Apple TV 3.0 update not helping sales as AirPort routers lose share - Page 3

While almost everybody suggests adding DVR functionality would be great, I really do not see how this should be done. We have some channels on DVB-T, some on DVB-C, some on DVB-S, encryption methods (and required CI modules) are not standardized, they actually differ from state to state, provider to provider and sometimes even between channels delivered by the same provider. I use no less than 4 different CI modules right now... and that is just one country and Apple TV is an international product. Apple would be nuts to even start this. They should provide a SDK and make the USB port usable, then third parties could design local solutions and the software to go with them.

I have a Mini in the closet which records shows using an Elgato device. Once the recording is done, it automatically gets converted to H.264 and added to the iTunes library, this will automatically sync it to the Apple TV (and I can sync it to the iPhone if I want to). Works fine and through the Web interface of the electronic TV guide I can even schedule recordings remotely.

This sounds like a very pricey device... Not gonna happen.

I am using 0.9.4 which Handbrake says is the latest when I check for updates and the picture does not look as good as my upscaled DVD player. The AppleTV is connected via HDMI.

I do not have to accept movies taking space on my HD, which is why I don't buy downloaded movies. DVD and Blu-ray does not take up space on my HD. Movie, storage, picture quality all in one package.

Steve Jobs calls it a hobby so everyone else calls it a hobby. Funny how everyone focuses on what Steve Jobs say, isn't it?

When you are the CEO of Apple and the largest shareholder in Disney, I would expect your hobbies to be quite large scale.

You can stream (not sync) from iTunes running on a MAC OS X computer with wireless connectivity or ethernet connection. I just started iTunes on my iMac which has streaming enabled. Under MyMovies - I can see all of the handbraked movies located on the iMac. Streaming can work quite well.


To add a computer for streaming go to Settings -> Computers -> Add Shared iTunes Library

I agree. My cable company-supplied DVR is good enough. Also, I don't want to have to deal with the kludge of having my DVR send an IR signal to my cable box. And if I wanted to match my current DVR's dual tuners, I'd need two cable boxes.

I think we need to wait until whatever the followup to the Cable Card is before third-party DVRs make any sense.



Only one optical audio? My Onkyo receiver (not high-end; part of a HTIB system) has three optical and one coaxial digital audio inputs, and so far that's enough, but I'm using three of these four inputs already (DVR, DVD Player, Mac Mini).

My Harmony Remote takes any pain out of the switching, so with a one-button push, I am all set up for any of my sources. I'm quite happy with my Mac Mini as media center, though I must say that Hulu quality is no match for the HD channels from the cable company.

too many good points in the comments to reply specifically.

today's ATV is kinda obsolete because (1) it is running on a version of Tiger 10.4 OS and (2) its processor/video chip cannot handle full 1080p HDTV.

conceptually ATV began as a media bridge box between your Mac and your SDTV. since then Apple has expanded that into a cross platform iTunes content delivery box for your low-end HDTV. it is quite cheap and does a nice easy to use job of that (including iPhone/touch remote control), but that is all.

Apple has refused to expand its functions beyond these limited purposes, even though third parties like ATVFlash have shown it could do much more - a browser, streamer, etc.

Clearly ATV needs a more compelling purpose to move out of the "hobby" category and become a really popular consumer product.

of the many possibilities mentioned in the comments, IMHO the outstanding one is for ATV to become also a bridge box between your iPhone/touch/Tablet and your high-end HDTV. so you could mirror your apps and games wirelessly on your big screen TV and sound system. among many things, that would cement the touch's status as the leading next gen portable game platform (sorry, Sony and Nintendo). overall it would leverage booming iPhone/touch/Tablet sales into a lot of new ATV sales as well.

but this will require a new generation of more powerful hardware (and some more RAM too), running a version of Leopard 10.5 OS, which would leave current ATV owners behind.

whatever it is, i have to think Apple will do something major to AppleTV in 2010. but maybe not until next Fall.

Handbrake picture quality is whatever you encode it to be. It can be good or it can be crap or anywhere in between -- depends entirely on your particular setting. But, no, the best combination of resolution and filesize for the Touch or iPhone isn't going to look very good on your 52" HDTV...

I agree. I can see zero difference between connecting my Mac Mini with HDMI and playing a DVD or HandBreaking it and playing it. No difference on my 46" Sony HDTV.

Bingo!

The AppleTV sucks, and its precisely why i my PowerPC Mac Mini is hooked up to my Bravia.

Personally i use my Mini (stream bootlegs, hulu, higher res youtube) in conjunction with my PS3 (blu-ray and DVD) and 360 (Zune streaming 1080p) for media purposes.

For me to ditch my Mini and PS3 AND 360 in the living room, it would need to surf the web since the PS3 browser is garbage, Netflix would be nice but i want 1080p streaming like my 360 has, if Microsoft can do it, Apple sure as hell can.

It needs to play every file format out the box. It needs to play Blu-Ray and DVD to kill any reason to use my PS3 and give me DVR capabilities as well as be a TV tuner. DolbyHD would be nice since we have a setup in the apartment, but atleast give it DTS support

While im sure it would be hard to do all those, and im not gonna magically drop my setup now for an AppleTV if they did, this would be a serious media powerhouse for the living room. I know if i didnt have any game console id plunk 399 down for one if it could do what i listed.

ATV has HDMI audio out, so does the 4890 card on my desktop computer - I think other small form factor machine do too. Besides, the HDCP issues primarily affect 1080p Blu Ray content (scaling it down to half the resolution if it detects a non-compliant device) and is nothing to do with audio.

I don't think Apple want their machines to be used as media centers. The way they messed up Front Row is Leopard (and failed to rectify in Snow Leopard) tell me this much, let alone the lack of public codecs for hardware accelerated 1080p playback. It's more to do with Apple protecting iTunes than hardware.

I have Linksys, Netgear and and Apple AE in use. All are very nice and work fine. I bought the Apple simply for 802.11n which no one else had back when I bought it. It also slaves my Canon printer over USB for the entire network of both Macs and PCs (using Bonjour). It steams HD 720p (yes genuine 720p at 24 fps) from a Mac Pro to an Apple TV very nicely. The newer ones have dual band having .11g and .11n which is nice so those .11g iPhones don't slow the network down. I have to use another router for iPhones to avoid this as mine is pre the dual function. The Apple have one really nice trick, it auto sets up a bridged network so everything in my network is seen as being on the same sub net - both those using the AAE and those directly linked to the Verizon FiOS router. The FiOs box sees all internal IPs as being in the same network. That is a pain to do with any other make I have used. It is automatic with Apple.

Bring out a low cost streaming only version of the AppleTV. No internal HDD. Add support for other formats (divx, avi, mkv and video_ts folders), a web browser and the ability to optionally use a bluetooth keyboard. Facebook on your TV could be a killer feature.

I have owned dlink, netgear, belkin and linksys wifi routers. Not a single one of them was easy to use, fast or reliable. In frustration I eventually bought an airport express.

It was easy to setup and was very reliable.
When I got an Apple TV it wasnt able to stream very well over the G network, so I got an airport extreme. It is also easy to setup and reliable.

What do I like the most about the airports? Apple does not roll out new models continuously and continues to support old models with firmware updates. The airports are not perfect ( I gave up using the NAS functionality on the ae, just too slow ) but it was easy to setup my three router dual band network and they never need to be reset.

I agree this is the best method for the ATV. The concept of downloading the movies to the ATV seems to be far less flexible and obviously space limited, so much so I am not even sure why the feature is offered. The instructions to do streaming as opposed to downloading seem confusing to many. I have had to help several people set this up since they had set up their ATVs only to have media downloaded and simply could not figure out how to stream. Personally, I simply stream everything, music included. BTW, you still have to 'sync' to update after adding new movies to the streamed folder set up as the iTunes Movie folder or restart iTunes or they don't show up on the ATV's menu.

As Orlando says above, the cost could be dropped without the internal HD which is not required IMHO. I guess Apple need it for movies purchased from iTunes directly or for buffering.

Apple has not pointed out, and most people have not realized that iTunes 9 Home Sharing feature eliminates the need for a separate "media server" piece of hardware, such as MS and many others sell now (like Iomega's Home Media Network drive for Mac).

all you need to do if you have a lot of media is to set up a new library with it all on any standard external 1T or 2T hard drive connected to any Mac in your house. and turn Home Sharing on. every Mac, PC, and AppleTV on your home network can then display that full library and stream (and copy) anything from it. and AirTunes can pump it into your sound system. the iPhone/touch Remote app can control it.

(btw, you should back up that media drive somehow too. TimeMachine can do it.)

this also means there is no compelling rationale any more - as there was before iTunes 9 - to be able to plug an external hard drive into the AppleTV USB port for media storage. and it is much easier to work with your media library on the Mac/PC anyway (edit metadata, etc.)

don't know why Apple has not given more prominence to this neat new feature of iTunes 9. instead of talking much about your home media setup, including ATV, Apple keeps promoting the iTunes Store and content products.

Yes. These are all available in the Airport Utility and not hard to find or configure.

Open the Airport Utlitiy, click on the router, then manual setup menu item.

MAC address setup is in the top level access tab
Power and SSID is in the top level wireless tab and clicking advanced.

The nice thing is that bridging using two AEBS (or AEBS and Time Capsule) is easy to do. Just allow extending the network on the AEBS connected to the cable modem (or FIOS) and then on the other side pick "Extend a wireless network". Done.

This is often made more confusing than necessary on other routers. Even the lowly Airport Express can extend or bridge a WDS network.

I have a PS3 and although it can see videos stored on my NAS, it has issues with lots of codecs.
About 30% of the time, I have no choice but to watch whatever it is on my computer instead of the big screen :-|
Plus, the PS3 has a huuuge clunky remote, whereas the Apple Remote is so great.

My guess is that the next rev of the aTV will have the same ARM processor and GPU as the tablet. Which possibly will use the full speed version of the 3GS' Samsung S5PC100 Cortex A8 and the PowerVR SGX or perhaps more likely Samsung's Hummingbird 1Ghz ARM CPU (also Cortex A8) with the PowerVS SGX.

Then have a subset of iphone and tablet apps available for the aTV. Perhaps using iPod touch and iPhones as controllers for games.

Anyone interested in the aTV already has one or is waiting for the next major rev (like me).

I'm not happy with home sharing at all. It still does not centralize content which means I have islands of media all over my home. iTunes 9 Home Sharing is certainly not the kind of innovative tool that we expect from Apple.

I really want to buy an Apple TV but it's hardware is old and slow. I'm looking forward to a ARM based unit that stays much cooler and a lot more functionality in software. I don't really a DVR and I damn sure won't be looking for Blu-ray but I need something that handles iTunes content very well and my own content well.

Apple isn't going to turn Apple TV into a TiVO just because the fanboys would like them to. If you think dealing with the top-level management in AT&T and Verizon is nasty, just try dealing with the pirates who run the MSOs!

You might try checking out the real world.

I have 3 SD TVs and a lot if not a majority also only have SD TVs. THEY DO EXIST. Do you think that when HDTVs were introduced all SDTVs magically disappeared? Some of us replace TVs when they fail, not when the newest model comes out.

I love most things Apple, but there's NO WAY IN HELL I would ever buy Apple TV. I have backed up tons of dvds and 1) the storage space on ATV is simply too small to hold them. They should either try to make an Iomega Multimedia Hard Drive type device, starting at around 2TB, OR, make a WDTV type External HD-to-TV interface. 2) Apple TV is not easy to use with .avi files, which is too bad because ATV has the most beautiful on-screen menu; but that's just not enough—Beautiful doesn't trump Functionality. Apple are surprisingly behind on this front. If they want to stay in the TV interface game they NEED to put out something like the WDTV, but keep the front row interface intact. Then I'd likely consider buying such a device.

True but that also means that you are not the target market for Apple TV. SDTV marketshare can only decline so it makes little sense to add support for a format that's fading away rapidly. We're still really in the infancy of downloadable content so I think those that wait will neatly bypass the cuts from the "bleeding edge"



That's why streaming is so important. The ideal solution would be a large NAS to centralize media but we're still not there yet.

.....

That's cool info if you have an iMac or big machine, but for me, it means having to constantly set up and dismantle the whole external drive from my notebook every time I leave for work. When I take my notebook from the house, my wife wouldn't be able to use this setup to watch media on the TV until I come home and set it all up again. The whole reason I bought the WDTV in the first place was that it freed up my notebook and offered a permanent solution for both of us.

Well Sony has started (well for a few years now) doing it by selling an external USB device, no reason why Apple can't

I am not surprised sales of the Apple TV are flat.

I have Vuze on the Macbook and an xBox 360 hooked up to the TV. This all pretty much provides the functionality of the ATV.

Yeah but you spent $300. It's not like you found a cheaper solution.

Er, the xBox was already there, It wasn't purchased to do that job. Vuze was free, so getting the functionality cost nothing.

No need for a DVR. Update the hardware , and add an app store which doesn't restrict media delivery - e.g. allow Netflix to make a Netflix app and Spotify to make a spotify app. Success!

Hardware wise, I'd just like less noise/heat, more space (500+ GB, so my 350 GB music collection will fit... I need to stop visiting play.com) and a less limiting remote. Ipod touch works well, but some functionality, like power off, isn't there either.

The DVR possibilities are too fragmented (satellite, cable, DVB - different standards, different encryption etc), so not a good fit for Apple TV.

PS: Actually having an iTunes video store here would increase its appeal too, and I would spend money there

Apple TV does stream from your library. It's very easy to set up.


Put the media on the network with a HD connected to your airport extreme. Use whatever computer you want to manage the library and synch things up. I have a dedicated server, but I understand your thoughts. It would be nice if the ATV could replace that server, however I doubt the ATV would ever support External SATA at 3GB/s. I have several ATV's and I have to consider multiple streams. Also, after struggling with a ton of media, USB2/ FW drives are too unreliable and too slow to transfer/ copy terabytes of data, so for me I'd rather have a more robust server that can serve an entire household, but for others I could see how great it could be if ATV were the server.

However I have to disagree with you, the Apple TV is a proper home media center. I'm very happy with my setup. I

Fusing media and computers has proven to be a "sticky wicket". Things will improve, but licensing and a slew of other legalities are definitely going to hinder development in this area. Apple is in a good place to leverage the power of the itunes store and their product ecosystem in these negotiations. So I'm inclined to think they will be able to make a great product/ service. Other's are at it too, so we'll see where it goes but otherwise there's nothing in the market that is leaps and bounds above ATV and few others have the clout to leverage change in what were fairly "static" and protected industries (music, tv and movies). Keep in mind, most of what we're talking about is still 1st generation tech no matter what offering you are talking about and accelerated development was traditionally unique to electronics and only now is it spreading to other industries.

The coolest thing is that it seems everyone is very interested in a "killer" product in this category. It should provide some real incentives to these corporations to work together developing a great platform and hopefully not fragment the market into disaster.

Apps are feature we all seem to want. The idea of supporting netflix (or others) in this regard seems like a mute point when you consider the iphone/ IPT can work that way with Rhapsody subscriptions for example. I genuinely prefer the Itunes store but if "there's an app for that" on the ATV as well I think it would be a huge selling point but I think we need an improved input device. The tablet in my opinion will fit the bill nicely.

Regarding less noise. MY ATV is silent. Yours should not be making noise, but mine are hot enough to cook an egg just about all of the time.

Oh good grief. A "bear to set up?" Frankly, with the quick setup guides and included software directions they've been pathetically simple to set up for quite some time now. One would have to be a computer novice not to be able to handle them.

AVI is a legacy format at this point. Even handbrake stopped supporting it. here's the quote from their page...


"AVI: AVI is a rough beast. It is obsolete. It does not support modern container features like chapters, muxed-in subtitles, variable framerate video, or out of order frame display. The code has not been actively maintained since 2005. Keeping it in the library while implementing new features means a very convoluted data pipeline, full of conditionals that make the code more difficult to read and maintain, and make output harder to predict. As such, it is now gone. It is not coming back, and good riddance."

Welcome to my ignore list and goodbye!

AppleTV is a hobby because there's no lock-in for users. If AppleTV gets subscriptions in 2010 then Apple will no longer call it a hobby. It will be a deal changer that will challenge cable companies.

It would be nice if a new hardware release was good enough to be a game console as well. Some of those iPhone games might be ok on the big screen.

I would like to see the AppleTV take off, be another Netflix, unfortunately in order to get decent downloads you need cable...and Comcast just bought NBC...ouch.

AT&T is going to hang up land lines, so there goes DSL.