Pentium M-based Intel chip at heart of Apple TV - Page 4

If the codexs are there it will play items stored in iTunes not just the iTS purchases. I don't know about sharing movies and photos that Front Row allows.

"H.264 MP4 Mencoder" encoded via FffmpegX (eg. for DVDRips) will play nicely in Quicktime. I'm having trouble with Xvids though in MacBook Intel 10.4.8, QT7.

I guess cerebral isn't the only masturbation on the cards then!

'Here flossy'

What I'd really like to know is what is the chain of command for all the products together. Airport lets any external hardrive become a network drive so I'm picturing a 750mb drive with all my media attached to to airport so I wouldn't have it on my tv or mac in the first place.

Is this possible:
Large external HD attached to new Airport Extreme.
My mac sees that.
My tv sees that through my mac.

Then I wouldn't need to have much on my computer, which I would be cool and save me an assload of diskspace.

What would be really really great is:
Large external HD attached to new Airport Extreme.
My tv sees that without needing my mac on.

That'd be awesome. Anyone think either of those senarios are possible?

You can spill beer on any remote, that's just an occupational hazard. Lord knows I've spilled booze on all kinds of shit. What we need is to water proof everything!



Naw, that's not even close to true. Maybe most brand new tvs debuted this year 42" and up are fullHD, but that doens't change what's available for sale today. Most of the debuted tvs don't ship for about half a year anyways, I know because I've been eyeing the new Sharps. And even so I'm also eyeing a new Samsung slim for my bedroom(because of the price) and those also aren't "fullHD."

edit: OOPS I just read the rest of your post and I see that you are commenting on something someone else said. My bad.

It's already possible to have your iTunes library on a network device, afaik. So your first scenario seems fine.

The second one? I think Apple may decide to allow that at some point, but for now the functionality is turned off.

How about a 3rd scenario...
I have a master iTunes library on a server/hard disk. And like an iPod Nano, I sync my laptop from the master library, giving me a small subset of music since I don't have a big hard disk. I'd like that.

Yes and probably No. AppleTV (and every other media extender appliance) is technically able to see the NAS. However, since AppleTV apparently works hand-in-hand with iTunes, you may have to use the NAS as your iTunes library to get AppleTV functionality. This all seems like a lot of back and forth networking, but if you have multiple computers in your home, this may be the only solution you have. If you only have one computer, then just use the USB port on the computer (unless it's a notebook).

I hope, though it's a longshot, that Apple allows the AppleTV to access media directly from the Airport Extreme. That would reduce the additional network traffic utilization that would otherwise be needed by going from the Airport Extreme connected NAS to the Mac to Apple TV when it could just simple go from the Airport Extreme to AppleTV. Boom!

You're right genius. Apple shouldn't be in the business of making any money.

Is there literature from apple on how to do this? I don't have the stuff to do it yet but if it works well and easy I might consider doing that


Too bad, they should make ?tv have it's own customized version of itunes to get around that.


It is a notebook, not the only computer but my mbp is definetly the one that handles all that stuff. A notebook can't use external storage for it's itunes library? Or do you just mean that since it's mobile its not a permanent solution. I guess when I wanna use ?tv I could just plug it into my mbp. My current itunes library on my mbp is 13gb already and I don't use itunes for video...yet, so an external solution(possibly networked) would be best.


I hope, though it's a longshot, that Apple allows the AppleTV to access media directly from the Airport Extreme. That would reduce the additional network traffic utilization that would otherwise be needed by going from the Airport Extreme connected NAS to the Mac to Apple TV when it could just simple go from the Airport Extreme to AppleTV. Boom![/QUOTE]

Yeah exactly, plus I could use it when my computer is off.

Any word on when going from mac to appletv if the mac can be asleep?

To store your itunes on the server/hard disk...

In your iTunes Preferences, under Advanced, set your iTunes Music Folder location to wherever you want (ie your network device).

Because those sales would drive iPod and now AppleTV sales, just like they do today.


I'm going to skip right to point C. How is this any different than getting stuff from iTS which is practically all the AppleTV can play anyhow? Still need to download it. And you wouldn't be making this ridiculous argument in the first place if Apple had announced it was now offering 720p downloads.

Point B: How is this different than buying a $300 AppleTV which can't even do as much as the $399 XBox 360?

Point A; XBox Live is $80 for a year, but that includes a webcam...couldn't find a price without the webcam.


I'm not entirely keen on defending Microsoft, but the XBox Live prices and points do convert to real money that you could use up (unlike Zune points). Yes, it could be confusing with the points, but at least they are in whole 100 amounts.


Let me see, scrolling through an onscreen keyboard is more cumbersome then this process:

Go to iTunes on computer.
Search for song/movie/TV show.
Wait for show to download.
Return to living room to watch on AppleTV.

I wonder what updates they are putting in Front Row for this. Currently, if a TV show is downloading, Front Row will give you an error message if you try to access anything that would be in the same folder as the show downloading (for example if you download Episode 7 of Heroes, episodes 1-6 will be unavailable until it finishes). Obviously, that also means it can't do what iTunes can and allow you to start watching the show while it downloads. And please Apple, fix the fricking TV show sort so they are alphabetical!!

For those that think AppleTV is overpriced, check out the $350 Netgear EVA8000 media appliance.

It offers quite a bit less hardware wise than AppleTV, but it does offer support YouTube (kinda) and many codecs such as Xvid and DivX.

Why not just hook your computer directly to your TV?, Video downloaded from the internet isn't all that great anyway, the movies on the Itunes store are compressed, so what's the big deal about HD? My mac mini is currently hooked up my stereo via a cable, and hooked up to my monitor and video projector via a splitter. Works for me.

That's already been asked/answered more times than anyone can count.

• Your Mac mini is twice the cost of an AppleTV. Most people don't like to use their entertainment center as their computer.
• Most HTPCs have significant fan noise which makes using it in the same room as your TV less than ideal. These small media appliances that are popping up give you the best of both worlds. Many even have rudimentary internet access.
• Even HD-DVD and Blu-ray movies are compressed using H.264, the same codec as on the iTS.

here is the price and the iTV specs







Find out more here

http://www.apple.com/appletv

I completely agree... at least for myself.

I have always-on media servers at my house and would prefer a pure network media player. For me, the local cache is an unneeded expense.

I suspect that apple put a hard drive in it so that people who turn their computers off, or have laptops, can watch content without having to turn on their computer.

Same here; I've been noticing we have similar media streaming strategies.

I wonder if ATV still works if its HD fails.


Or "borrow" protected content via synching though I don't understand all the authorization aspects of it yet. In iTunes, authorizing protected content is a one-time transaction. For ATV, Internet access is required at different times although information from Apple is still sparse. That's not the clearest explanation but hopefully it makes some sense. I'm still thinking of other scenarios when the HD "cache" might be useful.

Wouldn't it be nice if we had one iTunes library and used partial syncing and caching to play to all our machines?

Even better, one library with no syncing or caching.

Not that having multiple computers with content is bad. Rather, the best solution is one that doesn't require any syncing or caching. The user gets a list of all the available content and selects what they want to play. They shouldn't have to manage anything.

iTunes accomplished this almost perfectly with music file management on a single computer. People no longer have to ever touch, move, or rename song files, ever. Next, iTunes took on the difficulties of library management on multiple computers on the LAN. I wouldn't characterize their solution as perfect, but it is probably still the best available.

The AppleTV is a network video player for lack of a better term. Apple is attempting to simplify media playback by making media available anywhere on the network regardless of where it is physically stored. And here's the important part... with as little file management as possible. The whole concept of "syncing "is a necessary evil at best.

Don't get me wrong I want to sit at any iTunes and have the full library. I want fast response to any search or browsing of the library, and I don't want any stutters due to the network (even if someone restarted the 'server'). I'd prefer the song to keep playing if I take my laptop out of range (doesn't happen too often) and I'd also like to keep playing if I leave my network entirely.

Now, my Laptop may not be able to hold the whole library, so I'd need to nominate (somehow) my subset of music/video etc.

Most of syncing and caching doesn't need any user intervention. The user doesn't care how it works, what's local and what's on the server. They just want their full library (and when away, a nominated OR shuffled subset).

I view syncing as a temporary and necessary evil. The best solution is that of wireless network video players streaming anything from anywhere.

We're... so... close.

I've always been against the principle of "speed up the network!" in contrast to the "be more efficient in what we send across the network".

In previous posts you've said you don't like syncing, but your reasons are stated around usability. Are there other reasons?

Usability issues are my main gripe with syncing. I suppose that if all of your synced devices had capacities larger than your media collection, it wouldn't be an issue.

Cost would be another reason. If a network is available, there is no need for local storage. Which means you don't have to pay for storage and the product is cheaper.

Agreed that you don't want a subset available on your computer, you want all available. And it has to be seemless. This can be done though using a caching/syncing background process and a bit more brains in the iTunes software (to show the whole library, but play from local source if it's synced).

I doubt you'll save much money by smaller hard disks on your computer - it would be nice to have central storage in general (not just for iTunes) and maybe let Time-machine use excess local capacity for its backups.

Anywa... getting way off topic - apologies to others... let you get back to Pentium M stuff