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Apple TV is not going anywhere... all it needs is more content (and in more countries)

Aug 10, 09 - 12:26 pm Comment from: mr_matalino

I guess this guy has already wrote his iTablet article and has nothing else to write about. How many times are we going to re-hash this topic? Blu-ray, DVR, mac mini - same arguments...

Aug 10, 09 - 12:27 pm Comment from: Tommy Boy

The big thing the tv needs is parental controls. I need to be able to load up a ton of <s>kiddie</s> educational videos while ensuring that same user cannot find inappropriate content.

Media Centre is.... Oh so Microsoft!

bozo

Aug 10, 09 - 12:34 pm Comment from: ericdano

Not going to happen. Apple will announce Hulu support and possibly netflix streaming. Or a monthly subscription for movies from the iTunes store if you stream them. Like 9.99 a month for higher quality, portable content you can stream to apple tv or you iPhone/itouch

Why buy an Apple TV, when an iPhone / iPod touch will do exactly the same thing when plugged in to a TV?

Aug 10, 09 - 12:37 pm Comment from: REALTORben

I must admin, I love the idea of being able to throw in a DVD or BluRay disc and watch it on my HDTV. Or being able to browse and rent/download movies or tv shows on the fly. Or browse my library of movies and watch whatever I want. Or set it up with my Cable or Satellite provider to record shows. All in one easy to find place.

Media Center is a bad title. iHub (or Entertainment Hub) would be a better title. Especially if you could stream it on your network to other Mac's/Apple TV's. (and iPhone/iPod Touch's).

It could be powerful. But baby steps. There were a lot of steps between OS 10.0 and OS 10.6, so to must the AppleTV Progress.

Aug 10, 09 - 12:39 pm Comment from: Jersey_Trader

So, Steve, what is holding this up? Are we looking to take this market too or are we just going to pass it by? This could have been done a long time ago. But, NOW would be a good time to give us the home media center that you talked about years ago.

Aug 10, 09 - 12:44 pm Comment from: flappo

imo blu ray is overrated

some of the discs are superb , but sadly more than a few are no better than upscaled dvd

factor in the sheer convenience of apple tv / itms video and personally i'm sold

i'm not buyiing any new br unless they're really something special

been stung by plenty of crap bd's and surprised by the quality of apple's downloads

Aug 10, 09 - 12:47 pm Comment from: Toasty

I would buy this. If I could shrink my TV devices all down to one unit I would be very happy. I love my apple TV. But I need way more disk space and constantly housing 2 copies of video (Mac and the ATV) is really a waste of space. Not to mention, I don't want to run my Mac all day long just to feed media to the ATV.

Or, they can just enable the USB port for an EXT drive. I'd be happy with that.

@gog

Because it makes more sense to use the ipod touch/iPhone as a remote control which is just in front of you. The future of mobile computing is wireless.

The next appleTV will be more iPod then ever because Apple will change to ARM CPUs and open the device to the AppSTore.

Aug 10, 09 - 01:00 pm Comment from: GizmoDan

I will buy one when they do DVR.

Surely more more expensive?

Aug 10, 09 - 01:33 pm Comment from: ecrabb

@flappo,

You must have a 720p display, and an iffy one at that. I haven't seen a single BD that doesn't DESTROY scaled DVD. Even the relatively lame BD's (some old catalog titles) are far superior to scaled DVD. I don't know what you're looking at, but it isn't even close. If you think they are, there's something wrong with your setup.

Oh, and if you're surprised at Apple's downloads, it also makes me wonder what you're looking at. Talk about not much better than scaled DVD...

I like the apply tv, if it comes with dvr functions then yes I would buy one in a heart beat!!

Down with physical media and DVR functionality.

Up with on-demand downloads and streaming for *all* content.

Aug 10, 09 - 01:50 pm Comment from: rattiemouse

Apple TV is just a hobby. It will never get Blu Ray.

@gog

The iPod Touch/iPhone can stream video from your iTunes library? The iPod Touch/iPhone can be controlled with a remote control? News to me!

@Toasty

Why are you keeping copies of your media in 2 places if you don't want to? Just stream your video to your Apple TV instead of syncing it! I don't understand why more Apple TV owners don't do this. It makes purchasing the 160GB version completely unnecessary.

I had an Apple TV for a few months after which I put it on Ebay (it actually sold, believe it or not) I replaced the ATV with a Mini on which I run Plex using which I am able to do everything I could on Apple TV and then some (Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, etc.). I also have full access to the iTunes store for anything I might want to buy / rent for Apple.

IMO, Apple has no roadmap for the ATV. If they do, then they have kept that under wraps pretty well. Even if they DO execute a product refresh with all the features described in this article, the only real differentiator will be the BD player, which IMO is something I can do without for the next 12 - 18 months. The DVR is pointless because I can't think of any online streaming content that I might want to record.

Blu-Ray is dead now that Toshiba has licensed HD-DVD to the Chinese. Cheap CBHD discs will undercut Blu-Ray out of business.

Aug 10, 09 - 02:48 pm Comment from: Deus Ex Technica

@Sarasota

"Blu-Ray is dead now that Toshiba has licensed HD-DVD to the Chinese. Cheap CBHD discs will undercut Blu-Ray out of business."

Not if there aren't any HD-DVD decks in the U.S. to play them on.

Alll the studios are on board with Blu-Ray. I see 2-3 jobs/week in get posted by studios for BR compression and DVD authoring. They've committed their investment at this point. So even if China begins producing cheap HD-DVD decks, there's no way that high-volume retailers are going to carry decks (no matter how cheap they are) that have no titles to run on them.

Keep in mind that most of the margin is in the disc, not the deck.

who writes this pish..................... blue ray is dead. Last century legacy tech, in a bandwidth world.

As for DVR... well that might have a wee repreve from the tech dustbin if it shows up in the soon to be refreshed iMacs

Aug 10, 09 - 03:14 pm Comment from: cogitoergomac

@gog:

You're not serious, are you? I have all those devices, and only the ATV can do what it does. I use my iPhone to control my ATV, but my iPhone cannot come close to the combo of streaming, iTS rental/purchase, syncing, HD display, and interface of my ATV.

@Grant:

Because there are circumstances in which storage is preferred over streaming. For example, in my office, my ATV is the front end for my headphone listening rig. My MBP is not always around to stream to it. And at home, network loads sometimes introduce undesirable performance hits on playback. So, sync & store is sometimes preferable.

Deus Ex Technica - Not if there aren't any HD-DVD decks in the U.S. to play them on.....Keep in mind that most of the margin is in the disc, not the deck.

Who cares about the US market when you just lost millions of Chinese consumers? What kind of market will there be for Blu-ray if the Chinese are pumping out $3-$5 HD media? Just because there aren't any machines in the US, yet, doesn't mean anything as the whole Chinese market will be lost first, then Korea and Vietnam and the Philippines.....

Just wait until the players and media are readily available on eBay, too!

Aug 10, 09 - 04:24 pm Comment from: ron

It'll also have all the capabilities of the best home system remote, doing away with the seven remotes I have.

There is always something better on the horizon in high tech products. If you are always waiting for the next "greatest" advance before you buy, you'll never buy anything. Why buy OS X or a new MP or MBP, when the next generation of both the software and hardware will be so much better?

AppleTV already has parental controls. I use one to manage content for my kids (3 & 5). I have complete control of the the content, so they only see what I want them to. I sync the unit to another library, rather than stream everything. That way the things that I don't want them to watch don't even show up in the menu. The hard drive size doesn't matter because the AppleTV will stream any of the content that is synced but won't fit on the local drive. In fact, it will actually manage the synced content with a preference for keeping content that has not been watched yet on the local hard drive. It's actually a very cool device. I'm going to buy another one for my living room. I've just been waiting for a hardware update to see if they add any cool features.

I use a Mac mini as a media hub connected to my 32" tv, at 1366x768, which is great to watch iTunes HD content and any media format from the web (.avi, .wmv, .rm, divx, mp4, mpg).

But my big 60" 1080p plasma has a PS3 connected to it because it has a Blu-ray player and the mini does not. If Apple made a mini with Blu-ray then the PS3 would be on Craigslist before I even had the new mini unpacked.

As if!

The big thing the AppleTV needs that you failed to mention is to accept industry standard file formats not just iTunes ones.

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC is the standard for HD video on Blu-ray... how is this different than what tv can support? other then capping out at 720p/24fps?

Aug 11, 09 - 11:30 pm Comment from: Tommy Boy

@@Matthew: What Matthew meant to say is "the big thing the AppleTV needs that you failed to mention is to accept the p[irate-standard standard file formats, like AVI and MKV, and not just iTunes ones."