It is very, very easy to hack your AppleTv to add Boxee and XBMC. Just copy the installer to a USB stick, stick in the back of your AppleTV, restart and let it do its thing. Boxee is a great thing to have on your AppleTV, is updated regularly and works well. There's a free remote control app for your iPod touch/iPhone too. Give it a try - it will give your old AppleTv a new lease of life.
I bought the ATV product for jailbreaking my old AppleTV, and frankly find that its a bunch of amaturish hobbyware. Boxee is a joke.
No harm done, but I have to laugh at the folks who accept the jailbreak garbage because of the rise they get out of outsmarting 'the man'.
I'll bide my time and use a properly designed and supported product, thank you.
Got my shipping confirmation today for Oct 4th or before so looking forward to that. My son has Jail Broken his iPod Touch and is constantly asking me for help.
Personally i prefer to let Apple develop these products through future software updates as they always do in the end. This new aTV has so much potential.
For me the new aTV offers a simple way of watching movies on my wall mounted HDTV in the bedroom (not those kind of movies, Mrs Underhill would kill me) streamed from my iPhone. I can finally get rid of the DVD player and the cabinet to go with it. The aTV looks so neat and small and should tuck away nicely behind the TV.
Hey all, I wasn't sure if Airplay was open source or at least licensable. I assume so since third parties are providing or at least promising support for the standard. My point it that if it is, than some enterprising programmer should be able to bolt on support for Airplay on the old Apple Tvs. Heck it should not be such a big deal for apple to do it themselves. I mean if I can already use airplay on my 4.2 ipad to stream audio to an airport express ( hardly the latest greatest hardware device) then it should be trivial for apple or someone else to bolt on support for Airplay to old AppleTVs. That functionality alone would let me stream my phone or pad video contents to the old apple tv boxes I have and make them still VERY useful instead of an old legacy device which cant do what I want. All I want is to use it on older extra TVs to stream my in app Airplay compliant video to those old boxes to stretch out some life in them. I will buy a new one or two for my main TV;s but will not for the guest room etc... all Im sayin is it should not be hard to implement and would be a nice olive branch for those of us who have them lying around.
Probably because hacks will be the only way to get apps into the Apple TV.
Yet. Apple hasn't announced an app strategy for the Apple TV yet. And watching what happened with the original iphone, only an idiot whould assume Apple doesnt have a plan.
Quote:
Google TV is going to eat Apple TV for breakfast.
Google TV will be a disaster. It will be exactly like the Windows tablet PCs - an OS not optimized for the deceive and usage it's targeted for, with a crappy user experience.
How long were Windows tablets out? Almost a decade? Bill Gates pet project? And yet they failed because MS wasn't committed enough to polish the user experience for the tablet - since it would have meant they would have to tweak their Windows brand.
I don't think Google has a brand issue. I think they have a resource and competency issue. It's obvious now Schmidt benefited greatly from being in the board from their rapid almost carbon copy of the iPhone. It's equally obvious watching Googles dazed, confused and scattershot response to the iPad that he never saw the iPad.
And I have no faith in them having any kind of a cohesive strategy for the Google TV. They haven't demonstrated the ability for independent thought yet...
Quote:
If Apple hadn't been so conservative, they'd of done Apple TV properly and such hacks wouldn't be needed.
Ironically, because Apple is so conservative and deliberate in doing things properly, they will succeed. It matters not that Google TV will merely have Android apps optimized for a phone touchscreen thrown on a TV first - the experience will suck.
Apple wasn't first to music players, smart phones or tablets - yet they dominate those categories and are the clear trendsetters. They do this via a clear focus on their customers and their customers experience with their products. They don't focus on sales numbers, marketshare, partners, developers or even profit. They know who their real customers are: people like me with normal wants and desires - mainly that the damn thing do what you need it to do without having to think about the device that is helping you do what you want. Unless I want to. If I want to Geek Out with my iPhone or iPad, I can jailbreak it and do everything Android can do. I'm not locked in with the iOS any more than Android users are. The big difference is I get a polished and well honed experience by default with the iOS. THIS is why the iOS will continue to dominate in raking in the profits. Like the MacOS, there will always be cheaper, more numerous devices. But they won't have the use or generate the revenue of the iOS ecosystem.
Cook and Jobs have both made statements that if you take care of the important things, profits will follow. Their cash horde and market cap bare that out but look how even today companies are loath to drop useless features that clutter up the products and negatively impact the user experience.
No, until Google demonstrates a new found philosophy in customer focus (and no Google, your customers aren't advertisers or programmers) to assume Google TV will be successful just because it shipped first or is backed by Google is plain silly.
Waiting for someone to successfully allow the new OS to be on the old ATV (if at all possible). So I can have the benefits of both. HDD with some storage and all the new stuff of the iOS (Airplay, rentals etc).
Not going to happen. The old one is based on an Intel CPU and the new one is ARM.
Because some people don't own an iPad, or iPhone, it is a bit stupid to have to spend $1000 to get a $99 device to work properly
1) why do people like you always seem to imply a device is fixed with the launch feature set forever? I realize you may have been conditioned by decades of previous consumer electronic companies milking you and only offering upgrades via new devices, but every since the first iPods Apple has demonstrated they update their devices (where practical) over time.
2) AirPlay isn't iOS only. It will be on the Mac and Windows eventually.
I see - and how are these apps going to be controlled exactly - with an apple remote?!
Hey now - you aren't supposed to point stuff like that out! Android will just be better because they are first! And it's "open" so that HAS to make it better right there, no?
Quote:
lmao.
Pointless jailbreak.
Indeed!
Quote:
Apple will introduce apps when they've worked out how to best control them.
And this is why Apple will have the majority of the profits while everyone else will have sales numbers and market share
Waiting for someone to successfully allow the new OS to be on the old ATV (if at all possible). So I can have the benefits of both. HDD with some storage and all the new stuff of the iOS (Airplay, rentals etc).
Whoa! Think about what you just said. I absolutely hate having to take out my laptop just because my old apple tv can't hold all of my content. It's a five minute process that is literally a pain in the ass. Sounds stupid, but it gets old...seriously.
LaLa acquisition, new datacenter... I think Apple is planning for the long term - and will have you covered.
Quote:
Sucks that I have to keep my airport express AND my old apple tv in the bedroom just to have the functionality of apple tv and streaming music with the rest of the house.
Huh? The ATV has wireless and can stream music just like the old ATV (indeed, it will show album art while doing so - a nice upgrade from the streaming in the AE). Why do you think you need to put an AE near it? I don't get it from your description.
Frankly, the older ones had more capability after they were hacked than I can see the new ones having.
At launch, sure. But what product doesn't improve over time?
And the underpowered CPU in the old ATV makes for a pretty laggy UI, and it's worse when hacked. If you want a free for all get a $500 mini, not a $99 appliance.
I have and Like Dish Network with their 622 DVR, but looking to cut costs. We will be dropping it soon for an antenna and internet sources., Boxee/Hulu etc.
I see myself dropping down to Tivo S3 for over the air (the quality is amazing! PBS in HD is stunning over the air - it's compressed to $h17 by cable/sat) with an ATV.
Netflix on Tivo isn't a good experience. The hardware is too overtaxed. Maybe the new Tivo Primer is better, I dunno. I see traditional TV going away for me so my DVR days are numbered (woo hoo!)
ATV gets me access to all media on my computers, not just iTunes content - importantly my pictures. It does it well and the integration with the iTunes ecosystem is, as one would expect, seamless. I think the new streaming model will dramatically streamline things, esp. For pictures and video, vs the previous sync model.
I also have an Xbox 360 and PS3. The 360 is prety much games only these days and the PS3 bluray. I wouldn't rebuy the PS3 today, to many other cheaper and just as good BR players out there.
A new product that no one has yet and people are already complaining about what it can't do and saying it should have this or that feature.
How about buying a product for what it was designed to do. Kind of stupid to buy any product to do something it wasn't designed to do and then complain that it can't do things the manufacturer never said it could do to start with.
And the $99 device does "work properly", it streams media from your home network and the apple rental store, also netflix if yr in a netflix enabled territory. This is what it's advertised as being able to do, and if you bought it to do anything else on, you should just have bought a mac mini.
Sorry, put the wrong currency on one of the items.
The iPad is NZ$800 to NZ$1350, the iPhone 4 is NZ$1100 to NZ$1300. I responsed to someone that said having the apps didn't matter as you could stream them from your iPad, or iPhone. Hence why should I have to pay up to $1350 for an accessory to a NZ$170 device just to get some functionality to work?
No, until Google demonstrates a new found philosophy in customer focus (and no Google, you customers aren't advertisers or programmers) to assume Google TV will be successful just because it shipped first or is backed by Google is plain silly.
Well, that's the thing, the advertisers are their customers. The "customers" are just fodder.
What percentage of Google projects are actually total flops, like Wave, or never make it out of the labs? Anyone?
Sorry, put the wrong currency on one of the items.
The iPad is NZ$800 to NZ$1350, the iPhone 4 is NZ$1100 to NZ$1300. I responsed to someone that having the apps didn't matter as you could stream them from your iPad, or iPhone. Hence why should I have to pay up to $1350 for an accessory to a NZ$170 device just to get some functionality to work?
It's fully functional without an iOS device. You can stream movies from your iTunes library, rent movies and watch Netfix without an iOS device controlling it. You can even use AirPlay from your computer and view your photos without an iOS device.
If you have a $1350 iPad, Apple TV also serves as a relatively cheap accessory to your iPad and increases the functionality of your iPad by putting its video display on your TV.
People will buy Apple TV and use it by itself.
People will buy Apple TV and use their existing iOS devices with it.
People will not buy Apple TV and purchase an iOS device specifically to control Apple TV, because that would be stupid as you've pointed out. At least I hope people don't do that.
Whoa! Think about what you just said. I absolutely hate having to take out my laptop just because my old apple tv can't hold all of my content. It's a five minute process that is literally a pain in the ass. Sounds stupid, but it gets old...seriously.
Now, with that said, someone makes iOS available for the old apple tv. I hate that I can't use my old apple tv as an airport express anymore. Especiallyy now that I can stream from my phone. Sucks that I have to keep my airport express AND my old apple tv in the bedroom just to have the functionality of apple tv and streaming music with the rest of the house. Dumb. I can understand not streaming video to old apple tv. That's fine. BUT, don't strip a feature that the previous generation could do before. (I know it can still do it from my computer but I want to do it from my idevices seeing that they can stream to my airport express).
I don't know if someone eventually answers this but I'll add my explanation. Just like the current OS X is tied to the Intel processor, it appears that iOS is tied to Apple's A4 processor which is what is in the new Apple TV but not in the old one. It seems very unlikely that iOS can be hacked onto the old Apple TV because it is not binary compatible. As Apple migrated from 68000 to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel, Intel to ARM, ARM to A4, they used emulation or bundled multiple binaries to handle transitions. Even with complete corporate backing these were always challenging. The old Apple TV will remain the least expensive Intel Mac and lack an invitation to the iOS party.
Comments
It is very, very easy to hack your AppleTv to add Boxee and XBMC. Just copy the installer to a USB stick, stick in the back of your AppleTV, restart and let it do its thing. Boxee is a great thing to have on your AppleTV, is updated regularly and works well. There's a free remote control app for your iPod touch/iPhone too. Give it a try - it will give your old AppleTv a new lease of life.
I bought the ATV product for jailbreaking my old AppleTV, and frankly find that its a bunch of amaturish hobbyware. Boxee is a joke.
No harm done, but I have to laugh at the folks who accept the jailbreak garbage because of the rise they get out of outsmarting 'the man'.
I'll bide my time and use a properly designed and supported product, thank you.
Got my shipping confirmation today for Oct 4th or before so looking forward to that. My son has Jail Broken his iPod Touch and is constantly asking me for help.
Personally i prefer to let Apple develop these products through future software updates as they always do in the end. This new aTV has so much potential.
For me the new aTV offers a simple way of watching movies on my wall mounted HDTV in the bedroom (not those kind of movies, Mrs Underhill would kill me) streamed from my iPhone. I can finally get rid of the DVD player and the cabinet to go with it. The aTV looks so neat and small and should tuck away nicely behind the TV.
Some people are easily pleased.
Agree or disagree?
Probably because hacks will be the only way to get apps into the Apple TV.
Yet. Apple hasn't announced an app strategy for the Apple TV yet. And watching what happened with the original iphone, only an idiot whould assume Apple doesnt have a plan.
Google TV is going to eat Apple TV for breakfast.
Google TV will be a disaster. It will be exactly like the Windows tablet PCs - an OS not optimized for the deceive and usage it's targeted for, with a crappy user experience.
How long were Windows tablets out? Almost a decade? Bill Gates pet project? And yet they failed because MS wasn't committed enough to polish the user experience for the tablet - since it would have meant they would have to tweak their Windows brand.
I don't think Google has a brand issue. I think they have a resource and competency issue. It's obvious now Schmidt benefited greatly from being in the board from their rapid almost carbon copy of the iPhone. It's equally obvious watching Googles dazed, confused and scattershot response to the iPad that he never saw the iPad.
And I have no faith in them having any kind of a cohesive strategy for the Google TV. They haven't demonstrated the ability for independent thought yet...
If Apple hadn't been so conservative, they'd of done Apple TV properly and such hacks wouldn't be needed.
Ironically, because Apple is so conservative and deliberate in doing things properly, they will succeed. It matters not that Google TV will merely have Android apps optimized for a phone touchscreen thrown on a TV first - the experience will suck.
Apple wasn't first to music players, smart phones or tablets - yet they dominate those categories and are the clear trendsetters. They do this via a clear focus on their customers and their customers experience with their products. They don't focus on sales numbers, marketshare, partners, developers or even profit. They know who their real customers are: people like me with normal wants and desires - mainly that the damn thing do what you need it to do without having to think about the device that is helping you do what you want. Unless I want to. If I want to Geek Out with my iPhone or iPad, I can jailbreak it and do everything Android can do. I'm not locked in with the iOS any more than Android users are. The big difference is I get a polished and well honed experience by default with the iOS. THIS is why the iOS will continue to dominate in raking in the profits. Like the MacOS, there will always be cheaper, more numerous devices. But they won't have the use or generate the revenue of the iOS ecosystem.
Cook and Jobs have both made statements that if you take care of the important things, profits will follow. Their cash horde and market cap bare that out but look how even today companies are loath to drop useless features that clutter up the products and negatively impact the user experience.
No, until Google demonstrates a new found philosophy in customer focus (and no Google, your customers aren't advertisers or programmers) to assume Google TV will be successful just because it shipped first or is backed by Google is plain silly.
Waiting for someone to successfully allow the new OS to be on the old ATV (if at all possible). So I can have the benefits of both. HDD with some storage and all the new stuff of the iOS (Airplay, rentals etc).
Not going to happen. The old one is based on an Intel CPU and the new one is ARM.
It's $100 - not exactly a hardship to upgrade
Because some people don't own an iPad, or iPhone, it is a bit stupid to have to spend $1000 to get a $99 device to work properly
1) why do people like you always seem to imply a device is fixed with the launch feature set forever? I realize you may have been conditioned by decades of previous consumer electronic companies milking you and only offering upgrades via new devices, but every since the first iPods Apple has demonstrated they update their devices (where practical) over time.
2) AirPlay isn't iOS only. It will be on the Mac and Windows eventually.
I see - and how are these apps going to be controlled exactly - with an apple remote?!
Hey now - you aren't supposed to point stuff like that out! Android will just be better because they are first! And it's "open" so that HAS to make it better right there, no?
lmao.
Pointless jailbreak.
Indeed!
Apple will introduce apps when they've worked out how to best control them.
And this is why Apple will have the majority of the profits while everyone else will have sales numbers and market share
Waiting for someone to successfully allow the new OS to be on the old ATV (if at all possible). So I can have the benefits of both. HDD with some storage and all the new stuff of the iOS (Airplay, rentals etc).
Now THAT would be great :-)
Don't hold your breath waiting for this one.
Whoa! Think about what you just said. I absolutely hate having to take out my laptop just because my old apple tv can't hold all of my content. It's a five minute process that is literally a pain in the ass. Sounds stupid, but it gets old...seriously.
LaLa acquisition, new datacenter... I think Apple is planning for the long term - and will have you covered.
Sucks that I have to keep my airport express AND my old apple tv in the bedroom just to have the functionality of apple tv and streaming music with the rest of the house.
Huh? The ATV has wireless and can stream music just like the old ATV (indeed, it will show album art while doing so - a nice upgrade from the streaming in the AE). Why do you think you need to put an AE near it? I don't get it from your description.
Frankly, the older ones had more capability after they were hacked than I can see the new ones having.
At launch, sure. But what product doesn't improve over time?
And the underpowered CPU in the old ATV makes for a pretty laggy UI, and it's worse when hacked. If you want a free for all get a $500 mini, not a $99 appliance.
I have and Like Dish Network with their 622 DVR, but looking to cut costs. We will be dropping it soon for an antenna and internet sources., Boxee/Hulu etc.
I see myself dropping down to Tivo S3 for over the air (the quality is amazing! PBS in HD is stunning over the air - it's compressed to $h17 by cable/sat) with an ATV.
Netflix on Tivo isn't a good experience. The hardware is too overtaxed. Maybe the new Tivo Primer is better, I dunno. I see traditional TV going away for me so my DVR days are numbered (woo hoo!)
ATV gets me access to all media on my computers, not just iTunes content - importantly my pictures. It does it well and the integration with the iTunes ecosystem is, as one would expect, seamless. I think the new streaming model will dramatically streamline things, esp. For pictures and video, vs the previous sync model.
I also have an Xbox 360 and PS3. The 360 is prety much games only these days and the PS3 bluray. I wouldn't rebuy the PS3 today, to many other cheaper and just as good BR players out there.
How about buying a product for what it was designed to do. Kind of stupid to buy any product to do something it wasn't designed to do and then complain that it can't do things the manufacturer never said it could do to start with.
Spend $1000 - on what?! An iPad is around $500
And the $99 device does "work properly", it streams media from your home network and the apple rental store, also netflix if yr in a netflix enabled territory. This is what it's advertised as being able to do, and if you bought it to do anything else on, you should just have bought a mac mini.
Sorry, put the wrong currency on one of the items.
The iPad is NZ$800 to NZ$1350, the iPhone 4 is NZ$1100 to NZ$1300. I responsed to someone that said having the apps didn't matter as you could stream them from your iPad, or iPhone. Hence why should I have to pay up to $1350 for an accessory to a NZ$170 device just to get some functionality to work?
Sep 28, 2010 10:52 AM Arrived at FedEx location ANCHORAGE, AK
Sep 29, 2010 4:25 AM At dest sort facility KENNER, LA
Will the new OS run on the older ATV?
No, totally different CPU
No, until Google demonstrates a new found philosophy in customer focus (and no Google, you customers aren't advertisers or programmers) to assume Google TV will be successful just because it shipped first or is backed by Google is plain silly.
Well, that's the thing, the advertisers are their customers. The "customers" are just fodder.
What percentage of Google projects are actually total flops, like Wave, or never make it out of the labs? Anyone?
Sorry, put the wrong currency on one of the items.
The iPad is NZ$800 to NZ$1350, the iPhone 4 is NZ$1100 to NZ$1300. I responsed to someone that having the apps didn't matter as you could stream them from your iPad, or iPhone. Hence why should I have to pay up to $1350 for an accessory to a NZ$170 device just to get some functionality to work?
It's fully functional without an iOS device. You can stream movies from your iTunes library, rent movies and watch Netfix without an iOS device controlling it. You can even use AirPlay from your computer and view your photos without an iOS device.
If you have a $1350 iPad, Apple TV also serves as a relatively cheap accessory to your iPad and increases the functionality of your iPad by putting its video display on your TV.
People will buy Apple TV and use it by itself.
People will buy Apple TV and use their existing iOS devices with it.
People will not buy Apple TV and purchase an iOS device specifically to control Apple TV, because that would be stupid as you've pointed out. At least I hope people don't do that.
My Apple TV is getting closer.
Sep 28, 2010 10:52 AM Arrived at FedEx location ANCHORAGE, AK
Mines scheduled to arrive by noon tomorrow.
Whoa! Think about what you just said. I absolutely hate having to take out my laptop just because my old apple tv can't hold all of my content. It's a five minute process that is literally a pain in the ass. Sounds stupid, but it gets old...seriously.
Now, with that said, someone makes iOS available for the old apple tv. I hate that I can't use my old apple tv as an airport express anymore. Especiallyy now that I can stream from my phone. Sucks that I have to keep my airport express AND my old apple tv in the bedroom just to have the functionality of apple tv and streaming music with the rest of the house. Dumb. I can understand not streaming video to old apple tv. That's fine. BUT, don't strip a feature that the previous generation could do before. (I know it can still do it from my computer but I want to do it from my idevices seeing that they can stream to my airport express).
I don't know if someone eventually answers this but I'll add my explanation. Just like the current OS X is tied to the Intel processor, it appears that iOS is tied to Apple's A4 processor which is what is in the new Apple TV but not in the old one. It seems very unlikely that iOS can be hacked onto the old Apple TV because it is not binary compatible. As Apple migrated from 68000 to PowerPC, PowerPC to Intel, Intel to ARM, ARM to A4, they used emulation or bundled multiple binaries to handle transitions. Even with complete corporate backing these were always challenging. The old Apple TV will remain the least expensive Intel Mac and lack an invitation to the iOS party.