Apple fit with early lead in "digital living room" - Page 3

Originally Posted by icfireball

Dang Ireland. You just got TREATED.

Happy St. Patty's Day though.

Originally Posted by @homenow

I will make a prediction that I think everyone would agree with, Apple will never license Apple TV technology to another manufacturer. They may at some point in time license Fair Play if they think they need to, but not the rest of it.

Originally Posted by JimmyTJ

I'm actually more excited about AppleTV than I am about the iPhone.

Originally Posted by Ireland

You have a good point, but I was just saying what I think Apple needs to do, not what they will do.

Originally Posted by JimmyTJ

I think Apple is really on to something with this dumb frontend/smart backend solution. Long term, it will be cheaper and easier to use than what we have the today and creates opportunities for Apple to sell more Macs and even new types of media devices. I'm actually more excited about AppleTV than I am about the iPhone.

Originally Posted by JimmyTJ

This is really what an AppleTV is - its a dumb terminal that isn't suppossed to do anything except provide a front end to a backend server.

As a result, everything that you might want from an AppleTV is actually what you want for the backend - want DVR, add it to the backend computer. All of the negatives mentioned around AppleTV are really features missing from the backend. When, or if, AppleTV makes sense for you is really dependent on what you have available on the backend - hardware, software, and content.

Originally Posted by JimmyTJ


As a result, everything that you might want from an AppleTV is actually what you want for the backend - want DVR, add it to the backend computer.

AppleTV becomes a driver for people to purchase Macs .

Additionally, since the AppleTV is so dumb, it really doesn't ever have to change or become obsolete. As a result, the costs can really come down as production ramps up.

Why not even have a portable version? You could carry it around the house and watch/listen to it where ever you want.

Originally Posted by Ireland



Yeah, I meant to upload something like this but I've not go round to it because I've been a bit busy replying to comments like this and making cups of tea

Originally Posted by icfireball

$299. No offense but you'd be lucky to get $20. The name is too long, and particularly advantageous or relevant. Also, there isn't a huge market for domain names with that subject.

It was truly un-visionary to register leopardvision.com. We we all learn our lessons one way or another -- I've made plenty of mistakes.

Just promise me you don't do lionvision.com when Apple OS X Lion comes out :-)

Originally Posted by tribulation

...The iTV should be at least able to be a self-sustaining device. When I want it to connect to my Mac(s), great! When I just want to watch/record TV, let me do it with it. They're trying to tie together 2 completely separate devices, unsuccessfully by making the iTV so codependent.

Originally Posted by Ireland

Well if I do ever put that up we'll see. A few months ago someone would have said "apple-tv.com" was worthless, but not now - I own that one too.

Originally Posted by gugy

Hey Ireland,

Who are you expecting to buy such a domain name?
Apple?
Just curious and puzzled.

Originally Posted by Ireland

Well if I do ever put that up we'll see. A few months ago someone would have said "apple-tv.com" was worthless, but not now - I own that one too.

Originally Posted by @homenow

I believe that it is also set up to link to Apple's Quicktime site for viewing trailers over the internet. ... .... As long as that streaming is of an encoded file and the decoding is done on the Apple TV then the processor load to any computer that is streaming video will be minimal since it is just reading the disk and sending packets out to the network.

Originally Posted by icfireball

You could maybe sell this to Apple although I doubt they'd pay a lot for it. ~250-2000 maybe.

As far as Leopard Vision though, that has nothing to do with a potential product name so it wouldn't work. Apple TV did have a potential product name when you bought it.

Originally Posted by Abster2core

Best reference that I know of, i.e., that it supports surround sound and more is right on the Apple site.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...m=304277#faq26

Originally Posted by GregAlexander

I agree totally.

Anyone have any reputable quotes/links that say Apple TV won't do 5.1??

Originally Posted by tribulation

There's the catch!
Are movie trailers really that all important? But sure, leave them be - I'm not saying cut it from iTV, just add it to the main subset of the device [which should be a DVR].

**IF** the content is already encoded on an other machine you're saying, the internal HD can be used. Does anyone even know exactly what the internal HD is actually going to be utilized for at this point? Even if it does transfer over shows captured from my elgato-enabled Mac, there're still all of the other issues I mentioned before. It's turning a relatively easy processes into a multistep, perpetually unneeded copying process. It'd be like recording a show to VHS, then dubbing it to another VHS tape (tying up both VHS players) and then finally playing it -- then starting it all over again, all day long. With no return on investment.

Plus, doing all of that encoding, running the program (elgato, etc) to get it, and the storage needed to store it, at least initially -- is all on my desktop Mac that I'm using all day long for other tasks.

Originally Posted by Abster2core

Best reference that I know of, i.e., that it supports surround sound and more is right on the Apple site.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...m=304277#faq26

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Well, when Jobs announced the AppleTV, he explicitly said that it would support stereo, and by extension, Dolby Pro-Logic. I remember it well because I was so shocked that it seemed it wouldn't do proper surround-sound.

In addition, the AppleTV specs do not list either AC3 or DTS as supported audio, and make no specific mention of multi-channel AAC (which you would have thought would be explicitly stated if it did it).

Originally Posted by (in the AppleTV FAQ above)

Movies include audio which is encoded using Dolby Surround which delivers multichannel audio when played using Dolby Pro Logic systems.

Originally Posted by Mr. H

That's a FAQ for iTunes Movie downloads, not the AppleTV. And the surround sound to which they refer is Dolby Pro-Logic, which as I already said is embedded into a stereo signal. It is based on a technique originally developed by Dolby in 1976.

AC3 and DTS have 5 discrete full-bandwidth channels and one dedicated bass channel, and as such are a significant improvement over Pro-Logic.

More info about Pro Logic, AC3 and DTS.

Originally Posted by @homenow

Excuse my ignorance, but don't you want to pass through the audio to the surround sound processor on your AV amp or TV? You do this for a digital source through the HDMI connection or the digital audio out, Apple TV itself doesn't need to do anything to the audio right?

Originally Posted by JeffDM

From what I can tell, the H.264 standard basically uses AAC for audio.

Originally Posted by tribulation

The iTV should be at least able to be a self-sustaining device. When I want it to connect to my Mac(s), great! When I just want to watch/record TV, let me do it with it. They're trying to tie together 2 completely separate devices, unsuccessfully by making the iTV so codependent.

Originally Posted by AppleInsider

Munster estimated that there are at least 110 million users of the digital jukebox software which will combine to represent the preliminary addressable market for Apple TV.

By comparison, the analyst said the closest Windows-based product is Windows Media Center with an estimated 23 million Media Center-enabled PCs in the market. However, he said there appear to be only about 12 million actual Media Center users.

"In other words, Apple has a 10x headstart in the digital living room," he wrote.

PiperJaffray believes the digital living room could emerge into $4.7 billion business by 2008 if Apple is able to maintain its 70 percent share of the digital music market and one in ten iTunes users buys an Apple TV that year. One of the device's strongest selling points is expected to be the simplicity it offers consumers looking to view their iTunes content on a living room television set.

Originally Posted by pmjoe

• Access/purchase content directly from the iTunes Store (Apple already knows what you've bought, why do you need a Mac to access it?)

Originally Posted by pmjoe

• Sync directly and/or playback content from an iPod (it has a USB 2.0 port, what do you need the Mac for?)

Originally Posted by pmjoe

• Support for external storage (once again, it has a USB 2.0 port, what do you need the Mac for?)

Originally Posted by pmjoe

• Act as an AirPort wireless networking hub (it has a hardwired Ethernet port and draft N wireless)

Originally Posted by JeffDM

From what I can tell, the H.264 standard basically uses AAC for audio.

Originally Posted by Snowdog74

There's really no way to embed AC-3 or DTS natively into an H.264 stream, but there's no need.

Originally Posted by melgross

I just came across this article at MacDaily news. It's interesting. we may be seeing something soon, I hope.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/new...port-mode/9658

This one as well:

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/a...-tv-245101.php

Originally Posted by pmjoe

[*]Access/purchase content directly from the iTunes Store (Apple already knows what you've bought, why do you need a Mac to access it?)[*]Sync directly and/or playback content from an iPod (it has a USB 2.0 port, what do you need the Mac for?)

Originally Posted by @homenow

I think that the two most needed things for Apple TV are a rental/subscription service and access to some form of InterNet TV solution.

Originally Posted by tribulation

That's the tipping point for me. As it stands now, the iTV has no chance of seeing my living room. Without some major sources of live content, or heck, even a sign that they're trying -- with a few channels of streaming live FOXnews/CNN/whatever, and ESPN. Yes the licensing deals would be an issue, but, it's usually not the Apple way to provide a half-as* device like this. They are masters of striking the goldmine of deals (iTMS for starters). I'm sure they could have easily brokered a very nice deal to get some great ***LIVE*** <BOLD x 100>LIVE</BOLD x 100>.

The other problem I have with it is that what was mentioned before. It's too reliant on another Mac. It's almost like they're just pushing to make your Mac (the one you use for....you know.....work, and stuff) 2nd class server. I can't stress enough, how much I don't want to have my Mac being stressed itself with having to delegate out all of this content. When I'm editing a movie, playing a game, or doing anything on my Mac -- while my kids are downstairs on an iTV pulling tons of content from my same Mac; and also having my wife on her iTV in our bedroom pulling even more data/bandwidth/CPU/RAM resources away from my Mac -- I don't want all of those resources bogging down my computer.

If anything, the iTV should have been equipped with a massive hard drive(s) (or at least an iTV+ model) to act as THE server/file repository. This option would have made much more sense to me......

Then if I have some movies to watch, they're all on my **expandable** iTV's system (we should just refer to it as the mainframe/hub of the house in this case). Then in the more-rare case that I want a movie on my Mac instead of the iTV, it'll stream it back to me, or any Mac in my house. This workflow seems much more logical to me, as my iTV device would be always-on (unlike my power hungry G5 and older CTR iMac). In its current incarnation (incantation?) it works just the opposite of what I'd like, my Macs have to stay on all the time (otherwise I have to run in the other room to boot up my G5 if I want 'movie A', or go in the basement to boot up my hot-CRT-iMac (which heats up the house, works nicely as a space heater as well) to get 'movie B'. All of that time spent running around, I could have just burned a DVD and brought downstairs -- you get my point

Too long of a story short.......how many of you think they should have flipped the entire conception around 180°?

Without going on too much more, they really should have sold an XServer-like device (stripped down, just storage, doesn't need a ton of RAM or CPU speed) for the home media hub. In fact, this is what the Airport Extreme should have been. Like said above, the AirportServerExtreme should have been a router, usb network printer hub (as it is now), AND include a networked storage volume(s) -- at least on par with what the iTV's puny drive is at 40gb -- that would have not added much price at all, and the attractiveness of the product would have gone sky-high....

Then you can buy iTV "hubs" that use that main central storage repository. In practice, the total price the consumer pays wouldn't be all that much more since the iTV is dumbed down (even more) so it costs less, and the AirportServerExtreme would be a bit more to produce, but make up the price. All in all, they could have upped the price on the package (sold together of course) to even $500 and they'd make an absolute killing. Now THAT would make a captivating product that wouldn't stand a chance at failing. And fills a much-needed gap, intelligently.

Originally Posted by Mr. H

Why on earth would this news "support the theory that they [Apple] will begin offering HD content soon" (Gizmodo)?

iTunes has supported the import of high-bit-rate AAC (up to 320 kbps) and Apple Lossless for a long time, and this has not heralded high-bit-rate music downloads from iTunes. I don't really know why this news has come as any sort of surprise to anyone, we knew from the day of announcement that the AppleTV would support resolutions up to 720p. It stood to reason that if QTpro included an "export to iPod" preset, that they'd probably intro an "export to AppleTV" preset. What would have been odd is if the preset didn't do 720p given the hardware is capable of playing it back.

Originally Posted by tribulation

I agree with most of that for sure. I think that most people, including Apple are looking at this thing completely backwards. Instead of targeting Mac users, or in rare cases, people that are inclined to buy a new Mac ONLY because of the iTV, in order to access and use the iTV.....

They should have targeted anyone with a TV (which is basically everyone). That would have let those people without a Mac see the coolness of Apple products, while subtly letting them know the features they can't use without a Mac (mainly syncing). If the iTV is powerful and useful, then people would see Apple's strengths -- thus when they went to buy a new PC (within a month, year, or even 2) they'd be much more inclined to purchase a Mac.

Originally Posted by @homenow

All they have to do is offer the pilot episode for free to get you "hooked" as well as rely on how people currently "discover" new series such as word of mouth.

Originally Posted by pmjoe

Exactly! And, just as much so, even in the 3 pages of comments here, we've had numerous people speak about how they don't want to have to leave their Mac on all the time, run between rooms to do stuff on the Mac and the AppleTV, etc. Those people have Macs and don't get why this thing can't behave as more of a standalone device.

Originally Posted by pmjoe

Exactly! And, just as much so, even in the 3 pages of comments here, we've had numerous people speak about how they don't want to have to leave their Mac on all the time, run between rooms to do stuff on the Mac and the AppleTV, etc. Those people have Macs and don't get why this thing can't behave as more of a standalone device.

And as far as acting as an AirPort wireless router goes. It just couldn't get any more trivial. The hardware is all there, and if this thing runs a variant of OS X as most imply, the software exists too. Where's your cable modem easiest to hook up? Well, right by your TV of course, and right where the AppleTV is supposed to go.

Like I said, the hardware is there. I'm not 100% happy with the specs but, it's sufficient to do what I proposed. The software just needs a major reconstruction, and add an iTunes Store interface. AppleTV 2.0! As with the AirPort stuff, if this thing is running an OS X variant, much of this would be pretty trivial. Maybe add an API for plug-in codecs while we're at it. Steve Jobs, call me up and I'll whip your AppleTV development group into shape.

As you put it, by making the device more standalone, it targets the general TV owning population. Or at a minimum, target the iPod owning population by supporting syncing and playing directly from an iPod docked to the AppleTV. Then the iPod folks say, hey, maybe I need to have this.

So far, Apple has just done nothing to distinguish this device from every other media hub that's come out in the past 1-2 years. I just don't think "buy it because you bought an iPod from us" is going to be enough to sell it.

Originally Posted by SpamSandwich

The fastest and most efficient means of "discovery" is to channel surf. Guides and the like can't compare.