Comments on: What Are Apple’s Real Plans for the Apple TV?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I think in the medium term, Apple will not only converge iOS and MacOS, but also move ARM to laptops and desktops. AppleTV is tomorrow’s Mac mini / Pippin: nettop and beginner’s gaming console. Apple just need to adapt iOS for keyboard and mouse.

Betting so much on the cloud may be a mistake though: while it gives another layer on control and lock-in suppliers love (Apple especially), I think customers will soon realize it costs a bundle (my brother eats up his monthly bandwidth allotment with his VPN connexion to work, there’s nothing left for home cloud services nor media downloads), is unreliable, and is NOT always on. Cloud services are more expensive and less reliable than my home server, and outside of my control.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 22:10:00 +0000

I have 3 tv’s. Livingroom, master bedroom and home gym. Livingroom has a 1yr old mac mini 2.4ghz with a 2tb firewire external storage drive and wireless keyboard/trackpad. The mac mini uses plex for the media server. The other two rooms are each using a jailbroken ATV 2 running plex among other things. New programs are either downloaded from TPB, Icefilms or elango eyetv. Plex server identifies and sorts everything, using plex my ATV2 can play any type of file. I can stream all of my media to any tv in the house.
The only problem is losing those tiny apple remotes…

By: Dave Danger

Dave Danger — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 18:00:00 +0000

I agree with you it would be nice if the ATV would play alternative formats but I wouldn’t hold my breath. I have experimented a lot with this myself and supporting multiple formats is a PIA. And if you try to transcode on the fly you need a lot of horsepower. So my solution is to standardize on one format (in my case Apple’s) and I transcode all my media a head of time to that format and add it to my local iTunes library. This means that I usually have at least two copies of all my media but I like to have a bit by bit copy of the original anyway so that I can transcode to whatever format that I might need in the future. I have used Plex and it is a great product but unless you pay for the upgrade its most useful features are not available. I haven’t tried Boxee yet so don’t have any opinion of that one. I find the only really irritating feature of using iTunes is that you have to have a computer up and running iTunes in order to access your media on the ATV. Of course this is true for any of the server type solutions so I am hoping that the iCloud may be a solution to that. I think ultimately an iCloud kind of solution will be a requirement for wide spread dumbsumer acceptance as very few would be willing to have a 12 core 24 terabyte server dedicated to there media library as I do (I know, not everyone needs that much iron, but I do a lot of multimedia processing that really does make good use of it.) Which brings me to the problem that I have with iCloud which is I have much more data than we will initially be allowed to use. Hopefully that will change in the future.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:03:00 +0000

This is going to save me a few hundred gigs of hard drive space on my MBP.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:03:00 +0000

This is going to save me a few hundred gigs of hard drive space on my MBP.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:03:00 +0000

This is going to save me a few hundred gigs of hard drive space on my MBP.

By: anonymous

anonymous — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 23:03:00 +0000

This is going to save me a few hundred gigs of hard drive space on my MBP.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 07 Aug 2011 14:22:00 +0000

I’m as big an Apple person as the next, but ATV is a non-starter if you want to cut the cable. Until it is able to play .avi files, ATV is of no use. My 3 year old Mac Mini media center runs Plex with a 2TB drive attached. It streams to every other computer, iPhone, and iPad in the house and automatically downloads episodes and places them in the correct directories. (and spare me the righteous indignation about downloading TV…I pay for cable and TiVo, so the media outlets are all getting their cut…movies are Redboxed in our house)

Both Plex and Boxee are miles ahead of ATV for real media management.

By: Robert_hacken

Robert_hacken — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:05:00 +0000

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By: Robert_hacken

Robert_hacken — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:05:00 +0000

For more Apple news and rumors, please head over our website for 24hrs
Apple news coverage. Want more information about IPhone or Ipod Touch
rumors visit our website.

http://www.appletell.com/techn…

By: solomon_rex

solomon_rex — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:47:00 +0000

Yes. I have a Roku that works the same way (basically a box that connects the HDTV to the web) and it’s brilliant.

Apple’s next move is to supplant Netflix on its hardware, open up iOS on appletv for devs and hopefully get a motion controller for a remote.

By: solomon_rex

solomon_rex — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:47:00 +0000

Yes. I have a Roku that works the same way (basically a box that connects the HDTV to the web) and it’s brilliant.

Apple’s next move is to supplant Netflix on its hardware, open up iOS on appletv for devs and hopefully get a motion controller for a remote.

By: solomon_rex

solomon_rex — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 19:47:00 +0000

Yes. I have a Roku that works the same way (basically a box that connects the HDTV to the web) and it’s brilliant.

Apple’s next move is to supplant Netflix on its hardware, open up iOS on appletv for devs and hopefully get a motion controller for a remote.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 06:39:00 +0000

You don’t need iTunes running on your desktop to play music to an Apple TV. Just use the iPod app on your iPad, for example, and direct the speaker output to Apple TV.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 06:36:00 +0000

Your ire should be directed to the movie studios, not Apple.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 00:06:00 +0000

this has nothing to do with what apple wants to do and everything to do with getting rights to do it from the movie studios. Of course apple wants to be able to stream shows… but there are legal licenses needed to do that. The reason they only support renting of movies currently is because they don’t store your “bought” purchases on the apple tv itself, they stream them.

By: Minipower62

Minipower62 — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 23:29:00 +0000

Well if iPhones can be bluetoothed to appletv.. Then someone comes to visit and their icloud content is authenticated and can be played on your tv. Or in your hotel..

Agree having to have iTunes on is frustrating.. And in Australia we don’t have the same tv show access..

I use it mostly for AirPlay from iPad for catch up tv.. Or bought shows or movies on that..

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:04:00 +0000

There’s a simple solution, can you guess what it is?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:03:00 +0000

You’re an idiot.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 21:03:00 +0000

You’re an idiot.

By: Brad W

Brad W — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:54:00 +0000

Personally, I have two Apple TV’s – Gen 2. I find it very frustrating that I have to have iTunes running on my Mac, or PC all the time, in order to view the videos that I have purchased. With the introduction to iCloud, I see this changing. Another thing that I find frustrating, is that they have now allowed TV shows to be synced to the iCloud, but no movies. WTF Steve Jobs! Get your head out of your keester and listen to your customers! If your customers are willing to BUY a Movie or TV show, you should allow them to do it from ANY of the Mighty Apple products or services! I’ve been an Apple supporter for many, many years, but Apple is getting just as bad as Microsuck.

By: Nick

Nick — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:30:00 +0000

The only thing positive I see with the Apple TV is that it can be hacked to run XBMC

By: Dnaybour

Dnaybour — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 20:09:00 +0000

i have had my Apple TV for almost a year and it is VERY frustrating.
You need live access to iTunes to throughout to see films photos or music. BUT weekends and evenings everybody wants access to iTunes.
I also finds it needs setting up every time I try to use it. so guess what I do’nt bother

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:56:00 +0000

Don’t you get tired of writing this crap? I am tired of reading it!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 19:56:00 +0000

Don’t you get tired of writing this crap? I am tired of reading it!