800 and you wouldn't be able to access much at all.

The AppleTV is undercutting the vapourware competitors, so I wouldn't worry about apple getting burned if I were you.

 

[Kron0s]

Imho 8 GB of internal storage means Apple will push content on Appletv when it's on idle time. A sort of service like video selection/video on demand.

 

[dongmin]

iOS thin client

Quite an interesting teardown.

All you need is driver support for Magic Trackpad and bluetooth keyboard and voila, you have a $99 iOS thin client!

 

[Randally]

8G? small, mine of 16G

 

[Piggie]

For the record, I bought one already...

Apple needs to market these things if they want to sell them. Every time I mention an "Apple TV" to someone all I get in return is "How big is the screen?"

Nobody outside the "Tech" crowd basically has any idea about these. If they want to sell them there will need to be commericals like the iPod and iPhone have. But since Apple considers this a Hobby, and the device itself is basically a black square... I'm not sure I see them putting in the $$$.

That's exactly what I posted in another thread.

People I know who are just general ordinary people with mortgages on their homes and busy with the kids and school, and don't spend all evening reading up tech news, have no idea the thing even exists (or even did do under it's old design/model)

Not sure about the USA but in the UK I can't even say I've seen an advert for it ever. Not that I've been looking out for one.

But then again you see, I don't think 90% of people have heard of TIVO either .

Due to the UK TV system, and the BIG suppliers. All these little clever gizmo's just do not get much attention.

If SKY or Virgin Media bought out the Apple TV and put it into their advertising campaigns then millions would know about it almost instantly.

 

[mrklaw]

Maybe, but the buffer starts almost immediately arguing against the idea of pre-loading a lot of content.

depends on your connection. If your connection can download the movie faster than the bitrate of the movie, it'll start playing almost immediately. If you have a slow connection it'll buffer until its ready to play, then notify you. So if you have eg a 1Mb/s broadband, it may need to buffer practically an entire movie.

plus doesn't it notify you when its ready to play? You may not want to watch it immediately, so again it'll need to have it mostly buffered.

 

[coryndiego]

So using that extra slot to boost the storage capacity of the box would be awesome. Get an extra 8 GB chip (or higher) and stick in the extra slot.

I wonder if Apple has locked down the slot, since they aren't using it for now.

Does anyone know how easy or difficult it would be to add a second storage chip? It looks like a soldering job not something that's just popped in.
Maybe, when the time is right, we can take it into apple and they'll add the extra? Thoughts?

 

[richman555]

More storage on the device really isn't necessary. My original Apple TV has a 160gb hard drive and I rarely have it 20% filled as everything can be streamed.

I do however have a 2tb iomega external hard drive with my iTunes moved over to it and I attach it to my Macbook Pro via Firewire 800. It works great for a large library of purchased movies and tv shows.

If you are looking for storage on the device only because your network connection is too slow for streaming, you may want to upgrade your wireless network to wireless n or add a network extender to boost the signal.

 

[KnightWRX]

Isn't the issue of 720P versus 1080P ATV playback due to bandwidth? As 1080P has 2 million pixels and better surround sound, versus 720P's 1 million pixel quality, streaming true 1080P would be impossible for most people (unless they have a dedicated T1 or such).=

The output resolution does not dictate the content's resolution. My 1080p Blu-ray player can play back 720p files with no problems.

This argument that 1080p on the ATV would waste bandwidth is complete BS.

People I know who are just general ordinary people with mortgages on their homes and busy with the kids and school, and don't spend all evening reading up tech news, have no idea the thing even exists (or even did do under it's old design/model)

Uh ? I have a mortgage on my home and while I don't have kids, my coworkers do, to go with the mortgages on their homes. And guess what ? We read tech news.

Way to generalize there. You do know that tech savvy people make money and raise families right ? We're the people that ran BBSes in the 80s and 90s connected to messaging networks like Fidonet, that were in college when the Internet was basically Usenet and Gopher, that saw the birth of NeXT, Sun and other tech giants of today.

In fact, I'll generalize myself by saying that the over 30 and tech savvy crowd is probably more tech savvy and informed than the younger generation who have never seen a command line in their life, nor have any idea what the "demo scene" is or what a courrier for 7-day is.

 

[newagemac]

Ugh... the same wifi as the iPad? That means no 5ghz WiFi N. Great.

Both the iPad and the new Apple TV support 5Ghz Wifi N.

 

[richman555]

The output resolution does not dictate the content's resolution. My 1080p Blu-ray player can play back 720p files with no problems.

This argument that 1080p on the ATV would waste bandwidth is complete BS.

Only the lucky few with a blazing broadband internet connection can adequately stream 1080p content. I believe Apple will open up to 1080p at some point when the broadband is caught up. I've tried to stream 1080p over my internet connection it and it doesn't work well at all. I think it would be met with more disappointment and frustration than anything else.

 

[KnightWRX]

Only the lucky few with a blazing broadband internet connection can adequately stream 1080p content. I believe Apple will open up to 1080p at some point when the broadband is caught up. I've tried to stream 1080p over my internet connection it and it doesn't work well at all. I think it would be met with more disappointment and frustration than anything else.

Stop that, try to read before you respond. Is it so hard a concept to grasp ? 1080p output from AppleTV to your TV does not mean you need to stream 1080p from the Internet.

iTunes Store -> 720p -> Internet -> 720p -> AppleTV -> 1080p -> TV.

This works. Forcing 720p output to the TV is just limiting for the sake of limiting.

Again : 720p content from iTunes would playback perfectly on a 1080p enabled AppleTV.

 

[Lershac]

My shipment

Fedex says Oct 5, and its sitting at the sort facility a few miles from my house. I hope they deliver it early!

 

[williedigital]

The iPad supports 5GHz 802.11n -- I believe that it is the iPhone 4 that does NOT. However, the iPad doesn't appear to support link rates that are much above what you can get with WiFi-G so it's not really any faster than 802.11g, but you can operate in the 5GHz band if you need that frequency to avoid interference from 2.4 GHz devices.

That's pretty interesting. Can you say a little more about the tech behind this? Would you estimate the wifi speeds of the new model as lower than the old model?