I'm not sure I liked the idea of a porn-name-like alias anyway.
But the AppleTV almost doesn't match anything else anyway, it's almost designed to stick out like a cock. If you own more than one media device, it's almost certainly not going to match it. Home Theater stacks are mostly an amalgam of devices in black shells, all of different designs unless you bought everything from the same brand within a year or two of each other. A black box is a lot more discrete among other black boxes anyway, stick it in the shadow and maybe no one would notice.
Little bit of porn/cock obsession there, LOL.
My XBox 360 is white and silver, my aTV is silver and white, my Tivo Series 3 is silver and black. The only black box in my mix, and coincidentally the only eye-sore , is a Yamaha sound system which actually looks a lot like the Roku on steroids with a couple of knobs and a digital display on it, complete with ugly slots in the top.
When I get around to replacing the Yamaha, I'll be shopping for something smaller and sleeker. When I add a Mac Mini or MacBook to the mix, it will either replace the aTV, or fit in to the silver and white theme.
Admittedly, all of these components are just something to be ignored, sitting on low shelves. Ideally, I think that it would be cool if you could shove all the devices into a closed cabinet, or behind the TV, nicely out of sight, with a single RF remote control to control them all, or if IR needs to be in the mix, maybe a universal IR receiver/repeater that feeds the commands to the hidden devices so they can be tucked nicely out of sight. That would put an end to silly arguments like this.
If I recall correctly, that toaster, while cool lookng, tastes a very long time to toast. Plus, I would imagine that steam and crumbs would make it a very dirty item fast.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. H
The Roku unit also has no fan. It consumes 5 watts when active, and 4 watts inactive, next to the ATV's 20 watts active and 17 watts inactive.
Yes, the ATV has a hard-drive, but a laptop drive consumes about 2.5 watts max, so the difference between the ATV and the Roku is not justifiable.
There are some major differences that you haven't addressed. For starters, the performance of the processor and amount of RAM affect the wattage used.
Secondly, and perhaps the most important, there is a large variance in how these two devices are utilized. The Roku device is meant to only stream media from Netflix servers upon command. The AppleTV is an always-on device that will auto-sync your photos and media via iTunes so it needs to be in a ready state that doesn't require direct user interaction to initiate. This means it's never truly off.
The heat of the device isn't big deal. If they made the device twice as thick and added a fan we would probably be discussing the noise or the lack of aesthetics, It's hot to the touch, but not dangerously so, and it was obviously designed to release heat through the top of the device through conduction.
IMO, that is a better engineered than having air holes in a device that sits for years unmoved in an entertainment cabinet. These items tend to get covered with dust. Earlier this year I took apart a friend's receiver that was no longer working properly; after a vacuuming of the circuit board it worked. Dust and electronics do not mix well.
To address someone else's question, yes, the Roku, per their FAQ, remembers your playback position from session to session.
I watched some old television programs and a couple of movies on my MacBook Pro hooked up to the 65" television over the weekend. I'm on a 10mb/s cable connection, and gigabit ethernet. The MacBook Pro is 2.16ghz Core Duo class with ATI graphics, and VMWare and Parallels for running the Netflix Windows player. This really should be a system that plays streaming playback flawlessly.
For the most part, I was actually surprised at the picture quality. Some old 60's dramas were sharp, bright and clean, not a lot of compression artifacts. The movies weren't bad looking either, but definitely more compression artifacts, especially in black areas and dark scenes, than I've ever seen on SD channels over cable. At some points the compression and pixelation made the movies unwatchable. Both the television shows and the movies also had frequent frame dropping which was very noticeable, and when the camera panned, there were definite issues with the whole screen keeping up the background (that's probably an issue with the video driver in Parallels(?)).
The Roku box almost certainly doesn't have the horsepower of my MacBook Pro, but I can't confirm what its specs are from their website. The thing's dedicated nature may give it a playback edge, but who knows until they have one in hand. I'll hold off for a while, but it's an interesting concept.
Ideally, I think that it would be cool if you could shove all the devices into a closed cabinet, or behind the TV, nicely out of sight, with a single RF remote control to control them all, or if IR needs to be in the mix, maybe a universal IR receiver/repeater that feeds the commands to the hidden devices so they can be tucked nicely out of sight. That would put an end to silly arguments like this.
I've been championing such an idea for quite awhile, but have no idea how it could be implemented. I want the TV/monitor to be the only device I see so all these other devices should be controlled via a relay of the TV/monitor's internal RF receiver to these other devices. They are already connected anyway. And the ones that have small displays showing their status can now have a simple video overlay to represent their status; or more specifically, they can send the data back to the TV/monitor which will display it on-screen.
Have you not stopped to think that maybe it's just a total waste of electricity? Why should it be using so much juice that it gets very warm even when doing nothing? The ATV is a very disappointing product from an electronic engineering perspective.
The Roku unit also has no fan. It consumes 5 watts when active, and 4 watts inactive, next to the ATV's 20 watts active and 17 watts inactive.
Yes, the ATV has a hard-drive, but a laptop drive consumes about 2.5 watts max, so the difference between the ATV and the Roku is not justifyable.
The Roku hardware is capable of doing most of what the ATV does, it's just that Roku haven't implemented those things (not sure why - it seems quite likely that the box is subsidised by Netflix and they don't want it to be able to do anything other than stream from Netflix).
My comments weren't addressing whether the device is green or not. Just that it's going to produce heat, and whether it's radiating that heat out of a fanned/not-fanned vent, or out of the body of the device itself, it's going to radiate that heat. 17 watts isn't a lot, about the same as a night light, isn't it? Kudos to the Roku for being a bit greener, though!
Not sure where you get the wattage, but I won't dispute it. The Roku's over a year behind in development than the aTV, so I'd certainly expect that it would have lower energy consumption CPU than the aTV. If Apple ever upgrades the hardware in a second revision of the aTV, they'll surely put in something less energy hungry.
Laptop class harddrives do only consume a few watts. I just placed my hand on the top cover of my aTV, which is at rest, and the only place it is warm is on the corner where I believe the CPU is. It's certainly not hot enough to "fry an egg" at rest, and not at all uncomfortable to leave my hand on it.
I have no idea what components are in the Roku, so I can't argue whether it's capable of all that you can do with an aTV or not with proper programming. I think, though, that logically, with its lack of a harddrive and very small memory footprint, that it's probably not as capable as the aTV in terms of hardware. Time will tell, though as both companies improve their software offerings.
I was interested in the Netflix box when I first heard about it. The problem is, I don't have any view now movies in my queue. It would only really be useful for watching TV shows. I can watch the same movies over and over, but not TV shows. I think I'm probably going to pass on this device.
I also don't have an AppleTV yet. I think now that Tivo is licensing their software for use in others' hardware, AppleTV should try strike a deal with the Tivo people. If I could use an AppleTV as a DVR, I would buy one today.
Looks like the set-top box wars have officially begun. Sure this is a lame first shot, but the end game is all about content and NetFlix has some interesting deals with the big content suppliers.
BlueRay is never going to amount to much and everyone is starting to see that. The real long term play is in the streaming set-top box area. AppleTV, TiVo, X-Box360, and now NetFlix are all contenders at this point. I've used all of them and right now iTunes has more stuff I actually want to watch. I had some time to kill this weekend and went to NetFlix and TRIED to find something to watch instalnly and failed. Not interested in old Dragnet shows and subtitled indie documentaries. There is potential. But with what they have, it really should be free. But add a firmware upgrade that supports HD and some HD content and it gets a whole lot more competitive. And that's coming.
The good news is that ALL could survive and do well. This is not going to be like HDDVD vs BlueRay since there is no physical storage format to worry about. It seems like the war now is going to be over DRM and who can provide the best catalog of content at a price the market likes.
Apple will probably have a nicer-looking, higher-priced unit and iTunes will have a smaller catalog of highly desireable content that people will pay a premium for
NetFlix will be the low-cost provider with lots of content but maybe not available as quickly as iTunes
TiVo is the a wild card. Amazon has the money and ability to play in this game with Unbox, but right now they are focused too much on sales, not rentals. I would not be surprised to see Unbox extended to really compete with iTunes or TiVo partner with NetFlix. The HD TiVo is a great box, great interface, already connected to the net with HD capability... it just needs the content!
Good real-world example - I wanted to rent a particular movie this weekend. It was out at Blockbuster (never going back), it was not a Watch Instantly choice on NetFlix, Amazon Unbox had it but only for purchase not rental, so again, I eneded up renting it from iTunes for $2.99. This has happened exactly the same way several times. This is why iTunes (and AppleTV which I don't need since I can connect directly from my Mac to my projector) will have the lead for now. They have the content that people want to see.
I have no idea what components are in the Roku, so I can't argue whether it's capable of all that you can do with an aTV or not with proper programming. I think, though, that logically, with its lack of a harddrive and very small memory footprint, that it's probably not as capable as the aTV in terms of hardware. Time will tell, though as both companies improve their software offerings.
The main component is a very impressive integrated CPU/Audio&Video Processor from NXP (formerly Philips' semiconductor devision). The chip has an on-board SATA interface for HDDs.
In terms of the capabilities of the Roku box from a hardware perspective, as it stands it is capable of streaming H.264 (up to high profile level 4), MPEG-2, and VC-1, and audio in a variety of formats (mp3, AAC, wma etc.), from any source.
Yes, in order to match all of ATV's features the Roku would need an HDD, but this would be easy (for Roku) to add if they so desired.
I really hope that Apple are looking at this chip - it would enable them to reduce the price of ATV and radically reduce its power consumption. The only question mark is over whether Apple could write CoreAnimation for the chip in order to handle the wizzy ATV GUI.
As far as 17 watts being "not much", it really is an outrageous power consumption for a device in standby, essentially doing nothing. Even the power consumption of the Roku in standby is a little disappointing; there is an intiative in Europe to try and get manufacturers to aim at sub-1-watt standby figures - my 50" plasma uses 0.9 watts in standby and my DVD player is about 0.1 watts.
How many ATVs has Apple sold? let's be conservative and say 250,000. So, 250,000 ATVs are needlessly using 16 watts each of power, that's 4 MW of power being wasted 24/7.
You people arguing about which unit throws off more heat are missing the obvious difference. The ROKU uses an external power brick; the ATV uses an internal power supply (110V cord right to the unit). All this nattering about power consumption is completely misguided.
Take your choice: external wall wart that shifts the heat away from the unit, or a cleaner direct-cord design with more heat at the unit. You can't have both.
You people arguing about which unit throws off more heat are missing the obvious difference. The ROKU uses an external power brick; the ATV uses an internal power supply (110V cord right to the unit). All this nattering about power consumption is completely misguided.
Take your choice: external wall wart that shifts the heat away from the unit, or a cleaner direct-cord design with more heat at the unit. You can't have both.
No, I'm not missing that.
Have you seen the Roku's power adaptor? It's tiny. It almost certainly has an efficiency well over 90% (there's no way being that size that it could use a transformer; it's a switch-mode PSU). I don't know if the power consumption figures provided by Roku include the PSU power losses, but if they don't it still doesn't get anywhere near the power consumption of the aTV.
If the figures quoted by Roku don't include PSU power losses, you can basically add 0.5 watts to the figures they quoted - so 5.5 watts in use and 4.5 watts in standby.
Looks like 17 watts may be a high-side estimate, but standby consumption is definitely over 10 watts:
I wasn't aware of that at all. It seems like an official explanation, if there ever were one, would be to allow syncing at any time. Not that it's really an excuse. IMO, a much better way would be to have the device sleep and have iTunes send a Wake-On-Lan packet to wake it up.
Until they actually have a selection of content that's compelling, this is nothing more than a novelty. Their 10000 number is mainly TV episodes, the number of movies is very small and no recent mainstream hits.
I have over 400 discs in my Netflix queue. 27 are available for viewing with this box.
Until they actually have a selection of content that's compelling, this is nothing more than a novelty. Their 10000 number is mainly TV episodes, the number of movies is very small and no recent mainstream hits.
I have over 400 discs in my Netflix queue. 27 are available for viewing with this box.
That's about in line with my numbers, and I think bolsters an argument that it's not mostly TV episodes, as all of my "immediate viewing" titles are movies. I only have one TV series in my queue right now.
As far as 17 watts being "not much", it really is an outrageous power consumption for a device in standby, essentially doing nothing. Even the power consumption of the Roku in standby is a little disappointing; there is an intiative in Europe to try and get manufacturers to aim at sub-1-watt standby figures - my 50" plasma uses 0.9 watts in standby and my DVD player is about 0.1 watts.
How many ATVs has Apple sold? let's be conservative and say 250,000. So, 250,000 ATVs are needlessly using 16 watts each of power, that's 4 MW of power being wasted 24/7.
I don't want to get into the global warming debate, and I actually agree with most of what you say, but we're worried about one little device that coulda/shoulda done a better job in designing it's green-quotient?
If that 10 watts is such a concern, how many watts is the big screen TV drawing while it's sitting in standby keeping the projector lamp warm for instant on viewing? What about the cable box and the TiVo sitting there receiving TV signals and recording buffers all day long? How about the audio receiver. That's just the Home Theater. How many power bricks are sitting in walls doing nothing but sucking up juice while waiting for the iPod, cell phone, PDA, battery charger, whatever else to get docked for a recharge? What about clock radios all around the house telling time while someone's not even in the home?
Someone really concerned about the issue should be unplugging all these appliances when they're out of the house. THAT might make a difference, until then I may not hand out a 10 watt appliance a carbon footprint reducer award, but I'm not going to worry about it either! ;-)
By the way, could the aTV be programmed through software to reduce that standby draw? Something like going to sleep and doing a wake on lan as suggested by another contributor?
That's about in line with my numbers, and I think bolsters an argument that it's not mostly TV episodes, as all of my "immediate viewing" titles are movies. I only have one TV series in my queue right now.
I guess nobody knows exactly how many are TV episodes, but it's not like they could have 10K movies available with such a paltry selection, could they really have close to that number with mostly documentaries, foreign films, and indies? I suspect that a very large percentage is TV stuff. Along the same lines, do they count a disk with six half hour sitcom episodes as one title or six? With most shows having 20+ episodes per season, it wouldn't take that many shows to get them to their 10K title...for a number that includes TV episodes, that's actually not that big a number.
Looking again at my queue, out of 26 titles available for streaming, only four are TV series...but between those four, there are forty episodes available. Initially it looks like hardly any is TV, but it turns out that well more than half is.
If that 10 watts is such a concern, how many watts is the big screen TV drawing while it's sitting in standby keeping the projector lamp warm for instant on viewing? What about the cable box and the TiVo sitting there receiving TV signals and recording buffers all day long? How about the audio receiver. That's just the Home Theater. How many power bricks are sitting in walls doing nothing but sucking up juice while waiting for the iPod, cell phone, PDA, battery charger, whatever else to get docked for a recharge? What about clock radios all around the house telling time while someone's not even in the home?
Every little bit adds up. If all those power bricks consumed 10W, then you would probably see it in the electricity bill, though they would probably also be very hot to the touch. Mr H did make a good point that if 1/4 million of ATVs were never sleeping when they should be, 4MW is enough to power a town. Audio receivers probably don't consume a lot of power when they're off, most HT devices seem to consume less than 1W in standby whenever I look in the manual's spec page.
I can't speak for TiVos, but my EyeTV powers up my HT Mac just in time for a scheduled recording, then it shuts down after a recording. But at least it's doing something when it's on, and it's not on when it's not doing something.
Do projection TVs really constantly keep a bulb warm?
I guess nobody knows exactly how many are TV episodes, but it's not like they could have 10K movies available with such a paltry selection, could they really have close to that number with mostly documentaries, foreign films, and indies? I suspect that a very large percentage is TV stuff.
None of the "instant view" titles in my queue are documentaries, foreign films, indies or TV shows. And it's pretty close to the 10:1 ratio with my movie queue too, pretty close to the ratio of 100,000 DVD catalog: 10,000 "instant view" catalog they claim.
Comments
I'm not sure I liked the idea of a porn-name-like alias anyway.
But the AppleTV almost doesn't match anything else anyway, it's almost designed to stick out like a cock. If you own more than one media device, it's almost certainly not going to match it. Home Theater stacks are mostly an amalgam of devices in black shells, all of different designs unless you bought everything from the same brand within a year or two of each other. A black box is a lot more discrete among other black boxes anyway, stick it in the shadow and maybe no one would notice.
Little bit of porn/cock obsession there, LOL.
My XBox 360 is white and silver, my aTV is silver and white, my Tivo Series 3 is silver and black. The only black box in my mix, and coincidentally the only eye-sore , is a Yamaha sound system which actually looks a lot like the Roku on steroids with a couple of knobs and a digital display on it, complete with ugly slots in the top.
When I get around to replacing the Yamaha, I'll be shopping for something smaller and sleeker. When I add a Mac Mini or MacBook to the mix, it will either replace the aTV, or fit in to the silver and white theme.
Admittedly, all of these components are just something to be ignored, sitting on low shelves. Ideally, I think that it would be cool if you could shove all the devices into a closed cabinet, or behind the TV, nicely out of sight, with a single RF remote control to control them all, or if IR needs to be in the mix, maybe a universal IR receiver/repeater that feeds the commands to the hidden devices so they can be tucked nicely out of sight. That would put an end to silly arguments like this.
Actually... this one looks pretty cool!
If I recall correctly, that toaster, while cool lookng, tastes a very long time to toast. Plus, I would imagine that steam and crumbs would make it a very dirty item fast.
The Roku unit also has no fan. It consumes 5 watts when active, and 4 watts inactive, next to the ATV's 20 watts active and 17 watts inactive.
Yes, the ATV has a hard-drive, but a laptop drive consumes about 2.5 watts max, so the difference between the ATV and the Roku is not justifiable.
There are some major differences that you haven't addressed. For starters, the performance of the processor and amount of RAM affect the wattage used.
Secondly, and perhaps the most important, there is a large variance in how these two devices are utilized. The Roku device is meant to only stream media from Netflix servers upon command. The AppleTV is an always-on device that will auto-sync your photos and media via iTunes so it needs to be in a ready state that doesn't require direct user interaction to initiate. This means it's never truly off.
The heat of the device isn't big deal. If they made the device twice as thick and added a fan we would probably be discussing the noise or the lack of aesthetics, It's hot to the touch, but not dangerously so, and it was obviously designed to release heat through the top of the device through conduction.
IMO, that is a better engineered than having air holes in a device that sits for years unmoved in an entertainment cabinet. These items tend to get covered with dust. Earlier this year I took apart a friend's receiver that was no longer working properly; after a vacuuming of the circuit board it worked. Dust and electronics do not mix well.
I watched some old television programs and a couple of movies on my MacBook Pro hooked up to the 65" television over the weekend. I'm on a 10mb/s cable connection, and gigabit ethernet. The MacBook Pro is 2.16ghz Core Duo class with ATI graphics, and VMWare and Parallels for running the Netflix Windows player. This really should be a system that plays streaming playback flawlessly.
For the most part, I was actually surprised at the picture quality. Some old 60's dramas were sharp, bright and clean, not a lot of compression artifacts. The movies weren't bad looking either, but definitely more compression artifacts, especially in black areas and dark scenes, than I've ever seen on SD channels over cable. At some points the compression and pixelation made the movies unwatchable. Both the television shows and the movies also had frequent frame dropping which was very noticeable, and when the camera panned, there were definite issues with the whole screen keeping up the background (that's probably an issue with the video driver in Parallels(?)).
The Roku box almost certainly doesn't have the horsepower of my MacBook Pro, but I can't confirm what its specs are from their website. The thing's dedicated nature may give it a playback edge, but who knows until they have one in hand. I'll hold off for a while, but it's an interesting concept.
Ideally, I think that it would be cool if you could shove all the devices into a closed cabinet, or behind the TV, nicely out of sight, with a single RF remote control to control them all, or if IR needs to be in the mix, maybe a universal IR receiver/repeater that feeds the commands to the hidden devices so they can be tucked nicely out of sight. That would put an end to silly arguments like this.
I've been championing such an idea for quite awhile, but have no idea how it could be implemented. I want the TV/monitor to be the only device I see so all these other devices should be controlled via a relay of the TV/monitor's internal RF receiver to these other devices. They are already connected anyway. And the ones that have small displays showing their status can now have a simple video overlay to represent their status; or more specifically, they can send the data back to the TV/monitor which will display it on-screen.
Have you not stopped to think that maybe it's just a total waste of electricity? Why should it be using so much juice that it gets very warm even when doing nothing? The ATV is a very disappointing product from an electronic engineering perspective.
The Roku unit also has no fan. It consumes 5 watts when active, and 4 watts inactive, next to the ATV's 20 watts active and 17 watts inactive.
Yes, the ATV has a hard-drive, but a laptop drive consumes about 2.5 watts max, so the difference between the ATV and the Roku is not justifyable.
The Roku hardware is capable of doing most of what the ATV does, it's just that Roku haven't implemented those things (not sure why - it seems quite likely that the box is subsidised by Netflix and they don't want it to be able to do anything other than stream from Netflix).
My comments weren't addressing whether the device is green or not. Just that it's going to produce heat, and whether it's radiating that heat out of a fanned/not-fanned vent, or out of the body of the device itself, it's going to radiate that heat. 17 watts isn't a lot, about the same as a night light, isn't it? Kudos to the Roku for being a bit greener, though!
Not sure where you get the wattage, but I won't dispute it. The Roku's over a year behind in development than the aTV, so I'd certainly expect that it would have lower energy consumption CPU than the aTV. If Apple ever upgrades the hardware in a second revision of the aTV, they'll surely put in something less energy hungry.
Laptop class harddrives do only consume a few watts. I just placed my hand on the top cover of my aTV, which is at rest, and the only place it is warm is on the corner where I believe the CPU is. It's certainly not hot enough to "fry an egg" at rest, and not at all uncomfortable to leave my hand on it.
I have no idea what components are in the Roku, so I can't argue whether it's capable of all that you can do with an aTV or not with proper programming. I think, though, that logically, with its lack of a harddrive and very small memory footprint, that it's probably not as capable as the aTV in terms of hardware. Time will tell, though as both companies improve their software offerings.
I also don't have an AppleTV yet. I think now that Tivo is licensing their software for use in others' hardware, AppleTV should try strike a deal with the Tivo people. If I could use an AppleTV as a DVR, I would buy one today.
BlueRay is never going to amount to much and everyone is starting to see that. The real long term play is in the streaming set-top box area. AppleTV, TiVo, X-Box360, and now NetFlix are all contenders at this point. I've used all of them and right now iTunes has more stuff I actually want to watch. I had some time to kill this weekend and went to NetFlix and TRIED to find something to watch instalnly and failed. Not interested in old Dragnet shows and subtitled indie documentaries. There is potential. But with what they have, it really should be free. But add a firmware upgrade that supports HD and some HD content and it gets a whole lot more competitive. And that's coming.
The good news is that ALL could survive and do well. This is not going to be like HDDVD vs BlueRay since there is no physical storage format to worry about. It seems like the war now is going to be over DRM and who can provide the best catalog of content at a price the market likes.
Apple will probably have a nicer-looking, higher-priced unit and iTunes will have a smaller catalog of highly desireable content that people will pay a premium for
NetFlix will be the low-cost provider with lots of content but maybe not available as quickly as iTunes
TiVo is the a wild card. Amazon has the money and ability to play in this game with Unbox, but right now they are focused too much on sales, not rentals. I would not be surprised to see Unbox extended to really compete with iTunes or TiVo partner with NetFlix. The HD TiVo is a great box, great interface, already connected to the net with HD capability... it just needs the content!
Good real-world example - I wanted to rent a particular movie this weekend. It was out at Blockbuster (never going back), it was not a Watch Instantly choice on NetFlix, Amazon Unbox had it but only for purchase not rental, so again, I eneded up renting it from iTunes for $2.99. This has happened exactly the same way several times. This is why iTunes (and AppleTV which I don't need since I can connect directly from my Mac to my projector) will have the lead for now. They have the content that people want to see.
I have no idea what components are in the Roku, so I can't argue whether it's capable of all that you can do with an aTV or not with proper programming. I think, though, that logically, with its lack of a harddrive and very small memory footprint, that it's probably not as capable as the aTV in terms of hardware. Time will tell, though as both companies improve their software offerings.
The main component is a very impressive integrated CPU/Audio&Video Processor from NXP (formerly Philips' semiconductor devision). The chip has an on-board SATA interface for HDDs.
In terms of the capabilities of the Roku box from a hardware perspective, as it stands it is capable of streaming H.264 (up to high profile level 4), MPEG-2, and VC-1, and audio in a variety of formats (mp3, AAC, wma etc.), from any source.
Yes, in order to match all of ATV's features the Roku would need an HDD, but this would be easy (for Roku) to add if they so desired.
I really hope that Apple are looking at this chip - it would enable them to reduce the price of ATV and radically reduce its power consumption. The only question mark is over whether Apple could write CoreAnimation for the chip in order to handle the wizzy ATV GUI.
As far as 17 watts being "not much", it really is an outrageous power consumption for a device in standby, essentially doing nothing. Even the power consumption of the Roku in standby is a little disappointing; there is an intiative in Europe to try and get manufacturers to aim at sub-1-watt standby figures - my 50" plasma uses 0.9 watts in standby and my DVD player is about 0.1 watts.
How many ATVs has Apple sold? let's be conservative and say 250,000. So, 250,000 ATVs are needlessly using 16 watts each of power, that's 4 MW of power being wasted 24/7.
As far as 17 watts being "not much", it really is an outrageous power consumption for a device in standby, essentially doing nothing.
If that's true, then that's horrible. Standby should be negligible.
Take your choice: external wall wart that shifts the heat away from the unit, or a cleaner direct-cord design with more heat at the unit. You can't have both.
If that's true, then that's horrible. Standby should be negligible.
Looks like 17 watts may be a high-side estimate, but standby consumption is definitely over 10 watts:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=296699
http://discussions.apple.com/message...sageID=4408276
http://willmonwah.blogspot.com/2007/...nsumption.html
You people arguing about which unit throws off more heat are missing the obvious difference. The ROKU uses an external power brick; the ATV uses an internal power supply (110V cord right to the unit). All this nattering about power consumption is completely misguided.
Take your choice: external wall wart that shifts the heat away from the unit, or a cleaner direct-cord design with more heat at the unit. You can't have both.
No, I'm not missing that.
Have you seen the Roku's power adaptor? It's tiny. It almost certainly has an efficiency well over 90% (there's no way being that size that it could use a transformer; it's a switch-mode PSU). I don't know if the power consumption figures provided by Roku include the PSU power losses, but if they don't it still doesn't get anywhere near the power consumption of the aTV.
If the figures quoted by Roku don't include PSU power losses, you can basically add 0.5 watts to the figures they quoted - so 5.5 watts in use and 4.5 watts in standby.
Looks like 17 watts may be a high-side estimate, but standby consumption is definitely over 10 watts:
I wasn't aware of that at all. It seems like an official explanation, if there ever were one, would be to allow syncing at any time. Not that it's really an excuse. IMO, a much better way would be to have the device sleep and have iTunes send a Wake-On-Lan packet to wake it up.
I have over 400 discs in my Netflix queue. 27 are available for viewing with this box.
Until they actually have a selection of content that's compelling, this is nothing more than a novelty. Their 10000 number is mainly TV episodes, the number of movies is very small and no recent mainstream hits.
I have over 400 discs in my Netflix queue. 27 are available for viewing with this box.
That's about in line with my numbers, and I think bolsters an argument that it's not mostly TV episodes, as all of my "immediate viewing" titles are movies. I only have one TV series in my queue right now.
As far as 17 watts being "not much", it really is an outrageous power consumption for a device in standby, essentially doing nothing. Even the power consumption of the Roku in standby is a little disappointing; there is an intiative in Europe to try and get manufacturers to aim at sub-1-watt standby figures - my 50" plasma uses 0.9 watts in standby and my DVD player is about 0.1 watts.
How many ATVs has Apple sold? let's be conservative and say 250,000. So, 250,000 ATVs are needlessly using 16 watts each of power, that's 4 MW of power being wasted 24/7.
I don't want to get into the global warming debate, and I actually agree with most of what you say, but we're worried about one little device that coulda/shoulda done a better job in designing it's green-quotient?
If that 10 watts is such a concern, how many watts is the big screen TV drawing while it's sitting in standby keeping the projector lamp warm for instant on viewing? What about the cable box and the TiVo sitting there receiving TV signals and recording buffers all day long? How about the audio receiver. That's just the Home Theater. How many power bricks are sitting in walls doing nothing but sucking up juice while waiting for the iPod, cell phone, PDA, battery charger, whatever else to get docked for a recharge? What about clock radios all around the house telling time while someone's not even in the home?
Someone really concerned about the issue should be unplugging all these appliances when they're out of the house. THAT might make a difference, until then I may not hand out a 10 watt appliance a carbon footprint reducer award, but I'm not going to worry about it either! ;-)
By the way, could the aTV be programmed through software to reduce that standby draw? Something like going to sleep and doing a wake on lan as suggested by another contributor?
That's about in line with my numbers, and I think bolsters an argument that it's not mostly TV episodes, as all of my "immediate viewing" titles are movies. I only have one TV series in my queue right now.
I guess nobody knows exactly how many are TV episodes, but it's not like they could have 10K movies available with such a paltry selection, could they really have close to that number with mostly documentaries, foreign films, and indies? I suspect that a very large percentage is TV stuff. Along the same lines, do they count a disk with six half hour sitcom episodes as one title or six? With most shows having 20+ episodes per season, it wouldn't take that many shows to get them to their 10K title...for a number that includes TV episodes, that's actually not that big a number.
Looking again at my queue, out of 26 titles available for streaming, only four are TV series...but between those four, there are forty episodes available. Initially it looks like hardly any is TV, but it turns out that well more than half is.
If that 10 watts is such a concern, how many watts is the big screen TV drawing while it's sitting in standby keeping the projector lamp warm for instant on viewing? What about the cable box and the TiVo sitting there receiving TV signals and recording buffers all day long? How about the audio receiver. That's just the Home Theater. How many power bricks are sitting in walls doing nothing but sucking up juice while waiting for the iPod, cell phone, PDA, battery charger, whatever else to get docked for a recharge? What about clock radios all around the house telling time while someone's not even in the home?
Every little bit adds up. If all those power bricks consumed 10W, then you would probably see it in the electricity bill, though they would probably also be very hot to the touch. Mr H did make a good point that if 1/4 million of ATVs were never sleeping when they should be, 4MW is enough to power a town. Audio receivers probably don't consume a lot of power when they're off, most HT devices seem to consume less than 1W in standby whenever I look in the manual's spec page.
I can't speak for TiVos, but my EyeTV powers up my HT Mac just in time for a scheduled recording, then it shuts down after a recording. But at least it's doing something when it's on, and it's not on when it's not doing something.
Do projection TVs really constantly keep a bulb warm?
I guess nobody knows exactly how many are TV episodes, but it's not like they could have 10K movies available with such a paltry selection, could they really have close to that number with mostly documentaries, foreign films, and indies? I suspect that a very large percentage is TV stuff.
None of the "instant view" titles in my queue are documentaries, foreign films, indies or TV shows. And it's pretty close to the 10:1 ratio with my movie queue too, pretty close to the ratio of 100,000 DVD catalog: 10,000 "instant view" catalog they claim.