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.

Caution from Hollywood?

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

The question is. When will we get (non Disney) content?

I'd imagine MPAA member execs will be a little cautious about entering a partnership with Apple after seeing Jobs' enthusiasm about music DRM turn into an about-face when confronted with interoperability regulation in the EU,

Re:Better than TiVo?

[namityadav]

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

Too bad

[geekoid]

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?

This is so not for the /. crowd

[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]

What operating system it runs?

DivX to Challenge Apple's iTV with 'DiVX Connected

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2055708,00.as p [pcmag.com]

Re:Better than TiVo?

[thammoud]

Is this the Xbox 360 that can not sync your computer music to its harddrive for whatever bizzare reason? To listen to music on my 360, I have to turn on my computer (Laptop) in my family room. The user interface stinks and it does not play any of my iTunes stuff. No thank you.

Re:not for me i guess

[stubear]

Then explain Windows Media Center. I'm able to not only record and pause live TV, I have a well designed guide for finding programs and setting them to record whenever that show comes on, all for free (well, the cost of the MCPC anyway). I can even use my XBOX 360 as a MCPC extender and keep my MCPC in anotehr room altogether.

Re:you can kind of

[ranger5]

FYI, I have not yet used the AppleTV. On an OS X machine, running 10.4.9, with front row, there is a method to play many movie files that are not purchased from the iTunes store. For example, let's say you have digital video of your legal content, ie. kids hockey game, or a school play etc. and your Codec of choice is somewhere in the XVID or DIVX family. If you have the proper plug-ins for Quicktime/iTunes, they will play. It can get expensive in storage space if the content you are storing is in 22, 42 or 120 minute chunks, and doubly so if you have configured iTunes to copy all of your material into it's own DB. You can drag those video files directly into iTunes and edit their tags to sort them appropriately. Alas, I am not the source of this info, just one who has been able to make it work. The real trial and error - sorting out the bugs folks are here: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20051 013124423475 [macosxhints.com] Again, I have not tried this on the AppleTV, nor have I tried it on XP or Vista - just a macbook pro.

Re:Better than TiVo?

[elbobo]

While I agree that the Apple TV is severely limited in functionality, your attack on the remote I think is misguided. Personally I've found the Apple remote to be one of the best things to happen to media viewing since TV remotes went wireless. Navigating through Front Row with the remote is elegant and simple and a far superior experience to using any traditional media remote. Everything can be achieved with far less buttons, in a much smaller and neater remote than any other TV/media device offers. It's more intuitive and has almost zero learning curve. That's the sort of innovation that Apple are famous for, and the Apple remote is not an exception.

Less buttons == better.

Perhaps you haven't actually tried using it?

Linux available on it in 3... 2... 1...

[TheSHAD0W]

No, seriously, I can't wait 'til someone makes a Linux hack for it.

One feature they really ought to add, and it could be done all in software, would be the ability to stream video off network shares or NAS devices rather than relying solely on its internal HD.

Re:Better than TiVo?

[molarmass192]

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.

Widescreen Only?

[labradore]

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.

Re:Just use your 360

[ocelotbob]

You do realize that the Apple TV can stream from windows too, right? And that some of us have multiple computers with content on them, right? Will the 360 let me stream stuff from my computer and my neighbor's computer?

Re:About Time

[Bretai]

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

Counterexample: Did you ever notice how the MacBook specs never tell you it does 802.11a? 802.11g standard; 802.11n capable [apple.com]

Maybe it's because Jobs declared 802.11a dead a few years ago and nobody wants to make him look bad. I mean how could it possibly hurt sales to tell people it supports additional channels that they might use in the future?

Ahem...

[The-Bus]

"Part of the secret of Apple TV is that, like most of Apple's products, it doesn't try to do everything and thus become a mess of complexity. It can't receive or record cable or satellite TV, so it isn't meant as a replacement for your cable or satellite box, or for a digital video recorder like a TiVo. It can't play DVDs, so it doesn't replace your DVD player. Its sole function is to bring to the TV digital content stored on your computer or drawn from the Internet."

All this for $299? You could theoretically buy an Xbox 360 for the same price and watch video stored on your computer downloaded from the internet or DVDs, or play games. For $399 (not Mossberg's "50% more"), you can watch video stored on your computer, play DVDs, play games, download games and demos, and download episodes of shows and movies as well as trailers, etc. You don't even need to have a controller plugged in. The remote will do just fine.

For $300, you could also buy an old Xbox, "convert" it to something similar, and still have money for a Tivo. And I'm sure there's dozens of other options (that I'm not aware of) that work just as well for less.

I'm not a fan of useless combination of features but AppleTV is far, far away from being a killer app, as are most set-top boxes.

Re:This whole article is an embarrassment to Slash

[slughead]

- 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)

My additions:
- it *does* play H.264 and *only* H.264 video (protected and unprotected)
- it plays a myriad of audio formats (probably all the ones the iPods do) but, again, only 1 video format
- it has *no* video/audio inputs on the device, and cannot record *anything*, ever.
- it can connect to any copy if iTunes software running on a LAN and can either stream or be synchronized like an iPod using its built-in 40Gig HD

So, basically, this can be used for *four* purposes
1) Playing videos you have bought off the iTunes Store and downloaded off Quicktime trailers
2) Playing videos you have, for some reason, in H.264 format
3) Viewing Photos in most of the popular formats
4) Listening to supported audio files in most of the popular formats

It does *nothing* and I mean *nothing* else.

I, for one, will not be buying this. $1/song, $2/TV show, $10/movie all in awful fidelities and with a sub-par selection is absolutely ball-busting. Moreover, I can't loan any of this stuff to a friend or resell it when I'm done.

You buy your big-ass plasma TV and an AppleTV and you'll notice damn fast the difference between your HD Cable TV and the mess you downloaded off iTunes. Not to mention a 128kbit/s AAC iTunes song streaming to your stereo.

Apple's 'digital lifestyle' is cheap, highly limited crap with a high price tag. With the money I save from NOT buying into this vicious cycle of over-priced lock-in, lock-out, I'll buy myself a TiVo and a Netflix/Blockbuster account (which is now shipping HDDVD and BluRay). Larger selection, higher fidelity, more choices, choose to rent or choose to buy.

Re:Caution from Hollywood?

[westlake]

Disney is not the only producer of media in the planet. If you sell a device that only provides their content it will sink faster than you can say "Cinderella"

and if you sell a video device that can't access Disney content from Day 1 you can flush your investment down the toilet.

Re:Too bad

[mmeister]

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.

Watching Divx with iTunes trick

[Absentminded-Artist]

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:Does this thing...

[Professor_UNIX]

Handbrake can convert directly from a DVD to H.264 encoded movie files. I rip the movie with MacTheRipper and then either burn that image with Popcorn or take the resulting VIDEO_TS directory and run it through Handbrake. Handbrake will rip directly from an unencrypted DVD as well (for example, the aforementioned burned DVD-R via Popcorn). I took 4 gig DVD rips and converted it to a 1 gig H.264 mp4 and it looks great in full DVD resolution. The only downside is that it takes about 3 hours on my Dual 2GHz G5 Powermac to convert a 90-120 minute DVD to H.264... which surprisingly is slower than my 1.67GHz G4 Powerbook!!! I would've thought the G5 would run circles around the Powerbook, but apparently not.

/Always Download Legally and rip DVDs you own!!

Re:This whole article is an embarrassment to Slash

[tonejava]

My point wasn't about Apple TV specifically, the quote I was replying to was about Apple in general:

> Apple's 'digital lifestyle' is cheap, highly limited crap with a high
> price tag. With the money I save from NOT buying into this vicious
> cycle of over-priced lock-in, lock-out, I'll buy myself a TiVo and
> a Netflix/Blockbuster account (which is now shipping HDDVD and BluRay).
> Larger selection, higher fidelity, more choices, choose to rent or
> choose to buy.

Yes I own 3 Macs and the only turning point for me was the Unix kernel - Finally Apple introduces a command line capable OS!

I don't go for the simplicity but the power underneath and the fact it's no longer just something that looks good.

Besides, good luck finding decent support for a TiVo let alone someone who knows what one is in Australia!

Re:Apple TV and Divx

[NorQue]

ARGH! This was "HTML formatted"...

It should read like this:

: The .mp4 container format is the video equivalent of ODF

While I also would like AVI to go for good this comment needs clarification: .mkv/Matroska [wikipedia.org] would be the equivalent to ODF, not .mp4 - the latter one is a proprietary Apple format again, even though it was standardized. And .mkv is already widely in use, if only for High Definition and Anime content.

Re:This whole article is an embarrassment to Slash

[realisticradical]

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.