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Next-Generation Apple TV Renamed 'iTV', Utilizes Apps, Lacks 1080p?
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"iTV"? I think that's why they re-named it to Apple TV, because that "iTV" name just sucked.
$99? That's nearly impossible an Apple product to sell for. Other than the 3GS. But the iPhone has their own reason. It's the smartphone business.
Apps on tv? I can see this to be some kind of combo like kind of thing. Like a Wii like system that could be compatible with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. Just bluetooth your way through Apple TV, and start playing your apps on t.v. And maybe some Apps specifically for the TV itself.
And of course it's gonna be 720p! If you didn't think so, than you don't know Apple well. We all know Apple likes to stay at least an inch behind the competition. That's just the way it regularly rolls :/ bummer.
Anyways, i hope to see something good. Although i can just totally see Apple getting into the television business in the future. Like, literally in the television business. With a 48 inch and bigger sized t.v's running at 2,000 dollars and Apple Tv just built in and ready to go. And letting you have the options to add your own cable, or satellite provider. I just really hope something like that happens.
$99? That's nearly impossible an Apple product to sell for. Other than the 3GS. But the iPhone has their own reason. It's the smartphone business.
Apps on tv? I can see this to be some kind of combo like kind of thing. Like a Wii like system that could be compatible with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. Just bluetooth your way through Apple TV, and start playing your apps on t.v. And maybe some Apps specifically for the TV itself.
And of course it's gonna be 720p! If you didn't think so, than you don't know Apple well. We all know Apple likes to stay at least an inch behind the competition. That's just the way it regularly rolls :/ bummer.
Anyways, i hope to see something good. Although i can just totally see Apple getting into the television business in the future. Like, literally in the television business. With a 48 inch and bigger sized t.v's running at 2,000 dollars and Apple Tv just built in and ready to go. And letting you have the options to add your own cable, or satellite provider. I just really hope something like that happens.
Na, Apple will just make the App Dveloper change their name. No reason for Apple to sue them.
Correction, no one has done apps and interactivity on a television right yet.
You are talking about the Babe Ruth of user interfaces here. Apple and other creative geniuses have that ability to come up with a UI concept that is nearly impossible to cognate 'til most people see it and then it is obvious.
For example, I site the new iOS 4 feature of dragging an icon on top of another to immediately create a folder. That could have been done for over twenty years techically but we all were stuck with pull down and side menus to manually create a folder since that was the paradigm everyone involuntarily agreed to keep.
TVs that are pervasive and has been single screen for over fifty years. Most are almost conditioned just stare at it. There are graphical and sound elements you can create that breaks that user conditioning. User Interaction research and the right connection of theater arts is all about cracking paradigms like that.
My bet, Apple will come out with a kick ass UI for big screen TVs that use alpha blending and surround sound in such a way as the assisting UI is like a maid, butler or waiter around you. That is you are aware of the assistance and gets the job done while your attention is not diverted.
All the big time television guys will drule when the UI comes out. A handful of engineers at those respective outfits will scream at their short sighted managers for not letting them do their projects since they had a similar vision.
IMO, that is why there are SD card slots on the back of the new Mac Mini -- to store subscriber service keys.
Err... the issue of trademarks is a little bit more complicated than case sensitivity, it's not a damn password. Trademarks live in the spoken language domain as well. Good luck with pronouncing iTV and ITV differently.
They could always try their luck with iTube, though.
Dude, big time television networks days are numbers. The boys in New York in LA are trying to do everything they can from having production houses dump television networks and market shows directly via broadband.
The more they hold it back, the bigger the rush when their lawyers, politicians, bankers and medias efforts will fail.
That's a good point. I am dropping Comcast this week, as I can get almost all of my content either OTA or from streaming sites. It really depends on your market. In Chicago, I receive all the networks and several other local stations perfectly with a cheap $10 antenna. That gives me almost all the Bears (NHL on Fox, CBS, and NBC) games, Notre Dame games (College Football on NBC and ABC), and about half of the Cubs games (MLB on WGN or Fox). Only problems are now that Monday Night Football is on ESPN, some Cubs games on Comcast Sports, and some college football games on ESPN. Not everyone's situation, but it works for me.
As for the AppleTV upgrade, it needs to be capable of playing 1080p content, even if it only outputs 720p. I realize this is not likely possible/reasonable. I finally dropped my old AppleTV for a 2010 Mac mini so it could play my 1080p home videos. Most newer camcorders and many phones now are able to do 1080p, so the Apple's new device should be to play it. The "Apple only sells 720p movies" argument is weak, as Apple had no problem selling a media device they didn't provide content for. iTunes can play 1080p movies on my Mac mini. AppleTV was supposed to be iTunes on your TV. Instead, it can't even do 720p at 30 fps.
Personally, I would love to see "iTV" as an app available on iOS devices and OS X. Front Row hasn't been updated in years and the 3.0 update to AppleTV delivered a new main menu, but nothing else. I could see an app which keeps that main menu with completely new code underneath. One can dream at least.
They make about $1b revenue per quarter for the entire iTunes Store and did not say how much profit. Given that they make over $15b revenue in total, I would say that it's "not much".
"iTV"? I think that's why they re-named it to Apple TV, because that "iTV" name just sucked.
$99? That's nearly impossible an Apple product to sell for. Other than the 3GS. But the iPhone has their own reason. It's the smartphone business.
Apps on tv? I can see this to be some kind of combo like kind of thing. Like a Wii like system that could be compatible with your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad. Just bluetooth your way through Apple TV, and start playing your apps on t.v. And maybe some Apps specifically for the TV itself.
And of course it's gonna be 720p! If you didn't think so, than you don't know Apple well. We all know Apple likes to stay at least an inch behind the competition. That's just the way it regularly rolls :/ bummer.
Anyways, i hope to see something good. Although i can just totally see Apple getting into the television business in the future. Like, literally in the television business. With a 48 inch and bigger sized t.v's running at 2,000 dollars and Apple Tv just built in and ready to go. And letting you have the options to add your own cable, or satellite provider. I just really hope something like that happens.
An inch behind would've been 1080i. I wonder if they are hedging their bets on the viability of streaming anything higher than 720p. Might be a wise move, given the slovenly progress of broadband speeds.
That's actually exactly what I've been thinking. It has been suggested a long time ago that the iPhone OS devices can do exactly what the Apple TV does and even more.
A $99 dock including HDMI + remote + TV App + maybe cables. You don't even need internal storage, because the iPod/iPhone has it. The CPU should be able to handle at least 720p HD video.
The problem: what are you going to do when you are bored with TV and want to do what you usually do with your iPod/iPhone in that case: surf the web, check emails etc while the movie is playing. Also what happens about phone calls.
So, no, I don't think this is gonna happen.
That didn't seem to stop them with "iPhone" or "iPad". Someone else owned those already too.
Some of these posts seem to say 1080p doesn't matter. Or that 720p or 1080i is basically just as good, and "no one can see the difference really". I just though I would put a little comparo between the formats again, because some people are clearly poorly informed about the difference.
1080i and 720p are essentially two different ways of transmitting nearly equal pixel data. Either one is going to give you roughly 1 million pixels of information in a 1/60th of a second time frame. For a 1080p screen, 1080i is a usually a better choice, since a 1080p screen will combine the two 540 horizontal line fields from the subsequent frames and interlace them into one frame. The interpolation of the data will provide a better result due to the even multiple of horizontal lines. 720p is obviously not evenly divisible across a 1080p screen, and different manufacturers use their own processing to create the image. But either format will essentially produce the same result to the average eye. But to say a 1080i image is a full 1080 image is both correct and inaccurate. It is transmitted as only a 540 line image, and then combined with a subsequent image 1/60th of a second later. This creates artifacts and errors that make the image different than the single true 1080p image. As a result, viewing sports and other fast action can actually look better on 720p than 1080i, since its update rate for each "complete" image is twice that of the resulting merging of the two 540 line images in 1080i. However, people frequently forget the significant difference and tradeoff in vertical lines of resolution between the 720p versus 1080i ( and 1080p).
Specifically:
720p is sending 1,280 x 720 pixels or 921,600 pixels at 60 complete frames per second.
1080i is sending 1920 x 540 pixels or 1,036,800 pixels at 60 complete de-interlaced frames/sec (that is what is actually there, your TV makes it into a 2,073,600 interlaced image for a complete merged image at 30 frames per second.
and finally the champ, by a significant margin is 1080p which is full vertical resolution as well as horizontal resolution, 2,073,600 pixels at a complete 60 frames per second.
Anyway you want to try and do the math, 1080p is 2.25 x higher resolution/data rates than 720p and 2 x greater than 1080i. Period. Some may say people "can't really see it", or "it depends". But it doesn't. In a different thread post, everyone cheers the new, nearly 720p screen on a 3 inch iPhone screen, but people want to say here "you can't really see the difference in 720p versus 1080p" . . . . twice the resolution on a 50 inch or larger screen? Give me a break. That is why, for many of us, no 1080p is an instant turn-off. Netflix has already announced its intent to go to 1080p (as well as 5.1), even though it is delayed until next year, it will happen. So if Apple can't come out of the gates with a revamped "i" or "Apple" TV product to match, it is already obsolete (IMO).
1080i and 720p are essentially two different ways of transmitting nearly equal pixel data. Either one is going to give you roughly 1 million pixels of information in a 1/60th of a second time frame. For a 1080p screen, 1080i is a usually a better choice, since a 1080p screen will combine the two 540 horizontal line fields from the subsequent frames and interlace them into one frame. The interpolation of the data will provide a better result due to the even multiple of horizontal lines. 720p is obviously not evenly divisible across a 1080p screen, and different manufacturers use their own processing to create the image. But either format will essentially produce the same result to the average eye. But to say a 1080i image is a full 1080 image is both correct and inaccurate. It is transmitted as only a 540 line image, and then combined with a subsequent image 1/60th of a second later. This creates artifacts and errors that make the image different than the single true 1080p image. As a result, viewing sports and other fast action can actually look better on 720p than 1080i, since its update rate for each "complete" image is twice that of the resulting merging of the two 540 line images in 1080i. However, people frequently forget the significant difference and tradeoff in vertical lines of resolution between the 720p versus 1080i ( and 1080p).
Specifically:
720p is sending 1,280 x 720 pixels or 921,600 pixels at 60 complete frames per second.
1080i is sending 1920 x 540 pixels or 1,036,800 pixels at 60 complete de-interlaced frames/sec (that is what is actually there, your TV makes it into a 2,073,600 interlaced image for a complete merged image at 30 frames per second.
and finally the champ, by a significant margin is 1080p which is full vertical resolution as well as horizontal resolution, 2,073,600 pixels at a complete 60 frames per second.
Anyway you want to try and do the math, 1080p is 2.25 x higher resolution/data rates than 720p and 2 x greater than 1080i. Period. Some may say people "can't really see it", or "it depends". But it doesn't. In a different thread post, everyone cheers the new, nearly 720p screen on a 3 inch iPhone screen, but people want to say here "you can't really see the difference in 720p versus 1080p" . . . . twice the resolution on a 50 inch or larger screen? Give me a break. That is why, for many of us, no 1080p is an instant turn-off. Netflix has already announced its intent to go to 1080p (as well as 5.1), even though it is delayed until next year, it will happen. So if Apple can't come out of the gates with a revamped "i" or "Apple" TV product to match, it is already obsolete (IMO).
During the press conference there was a slide that had the apple tv in it. It's been a while since apple included the apple tv in any if it's press conferences. That was for sure a hint at what's to come.
I was thinking the same thing.
Add a camera to iTV and boom - FaceTime video chat on your big screen in your living room. Would be pretty cool.
Idiots!
Another **** Apple product that everyone will go crazy for ... under powered, under featured and over priced ... and WTF is it with Apple and adding apps to everything; we're getting serious product crossover here ... more of the same and less of whats really needed (like the obvious choice of a processor that CAN handle 1080p or i)
Apple; 1080p, 250GB HDD, WiFi, TV Tuner and Blue Ray or DVD option ... its not rocket science!!!!
Another **** Apple product that everyone will go crazy for ... under powered, under featured and over priced ... and WTF is it with Apple and adding apps to everything; we're getting serious product crossover here ... more of the same and less of whats really needed (like the obvious choice of a processor that CAN handle 1080p or i)
Apple; 1080p, 250GB HDD, WiFi, TV Tuner and Blue Ray or DVD option ... its not rocket science!!!!
You know, I never really found the Apple TV to be a worthy product, partly due to the meager library of films in iTunes. If Apple were to have an extensive library full of HD movies (as of now, around 5% are HD), I'd instantly buy an Apple TV and build a digital library. It doesn't make sense too, since movies like the Dark Knight are released only in SD. Must have something to do with licensing and movie studios.
What about people's video cameras? 1080p has been in them for a while. Imagine importing a 1080p video into iMovie and exporting it for the iTV and having it downscaled! Unless Apple now want everyone to shoot video with the iPhone4. Not having 1080p support would be like not putting USB3 ports into the next years laptops. Of course, this may actually happen.
The other thing is if the device does only have 16 GB storage for buffering, that wouldn't even hold a full 1080p Blue Ray rip!
Just as people found how to get the 3GS to play 1080p files, so people will find ways to hack the iTV.
The other thing is if the device does only have 16 GB storage for buffering, that wouldn't even hold a full 1080p Blue Ray rip!
Just as people found how to get the 3GS to play 1080p files, so people will find ways to hack the iTV.
Well, in that case the assumption is completely bogus because the iTS is not even remotely comparable to Apple's core hardware business. It's like saying: "Google/Microsoft have a great margin (being software companies), they SURELY sell their consoles/phones with a similar margin." They don't.
Apple has to give more than 50% of the money to the record labels and film studios. You can't seriously expect that they are running the store for like 100-200 million per quarter, that would be truly magical. I expect them to just break even.