AppleTV Hits the Streets

Stories are starting to pop up all over the web about the AppleTV, which evidently means that Apple has set loose the hounds of marketing and the units are (or will be tomorrow) available in Apple stores. Still no word on whether or not it plays DivX files. That will be the key to me purchasing one.

From the apple website

[pklinken (773410)]

Then you pull up a seat, put up your feet, and pick up the included Apple Remote to play your movie on TV. Give yourself a hand: You've just changed the way you watch digital media.

Hmmm.

not for me i guess

[fred fleenblat (463628)]

I'm a bit disappointed that it doesn't have some basic tivo functionality. You can't control a cable or satellite box, you can't tune in over-the-air broadcasts, analog or digital. All you can watch is iTunes content, most of which you have to *pay* for.

I would have snapped up an "HD iTivo" in a second but that's not what it is.

OK

[lucabrasi999 (585141)]

So when are they releasing the iRack [youtube.com]?

Too bad

[geekoid (135745)]

I was set to buy one, but it is fro wode screen only. II can watch widescreen movies on my standard TV, why couldn't the include s-Video and two analog plugs for sound? or wuold ahve making 9" to a side just been too big?

Re:Too bad

[mmeister (862972)]

Apple is known to not cling to old technology. They would rather ride/drive the HDTV wave than cling on to S-Video or composite past.
See dropping the floppy on iMac, dropping ADB & SCSI in favor of USB and FireWire.

I have a feeling there will be more coming that takes advantage of the HDTV than exists in this 1.0 product.

Obligitary question

[hack slash (1064002)]

Will the remote only have one button?

GoogleTV

[biocute (936687)]

Personally I will be waiting for GoogleTV, where it streams 24/7 YouTube videos produced by amateurs.

Obviously with Google's advanced technology in search and category, these videos will be sorted into different categories, genre, rating etc.

This is so not for the /. crowd

[by Anonymous Coward]

My laptop is nearly as big as my tv and has a much nicer screen, and my DVD player handles .avis and jpgs pretty well, and will be good if I ever get a better TV. But lots of people have nice TVs and not so convienent computers, this will be good for them.

For thoseof us who use our computers near-constantly there doesn't seem to be a point of making it easier to go from computer to TV, I don't think this box is for us. Now, if iTunes gets more movies and/or better pricing on movies and TV shows, then that may help.

Geeky question

[kosmosik (654958)]

What operating system it runs?

Widescreen Only?

[labradore (26729)]

OK. It's not hard to find a widescreen TV these days but my 4:3 still works. It's still good enough. How hard would it have been to just fit the stupid menus in 4:3 format as an option? Apple may be human-focused but it certainly isn't customer-focused.

Watching Divx with iTunes trick

[Absentminded-Artist (560582)]

Still no word on whether or not it plays DivX files. That will be the key to me purchasing one.

By opening a Divx file into a registered version of Quicktime you can save a reference file of the movie that is loadable into iTunes and Front Row. Works with Xvid as well. I haven't tested this on an AppleTV but since it's the conduit for iTunes into your TV, I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Re:Better than TiVo?

[namityadav (989838)]

Tivo is not necessarily the right product to compare it against. I think comparison between AppleTV and XBox 360 based IP TV will be a better apples to apples comparison (Saw what I did there? Saw what I did there?)

IP based TV is one area where I don't see Apple making a dent on Microsoft's solution. There are many things going Microsoft's way here:
(a) Microsoft's 10 million or so install-base
(b) The fact that unlike most other Microsoft products, 360 has decent reputation and following in it's field
(c) Xbox Live is also very much "alive" already
(d) There will be a huge intersection of gamers and early adopters of IP based TV
(e) Xbox 360 is already connected to your TV and your home-theatre

Re:Better than TiVo?

[molarmass192 (608071)]

The only thing that the Apple TV has that the D-link DSM-520 doesn't ...

You're wrong about the UI being the most important, the most important thing it has that the DSM doesn't is an Intel CPU. The AppleTV will be become the modders box du jour for video because of this fact alone. This is the FIRST Intel based media PC that is both silent and affordable. I'm expecting mine friday and the first thing I'm doing is popping the case open, pulling the drive, and seeing what I can do with this thing.

Re:No chance!

[n6mod (17734)]

The thing will play specially encoded H.264 movies from iTunes with DRM bolted onto, end of story

Or, you know... not.

There's an "Export to [apple]tv..." option in the latest quicktime that produces unencumbered H.264 files. So DRM is not a requirement for it to play. The apple specs only declare a smallish subset of H.264 and MPEG4 files, but 720p H.264 isn't bad at all.

This whole article is an embarrassment to SlashDot

[Jeremy_Bee (1064620)]

This whole article is an embarrassment to SlashDot. The OP starts off by "wondering" if Apple TV will support DivX when the information on supported formats has been posted on the Apple TV web site for months.

Most of the responders seem to know nothing about the product. Asking embarrassingly stupid questions like "does it have a keyboard?", "When are they going to have non-Disney movies?" and telling us that you can only play DRM'ed video on it???

There is hardly a question posed here that would not be answered by a ten second trip to the Apple TV website and anyone following the product even the slightest bit would know the answer to them. Most of the "opinions" on the product here are ill-informed nonsense at best. On top of that, there is a lot of bitter, mean-spirited, childish banter that one would expect on kids sites like Digg or Gizmodo, not SlashDot. I am truly embarrassed to see this kind of junk here.

For those who want to know:

- doesn't support DivX
- a keyboard would make it a computer, not a set-top streamer
- non-Disney movies already available (have been for a while)
- *does* play non DRM'ed music and video (just like iPod)

I am not going to bother trying to refute every point made here or talk up the device, but for a cool techie site populated by intelligent IT people who are supposed to be in the know on stuff like this... this article and most of the related comments are a joke.

Re:This whole article is an embarrassment to Slash

[Cryptnotic (154382)]

Welcome to Slashdot, you must be new here.

Apple TV and Divx

[Kadin2048 (468275)]

I think the reason why it doesn't support Divx is obvious. Apple wants to try and kill Divx as a de facto standard, if they possibly can. They would much rather have people using H.264 inside .mp4 container files, than Divx video inside .avi or .divx containers.

It's my understanding though that at least in recent versions, Divx is essentially ISO-compliant MPEG-4 Part 2 ASP video, albeit in a nonstandard container. So it seems like it ought to be possible to 'recontainerize' a Divx .divx or .avi into an .mp4 file without decompressing and recompressing it, thus avoiding loss. I'm not aware of any software tools that do this, though, and I might be misunderstanding ways in which Divx diverges from the standards.

Although I would really like to see Apple and .mp4 win this one, I'm not sure that they're going to; the installed base of divx-playing equipment may just be too big, and they may be forced to release an update to add support for it later.

I find it odd that so many Slashdotters seem in love with .divx or Divx-containing .avis, which are just as much of a closed, single-vendor, proprietary format as MS Word's .doc is, and everyone loves to just shit all over that. The .mp4 container format is the video equivalent of ODF, and although I'm not going to buy one, I hope that the Apple TV is popular enough to get the script kiddies and release groups that push TV shows and movies out on bittorrent using it (because, lets face it, the main driver of Divx is "unauthorized" content, to put it politely).

Re:Apple TV and Divx

[Hamfist (311248)]

mp4 [wikipedia.org] is not a proprietary Apple format, but an ISO standard that anyone can support. VLC Media player [videolan.org] supports it. Also, ffmpeg [mplayerhq.hu] has h264. When it comes to which has better hardware support, mp4 wins. When it comes to software support, mp4 wins. MPEG4 is an open standard. There are patents involved, but no royalties. Matroska was created to avoid patents, whereas mp4 has many patents in it. Matroska surely violates someones patents, but we just don't know whose yet. MPEG 4 has all the patent issues sorted out.

I actually just finished transcoding all of my video to mp4 as i prefer its subtitle support over the cheesy avi hacks. DivX was created during the non standard days of MPEG4, as the spec was not finalized. That spec is now finalised, and the standard codec is h264 in an mp4 container. These videos play in Windows, Linux or any other OS which has an h264 codec. They can be imported into iTunes as best as i know. My iTunes question of the day is actually which subtitle formats they use, as I don't know the answer to that.

Re:This whole article is an embarrassment to Slash

[realisticradical (969181)]

That's actually a pretty interesting point. I'll give it a try.

Netflix $15/Mo * 12 Mo = 180/Yr
Cable $40/Mo * 12 = 480/Yr (I get some crazy package deal with cable and internet so I'm not sure if suddenly my internet bill will go up, worth considering.)
No Tivo :(
Total = 660/Year

Shows I watch regularly: Lost, Heroes, random junk

iTunes store: Lost = 34.99/Season
Heroes = 42.99/Season
Total = 78/Year
Leaving me with $582 to buy my iTV and random junk...

The OP has an interesting point. On the other hand it'd make it mighty hard for me to watch sports, CNN and other live programming only found on cable.

Re:Caution from Hollywood?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy (963289)]

I don't know about you, but I get tired of Mickey Mouse cartoons rather fast.

Disney own Miramax, Pixar, Touchstone, ABC, ESPN, Buena Vista, ABC and more. There's a little more to Disney then 40s Mickey Mouse clips.

Re:About Time

[by Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for your worthless post. You may want to delay hitting the submit button until you have something substantial to say.

Re:About Time

[Simon Garlick (104721)]

Correction: Apple generally produces high-quality hardware six months after the product was launched. Until then, the early adopters are just one big beta team.

Re:About Time

[IdahoEv (195056)]

"Still no word on whether or not it plays DivX files."

With an Apple product, "no word" definitely means it doesn't play them.

Re:About Time

[badasscat (563442)]

With an Apple product, "no word" definitely means it doesn't play them.

Well, but there's not "no word". There's specific word that it doesn't play them direct from Apple itself. It syncs with iTunes; that's what it does. It supports h.264 and QuickTime, which is what iTunes supports. That's what it plays.

Maybe eventually somebody will figure out how to hack it to play divx, but out of the box, it definitely doesn't. A simple look at the AppleTV product page would tell you that. The submitter apparently doesn't know how to read.

Re:CmdrTaco's review

[vought (160908)]

Apple already builds an Apple TV for standard def TV users - it's called the iPod video. Buy one - they're the same price as this rig, albeit with less storage at the same price point, but you get portability.
--
The Apple TV - It's the true video iPod everyone tittered about all through 2005.

Instead of a cable or dock, it uses 802.11g/n.

Instead of headphones, you attach your TV/Home Theatre.

Apple limited the device to widescreen because they understand the market for the device a whole lot better than you do. People with big glass 4:3 TVs are getting rid of them. People who already have 16:9 or high-def sets will have the scratch to pop for one of these devices. They're the "wavefront" consumers who embraced the iPod first, and Apple hopes they'll embrace this iPod for the living room.