

Upcoming Apple TV loses 1080p playback, gains apps... and will be renamed iTV - yanowitz
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/11/upcoming-apple-tv-loses-1080p-playback-gains-apps/

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grandalf
Apple TV is only 720p for video now. The only thing that's 1080p is the menu!

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nrb
Surely that's so they can release the iTV 2.0 w/ 1080p in a few months for a
few hundred more bucks?

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adolph
Right now their top purchase/rental resolution is 720p.

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grandalf
Yes, and people running third party OS extensions can only get 1080p to play
with the aid of that broadcom card.

It seems odd that AppleTV was ever advertised as 1080p...

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flatulent1
Consumers will probably like this, geeks probably won't.

The current model is x86 based (1 GHz or so, single core, something like a
Celeron M) and runs a stripped down version of OS X. It's a bit underpowered,
but with some work loading things it can run standard OS X apps. QuickTime can
handle the same codecs used on OS X. With the current model, the more powerful
but more costly Mac Mini is an alternative.

As described, the new model has a much less powerful and Mac-binary
incompatible CPU, but it will use MUCH less energy and can handle h.264
playback with hardware decoding. That'll pretty much rule out adding codecs
for those XViD .AVI videos many have laying around. Lack of an Intel CPU
lowers cost significantly. It seems it could run app store stuff except for
the input device hmmm.... maybe it should have a touch screen? Add video out
somehow to an iPod touch?

Apple so far has stayed clear of directly supporting off-air or cable-tv PVR
functionality. The USB tuners from Elgato Systems work well ("Eye-TV"), but
with a Core 2 Duo it would take a dedicated hardware compressor to shrink
archives down to h.264 etc at a decent quality level and in a reasonable
amount of time.

Locked down like an iPad/iPod touch/iPhone, much of the geek appeal would be
gone. The thought of a browser without ad-blocking alone is a big deal to
some. (perhaps someone can fine a clear way to do some ad-blocking in a router
with open-source firmware?)

Hopefully whatever Apple does will allow access to plenty of tv content that
isn't costly. DRM issues (and poor support of video that people already have)
could be a negative.

It'll probably have (DRMed) HDMI output but no VGA or DVI. Or maybe Apple will
prove us all wrong and do something really surprising?

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jsz0
There are always some ways around things:

Ads: Atomic Web on the App Store includes and ad blocker though I do like the
idea of taking care of it at the router level.

XVID/DIVX: The free app ServeToMe does real time transcoding. You install the
server app and the client just streams H264. Works surprisingly well.

Hacking: Jailbreaking is about the same as rooting an "open" device. I'd bet
those guys would have a bunch of emulators and other forbidden apps out within
a week or two of its release.

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lukifer
ServeToMe does iPhone-resolution encoding... I doubt it would be easy to do
720p h264 in real-time.

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electromagnetic
I've used TVersity to transcode and stream 1080p in real-time through my xbox.

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mgrouchy
I was hoping for a refresh of the apple TV product line. Its too bad there is
no 1080P playback, thats a dealbreaker for me.

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mikeryan
Just out of curiosity what content would you be watching on an appple itv
device that's at 1080p? The vast majority of its content is delivered via IP
and 1080p video which streams at about 45Mbps isn't really realistic to be
moving around on most networks. Most 1080p video is still going to be
distributed the old fashioned way... On blu-Ray.

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gnaffle
It's realistic enough that it's perfectly doable on Pirate Bay. Apple could
have been innovative here and offered a (legal) BitTorrent network for
downloading HD content.

I _think_ that a lot of non-technical people (even Apple fans) will have a
hard time buying accessories for their shiny new "Full HD" flatscreen TV, and
then buying an Apple TV that doesn't support it. Unless they reduce the price
to the point where it's a no-brainer.

Fortunately, I'm still able to buy an Apple TV that supports 1080p without
problems, called a Mac Mini :)

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mikeryan
I disagree that its perfectly doable on pirate bay. Downloading and watching
1080p movies via the pirate bay is even an edge case for that service.

Take a look at their "High Res" movies

<http://thepiratebay.org/top/207>

First the majority are in 720. The ones that are in 1080 tend to be 10GB to
50GB in size and downloading them can take days (I've tried - on a decent
cable modem connection). Then you need to store these beasts which means some
sort of multi-terabyte storage server - or burning them to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD
disk. A perfectly acceptable alternative but then you're not usually using an
Apple "iTV" as your playback device.

So so far this is so far out as an edge case that Apple's choice still makes
sense.

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donohoe
Let's forget the fact that ITV is a TV channel in the UK... Not confusing at
all

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electromagnetic
I doubt it'll be releasing in the UK as iTV, as ITV owns the trademark and has
done since forever. The confusion will be great enough that ITV could easily
get an injunction in place to prevent the sale of the device so as not to
weaken their brand name.

Why? Well because ITV is a video providing service, iTV is a video receiving
service. You might get away with it, if ITV hadn't actually tackled the video
receiving end of the market when they launched their Freeview (which they
still partly own) which was a set-top-box for the receiving of free digital
images.

There's going to be no Apple vs Apple in this case.

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timthorn
Indeed, prior to Freeview (and after ONDigital), they called the service ITV
Digital, if memory serves.

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henrikhansen
Wait a second, if it's going to have apps, what is the controller going to be
like?

My guess: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is going to learn a new trick. Imagine a
driving game where the controller is your iPhone (accelerometer and gyroscope
for control) the screen can be used to control gear, and watch stats. If this
is going to be true, the new Apple TV will seriously be something unique!

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teilo
And no doubt it's still slow as molasses. Sorry, I'll take my Mac Mini w/HDMI,
running Plex any day.

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glhaynes
The current Apple TV certainly is too slow. But the A4 in the iPhone 4 isn't
slow at all driving media on its retina display...

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dmnd
Seems kind of strange to open the device up to such easy criticism. iTV? It
doesn't even have 1080p!

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easyfrag
This is Apple, no cut&paste on the original iPhone, no USB on iPad. I'm
guessing the user experience wasn't what they wanted either with the
performance of the playback, or with the speed of the download/streaming of
1080p from the store.

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elblanco
The app bit makes it clear this is set to be a direct competitor to Google's
Android based TV solution.

Also interesting to move it to iOS4, the first previously OSX device to move
to iOS? A sign of things to come?

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nixy
If you are insinuating that the Mac lineup will be moving to iOS, I think you
might be more than a bit off.

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silversmith
Coincidentally, the Apple TV device came up in random office discussion
yesterday, and general concensus was that it should have been called iTv.
Maybe Apple has secretly bought my company?

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cheesey
iTV? That's going to cause some confusion in the UK.

<http://www.itv.com/>

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extension
Damn, I was rooting for "iTube"

