I think you will be waiting a long time for that, From what i have read the last few weeks i am confident that what we will see from Apple will be something that could be far better, something that i am suprised that no-one else has made a serious stab at before.
The Apple TV will become the user interface of a distributed media centre and new devices will all come with 802.11n and just 'noplug and play' out of the box. So your "appleDVD" will just be a DVD drive with a wireless card, Then you will go out and buy an "Apple Blueray" that an AppleNAS with 500GB and built in wireless card etc... etc.. all these devices will sit anywhere in the house, wireless speakers in everyroom and all that jazz. Actually could turn into a very cute system, and i am 99% sure this is the future of AppleTV.
I myself have had a Mac Mini under my TV since the Intel ones were launched and it has been brilliant, this weeks news has left me wondering what to do now, i was waiting for the upgraded Mac Mini but now of course i am left in the dark. I am starting to wonder what the future of my set-up is going to be. I am even thinking of resigning the Mac Mini to become a desktop 'Play' PC and getting a PS3 to be my media centre, i just am not sure i am prepared to keep buying into the Apple dream and cut my losses now.
Haha... funny comments about buying into the Apple dream aside (there isn't an Apple Dream or a planned roadmap for the next 20 years as people like to speculate) I don't see this happening. I think there is a very good market for Apple TV products, but no "Apple DVD" or Apple Blu-ray" in the works. Remember, they are trying to replace the DVD (like the iPod replaced CD Players) not stick it on the box as a bullet point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by filburt
You need to give up on Apple TV as DVR and DVD/HD DVD/Blu Ray replacement. It is meant to be Internet video device. But yeah, Apple should've launched at least few 720p contents (maybe Pixar shorts) along with Apple TV. And there's my never ending beef against it not having multi-channel audio out-of-the-box, but I digress.
I think they didn't bother with the HD content because not only is there a shortage of bandwidth and HDD space for it, but even if they were to do it for shorts it would mean users would be getting Video at variable quality. This isn't a problem with Podcasts because Apple isn't even hosting podcasts (except for their own... I think they have 2) themselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hmurchison
Apple TV is such a difficult product to review because people consume video and audio in differing ways. I tend to really like DVR but I realize that Apple isn't going down this path yet and thus my ideal setup would be a DVR complemented by downloads.
I don't really buy the whole "The Apple TV is expensive" line. When compared to other devices in its class like the Netgear, Roku Labs and Slim Devices product the Apple TV is right in line. The truth is it's going to take some infrastructure changes to really make broadcast TV shine. Cable Card has all but failed to democratize things
Everyone has their own needs, Apple TV is being roasted because it's from Apple and it doesn't do everything everyone wants. Apple TV is another box for the people that want it mainly for iTunes, and soon Youtube content, therefore it shouldn't be expected to do everything else as well.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BRussell
This YouTube deal seems odd. When I first heard about this, I assumed they'd just upgrade the AppleTV's video capabilities so that it would play standard YouTube videos. But it turns out that they're re-encoding the entire YouTube video library into H.264? That's simply bizarre. What am I missing here? Is YouTube going to change over from whatever it is now (flv h.263?) to H.264?
[edit] BTW, whoever started this thread put it in the wrong forum.
Youtube I believe currently uses DivX wrapped in an FLV container. It's a bizarre deal but I can't wait to see what comes of it.
Quote:
Originally Posted by benny-boy
I also envision the AppleTV as the center of a new kind of stereo system, one not connected with RCA jacks or optical, but a digital version using USB. The "component" play seems obvious, as it does to other writers in this thread:
1) Reminiscent of the iPod accessory industry, get 3rd parties building components that all "speak Apple TV" through USB or draft-N Wi-Fi. Apple doesn't have to BACK any of these formats, just PATENT the INTERFACE with them. Add Blu-Ray, HDDVD, Tivo, eyeTV, the cable-company DVR, whatever. Just make it so you buy this thing and every addition after that is thinner, dumber, and cheaper. The piece that ATV brings to the table is downloads, and perhaps an experience described under (4).
This is one idea... and not an entirely bad one at that. Stealing the movie market isn't going to work as well as stealing the music market from bad products did. Right now there are many happy Netflix and TiVo customers, and I suspect the difficulty in penetrating the Movie market is one of the reasons Apple partnered with the largest community of video content on the internet.
Quote:
2) Much in the same way iPod adoption was pushed ahead by piracy and illegal file-sharing (while Apple marches behind the Banner for record labels), AppleTV adoption can be driven by associations with devices that Apple Corporate can disavow. Picture a media server device that not only holds all your legal media, but also rips and stores (illegally) DVDs. Every NetFlix customer would do major damage with this thing.
Um... Apple never supported piracy or illegal file-sharing, not even indirectly. Before iPod, there was iTunes, and what iTunes did was it ripped peoples CDs to their computer and allowed them to sync it with a few devices (I don't have a history or knowledge of which devices) and they created iPod after seeing how bad the portable music market was. They later provided a legal alternative for people to get music online that was much better than anything Limewire, Microsoft, or Real provided.
Quote:
3) Having said this, Apple TV should be able to accommodate higher end components that put out more than stereo sound! Oh, and where is Airtunes? My 12" PB is the best music remote ever!
OK, buy a movie in iTunes, it has multichannel sound, or take any video you have with multichannel sound, and any speakers you have that support it, plug it all into your TV, and the end result? Multichannel sound. Read More. I do agree though, where is AirTunes?
Quote:
(4) TV networks go interactive. That's right, under the ATV menu there are all the networks, ABC, ESPN, HGTV, BBC, NBC, you name it. Now imagine you click on them and each one is something resembling a free iTunes store. If you want to BUY an episode of LOST, go the the iTS. But if you want to watch Lost with commercials for free, or vote for your American Idol, or see supplementary footage from PBS's Frontline, or hear about Oprah's latest orphanage, you get there through a series of clickable menus resembling a webpage or DVD menu. What network wouldn't want to capture viewers this way? And then who the HELL would subscribe to cable television?
Hmmm... I'm all for destroying Cable television but I'm also against embedded advertising having anything to do with any Apple product.
No Comment for statement number 5, I hate sports.
Quote:
(6) Or New-release junkies... In the first day of release, I'm told that apparently the number of copies of Cars that walked out the front door of Walmart represented way more bandwidth than the largest server farms can presently deliver in 24hrs. Way more. Apple should commandeer corners of the ATV hard drive as disseminated servers.
BB
Here we have another reason HD content is not in iTunes yet. Apple probably could do something like commandeer corners of the Apple TV HDD except for one problem, one company already Patented the hell out of that. Meet Vudu. Judging from what I read, Apple would have a much harder time getting this to work on Apple TV just from the basic concepts. Vudu's box is about instantly playing content you buy, this means any Vudu box with a movie that you're buying will send the movie in a P2P fashion so one box can have the beginning, another box can have the middle, and yet another box can have the end. They'll send the data as you're watching the movie so it's not sent all at once, but it will still be very fast because there will be thousands of Vudu boxes sending the content to your one box, taking the best ideas of Bittorrent and completely removing user participation from it.
Apple TV stores more than just video and it stores it all from your computer, so just in that alone, Apple would have a much harder time creating the same infrastructure, and I certainly wouldn't want them reserving a piece of my Macbook's HDD just because someone wants to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, never mind the fact that it would be unreliable because my Macbook is contantly traveling between an online/offline state whether it's asleep or if I'm not anywhere near a hotspot.
OK, buy a movie in iTunes, it has multichannel sound, or take any video you have with multichannel sound, and any speakers you have that support it, plug it all into your TV, and the end result? Multichannel sound. Read More.
I would hardly consider Dolby Surround the same as discrete surround such as provided by AC-3 or DTS. Clearly the people who are complaining about the issue don't either. I have a 5.1 surround system and the differences even in passing are clearly noticeable.
And despite what the article states, there is a huge difference between the surround sound quality provided by a Dolby Surround audio track and the same 5.1 discrete surround track. HUGE. I won't consider it authoratative, but Wikipedia describes the mon surround channel derived from Dolby Surround as "limited frequency-range mono." How could such a thing even be vaguely comparable to two discrete channels?
Then there's the bashing of AC-3 and DTS saying they're unusable formats for downloadable content. Too much bandwidth, lousy compression, etc. The article then says that the AppleTV could do AAC 5.1 but it currently doesn't though (even that is mixed down to stereo), so I'm not sure what the point was of that being mentioned.
The bottom line is that the AppleTV won't natively output discrete surround unless it's basically tricked into doing and that is really what is at issue. It will output DTS basically because it interprets it incorrectly and outputs the WAV file untouched which a receiver can then properly decode. You can apply Dolby Pro Logic to any signal with varying (usually poor) results, it doesn't make it into something that most would describe as true surround sound.
Slewis, you have a lot to say but you clearly do not have a clue what you are talking about!!!
"But no "Apple DVD" or Apple Blu-ray" in the works. Remember, they are trying to replace the DVD (like the iPod replaced CD Players)"
"Um... Apple never supported piracy or illegal file-sharing, not even indirectly."
It is a well known fact that the majority of iPod owners have never bought a track from iTunes, all they have done is rip their own (or more likely their friends) CD's and added them to their music collection. Apple were aware of this from the beginning, why else have they always supported ripping CD's, this is still borderline illegal but Apple support it, so your statement is shit, iPod never replaced the CD it just enhanced it.
I have had a Mac Mini connected to my TV for over a year now and it is impossible for me to buy any kind of video from iTunes as i do not live in the states. Think about it, if AppleTV was supposed to be just for downloaded iTunes content then it would not be for sale outside the US, there is no video content available on iTunes anywhere else BUT they still sell Apple TV's! I use my MAC for downloaded video content, movies and TV shows, all probably illegal but i do not care because it is impossible for me to download legally from an source so i am helping to create a market that Apple is now going to exploit and profit from. Apple will end up with some king of HD disk support because if they dont then Apple TV will rot.
To release a media centre product that does not support DivX is stuipid and really spits in the faces of those of us Apple users to have actually created the market place that Apple are now trying to make money from. If they do not upgrade the Mac Mini then they have lost me as a customer for ever, the Apple TV is not a step up for me but is just a toy for people who want an east toy to play with. My Mac is 32bit and slow and due an upgrade, I will not buy Lepoard unless my hardware is upgraded and if not then bollocks i would buy a PS3.
why else have they always supported ripping CD's, this is still borderline illegal but Apple support it
In the US, ripping CDs has been legal. I do understand that's not the case for .au and .uk, but Apple isn't based in in either of those countries. As a whole, most DVD ripping software is illegal in the US. There are convoluted ways to make ripping protected DVDs legal, but I don't think Apple wants to get involved with that because they want to entice the movie companies to sell their videos on the iTunes store.
As far as I know, the idea for the iPod did come as a result of the Napster era, and there was the expectation that a lot of users won't legally own any of what they put on their device. The owner has to do that, and short of countries passing laws like the INDUCE act, Apple isn't culpable for that.
Apple's software doesn't do what Napster did and fetch any track from just anywhere, you had to have the disc in hand so iTunes can rip the information for you, or manually load the tracks in from your existing library. iPods don't make copying their libraries to other computers as easy as it could have been.
What the RIAA says is not relevant. Ripping audio CDs is legal. Ripping video DVDs would be legal as well if it weren't for CSS copy protection. It's the decrypting of the protection that makes the process violate the DMCA. It is not the ripping itself that does.
As I recall, according to the RIAA, switching physical media formats or the encoding format of your purchased CDs in not authorized.
It doesn't matter, they don't have to authorize it to be legal under copyright statutes. I recall Senator Orrin Hatch saying such, and he's in the RIAA's pockets. He quizzed RIAA drones (IIRC, including then-RIAA president Hillary Rosen) in a Senate hearing and he basically said that the drones were clueless or dishonest about the extent of fair use.
The RIAA had a decade of contest CD ripping software, and I don't think they've touched yet. If it weren't legal in the US, I doubt iTunes would have that feature.
Slewis, you have a lot to say but you clearly do not have a clue what you are talking about!!!
"But no "Apple DVD" or Apple Blu-ray" in the works. Remember, they are trying to replace the DVD (like the iPod replaced CD Players)"
"Um... Apple never supported piracy or illegal file-sharing, not even indirectly."
It is a well known fact that the majority of iPod owners have never bought a track from iTunes, all they have done is rip their own (or more likely their friends) CD's and added them to their music collection. Apple were aware of this from the beginning, why else have they always supported ripping CD's, this is still borderline illegal but Apple support it, so your statement is shit, iPod never replaced the CD it just enhanced it.
Apple fully supports CD ripping because hey, guess what, it is legal! They are a US Based Corporation, and hey, so am I so I'm not an expert on laws in Europe or Australia, so your statement is shit, iPod did replace the CD and iTunes still allows you to create your own CDs for any CD players you do happen to own.
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I have had a Mac Mini connected to my TV for over a year now and it is impossible for me to buy any kind of video from iTunes as i do not live in the states. Think about it, if AppleTV was supposed to be just for downloaded iTunes content then it would not be for sale outside the US, there is no video content available on iTunes anywhere else BUT they still sell Apple TV's! I use my MAC for downloaded video content, movies and TV shows, all probably illegal but i do not care because it is impossible for me to download legally from an source so i am helping to create a market that Apple is now going to exploit and profit from. Apple will end up with some king of HD disk support because if they dont then Apple TV will rot.
Bingo! We see a conflict of interests and legal systems.
1) You don't live in the States so the laws are different for you.
2) I do live in the states and as a general rule default to the US Laws.
3) Apple is based in the US and therefore defaults to US laws when they are creating products like iTunes or DVD Player.
4) If all of your content is illegal anyways what do you care about legal systems and laws.
5) If you are no longer an Apple customer how can Apple exploit your illegal content for profit. They're selling the hardware and they offer the software to manage media for that hardware, in that equation, Bittorrent might as well not even exist.
Quote:
To release a media centre product that does not support DivX is stuipid and really spits in the faces of those of us Apple users to have actually created the market place that Apple are now trying to make money from. If they do not upgrade the Mac Mini then they have lost me as a customer for ever, the Apple TV is not a step up for me but is just a toy for people who want an east toy to play with. My Mac is 32bit and slow and due an upgrade, I will not buy Lepoard unless my hardware is upgraded and if not then bollocks i would buy a PS3.
I've always hated DivX myself, but I once tested a DivX movie in Front Row with the Perian codec installed. If you're using your Mac Mini as a Media centre then it shouldn't even be a problem. Hell, I have a few WMVs I haven't converted to H.264 yet, but I just checked and with Flip4Mac installed you can play those as well. But you're no longer an Apple customer, and Apple never intended the Mac Mini to be a media centre product, last I checked it was the bloggers who decided that one.
I recommend moving to H.264 and MPEG-4.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffDM
I recall Senator Orrin Hatch saying otherwise, and he's in the RIAA's pockets. The RIAA had plenty of contest it. If it weren't legal in the US, I doubt iTunes would have that feature.
Neither iTunes or iPod would be as popular as they are now either.
The real crime of the four targeted companies appears to be the fact that they are "actively avoiding the use of MRT's technologies," and "failure to comply with this demand could result in a federal court injunction to any of the above named parties to cease production or sale of their products."
Quote:
Originally Posted by Eric Bangeman- HBO Article
Zitter's suggestion? Digital Consumer Enablement, which he believes would more accurately communicate the concept that DRM helps consumers enjoy content in ways previously not possible.
Why stop there? How about Happy Fun Content Surprise with a smiling, large-eyed bunny (think Thumper with an iPod) as the mascot?
Someone tell Zitter that "Enablement" doesn't exist in the Oxford American Dictionary (or Dictionary.app) and probably for a good reason, it doesn't enable consumers to enjoy content in ways previously not possible anymore than the elimination of DRM would.
Just passed an new ATT Billboard on the way home it said "Reinventing Television" ATT fromerly Cingular
Wonder what they exactly meant by Reinventing Television? So maybe the ITV on Apple Tv rumors are right. Maybe they are planning on delivering ATT Television right to the iPhone platform.
How about if Apple spend some of the $12 billion to purchase the private company that owns the Slingbox tecnology. Then your iPhone could be a portable slingbox viewer. Maybe ATT and Apple could split the cost. If You Tube got 1.6 billion, the Slingbox ought to be worth $2 easy. And they'd have plenty of money left over.
What do you suppose APPLE/ATT TV is going to be like?
Just passed an new ATT Billboard on the way home it said "Reinventing Television" ATT fromerly Cingular
Wonder what they exactly meant by Reinventing Television? So maybe the ITV on Apple Tv rumors are right. Maybe they are planning on delivering ATT Television right to the iPhone platform.
How about if Apple spend some of the $12 billion to purchase the private company that owns the Slingbox tecnology. Then your iPhone could be a portable slingbox viewer. Maybe ATT and Apple could split the cost. If You Tube got 1.6 billion, the Slingbox ought to be worth $2 easy. And they'd have plenty of money left over.
What do you suppose APPLE/ATT TV is going to be like?
Comments
I think you will be waiting a long time for that, From what i have read the last few weeks i am confident that what we will see from Apple will be something that could be far better, something that i am suprised that no-one else has made a serious stab at before.
The Apple TV will become the user interface of a distributed media centre and new devices will all come with 802.11n and just 'noplug and play' out of the box. So your "appleDVD" will just be a DVD drive with a wireless card, Then you will go out and buy an "Apple Blueray" that an AppleNAS with 500GB and built in wireless card etc... etc.. all these devices will sit anywhere in the house, wireless speakers in everyroom and all that jazz. Actually could turn into a very cute system, and i am 99% sure this is the future of AppleTV.
I myself have had a Mac Mini under my TV since the Intel ones were launched and it has been brilliant, this weeks news has left me wondering what to do now, i was waiting for the upgraded Mac Mini but now of course i am left in the dark. I am starting to wonder what the future of my set-up is going to be. I am even thinking of resigning the Mac Mini to become a desktop 'Play' PC and getting a PS3 to be my media centre, i just am not sure i am prepared to keep buying into the Apple dream and cut my losses now.
Haha... funny comments about buying into the Apple dream aside (there isn't an Apple Dream or a planned roadmap for the next 20 years as people like to speculate) I don't see this happening. I think there is a very good market for Apple TV products, but no "Apple DVD" or Apple Blu-ray" in the works. Remember, they are trying to replace the DVD (like the iPod replaced CD Players) not stick it on the box as a bullet point.
You need to give up on Apple TV as DVR and DVD/HD DVD/Blu Ray replacement. It is meant to be Internet video device. But yeah, Apple should've launched at least few 720p contents (maybe Pixar shorts) along with Apple TV. And there's my never ending beef against it not having multi-channel audio out-of-the-box, but I digress.
I think they didn't bother with the HD content because not only is there a shortage of bandwidth and HDD space for it, but even if they were to do it for shorts it would mean users would be getting Video at variable quality. This isn't a problem with Podcasts because Apple isn't even hosting podcasts (except for their own... I think they have 2) themselves.
Apple TV is such a difficult product to review because people consume video and audio in differing ways. I tend to really like DVR but I realize that Apple isn't going down this path yet and thus my ideal setup would be a DVR complemented by downloads.
I don't really buy the whole "The Apple TV is expensive" line. When compared to other devices in its class like the Netgear, Roku Labs and Slim Devices product the Apple TV is right in line. The truth is it's going to take some infrastructure changes to really make broadcast TV shine. Cable Card has all but failed to democratize things
Everyone has their own needs, Apple TV is being roasted because it's from Apple and it doesn't do everything everyone wants. Apple TV is another box for the people that want it mainly for iTunes, and soon Youtube content, therefore it shouldn't be expected to do everything else as well.
This YouTube deal seems odd. When I first heard about this, I assumed they'd just upgrade the AppleTV's video capabilities so that it would play standard YouTube videos. But it turns out that they're re-encoding the entire YouTube video library into H.264? That's simply bizarre. What am I missing here? Is YouTube going to change over from whatever it is now (flv h.263?) to H.264?
[edit] BTW, whoever started this thread put it in the wrong forum.
Youtube I believe currently uses DivX wrapped in an FLV container. It's a bizarre deal but I can't wait to see what comes of it.
I also envision the AppleTV as the center of a new kind of stereo system, one not connected with RCA jacks or optical, but a digital version using USB. The "component" play seems obvious, as it does to other writers in this thread:
1) Reminiscent of the iPod accessory industry, get 3rd parties building components that all "speak Apple TV" through USB or draft-N Wi-Fi. Apple doesn't have to BACK any of these formats, just PATENT the INTERFACE with them. Add Blu-Ray, HDDVD, Tivo, eyeTV, the cable-company DVR, whatever. Just make it so you buy this thing and every addition after that is thinner, dumber, and cheaper. The piece that ATV brings to the table is downloads, and perhaps an experience described under (4).
This is one idea... and not an entirely bad one at that. Stealing the movie market isn't going to work as well as stealing the music market from bad products did. Right now there are many happy Netflix and TiVo customers, and I suspect the difficulty in penetrating the Movie market is one of the reasons Apple partnered with the largest community of video content on the internet.
2) Much in the same way iPod adoption was pushed ahead by piracy and illegal file-sharing (while Apple marches behind the Banner for record labels), AppleTV adoption can be driven by associations with devices that Apple Corporate can disavow. Picture a media server device that not only holds all your legal media, but also rips and stores (illegally) DVDs. Every NetFlix customer would do major damage with this thing.
Um... Apple never supported piracy or illegal file-sharing, not even indirectly. Before iPod, there was iTunes, and what iTunes did was it ripped peoples CDs to their computer and allowed them to sync it with a few devices (I don't have a history or knowledge of which devices) and they created iPod after seeing how bad the portable music market was. They later provided a legal alternative for people to get music online that was much better than anything Limewire, Microsoft, or Real provided.
3) Having said this, Apple TV should be able to accommodate higher end components that put out more than stereo sound! Oh, and where is Airtunes? My 12" PB is the best music remote ever!
OK, buy a movie in iTunes, it has multichannel sound, or take any video you have with multichannel sound, and any speakers you have that support it, plug it all into your TV, and the end result? Multichannel sound. Read More. I do agree though, where is AirTunes?
(4) TV networks go interactive. That's right, under the ATV menu there are all the networks, ABC, ESPN, HGTV, BBC, NBC, you name it. Now imagine you click on them and each one is something resembling a free iTunes store. If you want to BUY an episode of LOST, go the the iTS. But if you want to watch Lost with commercials for free, or vote for your American Idol, or see supplementary footage from PBS's Frontline, or hear about Oprah's latest orphanage, you get there through a series of clickable menus resembling a webpage or DVD menu. What network wouldn't want to capture viewers this way? And then who the HELL would subscribe to cable television?
Hmmm... I'm all for destroying Cable television but I'm also against embedded advertising having anything to do with any Apple product.
No Comment for statement number 5, I hate sports.
(6) Or New-release junkies... In the first day of release, I'm told that apparently the number of copies of Cars that walked out the front door of Walmart represented way more bandwidth than the largest server farms can presently deliver in 24hrs. Way more. Apple should commandeer corners of the ATV hard drive as disseminated servers.
BB
Here we have another reason HD content is not in iTunes yet. Apple probably could do something like commandeer corners of the Apple TV HDD except for one problem, one company already Patented the hell out of that. Meet Vudu. Judging from what I read, Apple would have a much harder time getting this to work on Apple TV just from the basic concepts. Vudu's box is about instantly playing content you buy, this means any Vudu box with a movie that you're buying will send the movie in a P2P fashion so one box can have the beginning, another box can have the middle, and yet another box can have the end. They'll send the data as you're watching the movie so it's not sent all at once, but it will still be very fast because there will be thousands of Vudu boxes sending the content to your one box, taking the best ideas of Bittorrent and completely removing user participation from it.
Apple TV stores more than just video and it stores it all from your computer, so just in that alone, Apple would have a much harder time creating the same infrastructure, and I certainly wouldn't want them reserving a piece of my Macbook's HDD just because someone wants to watch Pirates of the Caribbean, never mind the fact that it would be unreliable because my Macbook is contantly traveling between an online/offline state whether it's asleep or if I'm not anywhere near a hotspot.
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OK, buy a movie in iTunes, it has multichannel sound, or take any video you have with multichannel sound, and any speakers you have that support it, plug it all into your TV, and the end result? Multichannel sound. Read More.
I would hardly consider Dolby Surround the same as discrete surround such as provided by AC-3 or DTS. Clearly the people who are complaining about the issue don't either. I have a 5.1 surround system and the differences even in passing are clearly noticeable.
And despite what the article states, there is a huge difference between the surround sound quality provided by a Dolby Surround audio track and the same 5.1 discrete surround track. HUGE. I won't consider it authoratative, but Wikipedia describes the mon surround channel derived from Dolby Surround as "limited frequency-range mono." How could such a thing even be vaguely comparable to two discrete channels?
Then there's the bashing of AC-3 and DTS saying they're unusable formats for downloadable content. Too much bandwidth, lousy compression, etc. The article then says that the AppleTV could do AAC 5.1 but it currently doesn't though (even that is mixed down to stereo), so I'm not sure what the point was of that being mentioned.
The bottom line is that the AppleTV won't natively output discrete surround unless it's basically tricked into doing and that is really what is at issue. It will output DTS basically because it interprets it incorrectly and outputs the WAV file untouched which a receiver can then properly decode. You can apply Dolby Pro Logic to any signal with varying (usually poor) results, it doesn't make it into something that most would describe as true surround sound.
"But no "Apple DVD" or Apple Blu-ray" in the works. Remember, they are trying to replace the DVD (like the iPod replaced CD Players)"
"Um... Apple never supported piracy or illegal file-sharing, not even indirectly."
It is a well known fact that the majority of iPod owners have never bought a track from iTunes, all they have done is rip their own (or more likely their friends) CD's and added them to their music collection. Apple were aware of this from the beginning, why else have they always supported ripping CD's, this is still borderline illegal but Apple support it, so your statement is shit, iPod never replaced the CD it just enhanced it.
I have had a Mac Mini connected to my TV for over a year now and it is impossible for me to buy any kind of video from iTunes as i do not live in the states. Think about it, if AppleTV was supposed to be just for downloaded iTunes content then it would not be for sale outside the US, there is no video content available on iTunes anywhere else BUT they still sell Apple TV's! I use my MAC for downloaded video content, movies and TV shows, all probably illegal but i do not care because it is impossible for me to download legally from an source so i am helping to create a market that Apple is now going to exploit and profit from. Apple will end up with some king of HD disk support because if they dont then Apple TV will rot.
To release a media centre product that does not support DivX is stuipid and really spits in the faces of those of us Apple users to have actually created the market place that Apple are now trying to make money from. If they do not upgrade the Mac Mini then they have lost me as a customer for ever, the Apple TV is not a step up for me but is just a toy for people who want an east toy to play with. My Mac is 32bit and slow and due an upgrade, I will not buy Lepoard unless my hardware is upgraded and if not then bollocks i would buy a PS3.
why else have they always supported ripping CD's, this is still borderline illegal but Apple support it
In the US, ripping CDs has been legal. I do understand that's not the case for .au and .uk, but Apple isn't based in in either of those countries. As a whole, most DVD ripping software is illegal in the US. There are convoluted ways to make ripping protected DVDs legal, but I don't think Apple wants to get involved with that because they want to entice the movie companies to sell their videos on the iTunes store.
As far as I know, the idea for the iPod did come as a result of the Napster era, and there was the expectation that a lot of users won't legally own any of what they put on their device. The owner has to do that, and short of countries passing laws like the INDUCE act, Apple isn't culpable for that.
Apple's software doesn't do what Napster did and fetch any track from just anywhere, you had to have the disc in hand so iTunes can rip the information for you, or manually load the tracks in from your existing library. iPods don't make copying their libraries to other computers as easy as it could have been.
In the US, ripping CDs has been legal. I do understand that's not the case for .au and .uk, but Apple isn't based in in either of those countries.
As I recall, according to the RIAA, switching physical media formats or the encoding format of your purchased CDs in not authorized.
As I recall, according to the RIAA, switching physical media formats or the encoding format of your purchased CDs in not authorized.
It doesn't matter, they don't have to authorize it to be legal under copyright statutes. I recall Senator Orrin Hatch saying such, and he's in the RIAA's pockets. He quizzed RIAA drones (IIRC, including then-RIAA president Hillary Rosen) in a Senate hearing and he basically said that the drones were clueless or dishonest about the extent of fair use.
The RIAA had a decade of contest CD ripping software, and I don't think they've touched yet. If it weren't legal in the US, I doubt iTunes would have that feature.
Slewis, you have a lot to say but you clearly do not have a clue what you are talking about!!!
"But no "Apple DVD" or Apple Blu-ray" in the works. Remember, they are trying to replace the DVD (like the iPod replaced CD Players)"
"Um... Apple never supported piracy or illegal file-sharing, not even indirectly."
It is a well known fact that the majority of iPod owners have never bought a track from iTunes, all they have done is rip their own (or more likely their friends) CD's and added them to their music collection. Apple were aware of this from the beginning, why else have they always supported ripping CD's, this is still borderline illegal but Apple support it, so your statement is shit, iPod never replaced the CD it just enhanced it.
Apple fully supports CD ripping because hey, guess what, it is legal! They are a US Based Corporation, and hey, so am I so I'm not an expert on laws in Europe or Australia, so your statement is shit, iPod did replace the CD and iTunes still allows you to create your own CDs for any CD players you do happen to own.
I have had a Mac Mini connected to my TV for over a year now and it is impossible for me to buy any kind of video from iTunes as i do not live in the states. Think about it, if AppleTV was supposed to be just for downloaded iTunes content then it would not be for sale outside the US, there is no video content available on iTunes anywhere else BUT they still sell Apple TV's! I use my MAC for downloaded video content, movies and TV shows, all probably illegal but i do not care because it is impossible for me to download legally from an source so i am helping to create a market that Apple is now going to exploit and profit from. Apple will end up with some king of HD disk support because if they dont then Apple TV will rot.
Bingo! We see a conflict of interests and legal systems.
1) You don't live in the States so the laws are different for you.
2) I do live in the states and as a general rule default to the US Laws.
3) Apple is based in the US and therefore defaults to US laws when they are creating products like iTunes or DVD Player.
4) If all of your content is illegal anyways what do you care about legal systems and laws.
5) If you are no longer an Apple customer how can Apple exploit your illegal content for profit. They're selling the hardware and they offer the software to manage media for that hardware, in that equation, Bittorrent might as well not even exist.
To release a media centre product that does not support DivX is stuipid and really spits in the faces of those of us Apple users to have actually created the market place that Apple are now trying to make money from. If they do not upgrade the Mac Mini then they have lost me as a customer for ever, the Apple TV is not a step up for me but is just a toy for people who want an east toy to play with. My Mac is 32bit and slow and due an upgrade, I will not buy Lepoard unless my hardware is upgraded and if not then bollocks i would buy a PS3.
I've always hated DivX myself, but I once tested a DivX movie in Front Row with the Perian codec installed. If you're using your Mac Mini as a Media centre then it shouldn't even be a problem. Hell, I have a few WMVs I haven't converted to H.264 yet, but I just checked and with Flip4Mac installed you can play those as well. But you're no longer an Apple customer, and Apple never intended the Mac Mini to be a media centre product, last I checked it was the bloggers who decided that one.
I recommend moving to H.264 and MPEG-4.
I recall Senator Orrin Hatch saying otherwise, and he's in the RIAA's pockets. The RIAA had plenty of contest it. If it weren't legal in the US, I doubt iTunes would have that feature.
Neither iTunes or iPod would be as popular as they are now either.
In other news, MRT is attempting to make it illegal to not to use their product, and HBO wants to rename DRM. It's hard to believe both of these articles came out the same day within 15 minutes of each other.
The best quotes:
The real crime of the four targeted companies appears to be the fact that they are "actively avoiding the use of MRT's technologies," and "failure to comply with this demand could result in a federal court injunction to any of the above named parties to cease production or sale of their products."
Zitter's suggestion? Digital Consumer Enablement, which he believes would more accurately communicate the concept that DRM helps consumers enjoy content in ways previously not possible.
Why stop there? How about Happy Fun Content Surprise with a smiling, large-eyed bunny (think Thumper with an iPod) as the mascot?
Someone tell Zitter that "Enablement" doesn't exist in the Oxford American Dictionary (or Dictionary.app) and probably for a good reason, it doesn't enable consumers to enjoy content in ways previously not possible anymore than the elimination of DRM would.
Sebastian
Wonder what they exactly meant by Reinventing Television? So maybe the ITV on Apple Tv rumors are right. Maybe they are planning on delivering ATT Television right to the iPhone platform.
How about if Apple spend some of the $12 billion to purchase the private company that owns the Slingbox tecnology. Then your iPhone could be a portable slingbox viewer. Maybe ATT and Apple could split the cost. If You Tube got 1.6 billion, the Slingbox ought to be worth $2 easy. And they'd have plenty of money left over.
What do you suppose APPLE/ATT TV is going to be like?
Just passed an new ATT Billboard on the way home it said "Reinventing Television" ATT fromerly Cingular
Wonder what they exactly meant by Reinventing Television? So maybe the ITV on Apple Tv rumors are right. Maybe they are planning on delivering ATT Television right to the iPhone platform.
How about if Apple spend some of the $12 billion to purchase the private company that owns the Slingbox tecnology. Then your iPhone could be a portable slingbox viewer. Maybe ATT and Apple could split the cost. If You Tube got 1.6 billion, the Slingbox ought to be worth $2 easy. And they'd have plenty of money left over.
What do you suppose APPLE/ATT TV is going to be like?
It's not about "i" because it's all about U!!
Sebastian