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Why does anyone want to buy this?


user2
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because it is running some form of OS X (possibly 10.5 , hence the use of core animation) on common hardware Pentium M , Intel 945G , Geforce Go 7300.

So possibly what was done with Tiger to make it OSX86 , might be done with Apple TV OS too.

Building your own Hackintosh TV mediacenter.

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because it is running some form of OS X (possibly 10.5 , hence the use of core animation) on common hardware Pentium M , Intel 945G , Geforce Go 7300.

So possibly what was done with Tiger to make it OSX86 , might be done with Apple TV OS too.

Building your own Hackintosh TV mediacenter.

 

Fair nuff, but I already have a hackintosh media center that is more capable than the Apple TV. Are we certain there is an OS installed on the hard drive or that it just doesn't boot from a rom.

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Nope just the contrary,

 

The Apple TV has been hacked, and now can play Xvid, Divx and almost anything you throw at it, right now a system of doing it from the outside is being created, we are probably seeing the born of the Perfect media center.

 

BTW PVR is not a thing you could get with Apple TV, but the mess of encoded signals, and the necesity of a set top box to watch cable tv is a a no go fr the apple TV, now you can put your own content inside , this is the XBMC killer...

 

BTW you can sync your mp3 without problem throught itunes,

 

You dont need to buy apple content you can get it from elsewhere, you can rip your own content too.

 

Crappy qualityy? 720p AND 1080i ??? 70% of the HDTVs installeds are only capable of that as highest definition, 1080p is dificult and costly.

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Nope just the contrary,

 

The Apple TV has been hacked, and now can play Xvid, Divx and almost anything you throw at it, right now a system of doing it from the outside is being created, we are probably seeing the born of the Perfect media center.

 

BTW PVR is not a thing you could get with Apple TV, but the mess of encoded signals, and the necesity of a set top box to watch cable tv is a a no go fr the apple TV, now you can put your own content inside , this is the XBMC killer...

 

BTW you can sync your mp3 without problem throught itunes,

 

You dont need to buy apple content you can get it from elsewhere, you can rip your own content too.

 

Crappy qualityy? 720p AND 1080i ??? 70% of the HDTVs installeds are only capable of that as highest definition, 1080p is dificult and costly.

 

How is it the XBMC killer when it does exactly the same thing? The quality of the movies I'm refering to are the ones available on iTunes. I downloaded A Bugs Life from iTunes at 12.99 and the quality was no where near DVD. I am glad to hear that it has been hacked though.

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No way to stream you own mp3s or ripped movies

 

I keep hearing that everywhere. Its not true, as long as you rip your music as MP3s or Apple Lossless and add them to iTunes, or do it within iTunes, itll work. And for movies, just use handbrake (or mediafork as it is now called) and rip them to a format iTunes understands (MP4) and you should be able to stream them no problem.

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I keep hearing that everywhere. Its not true, as long as you rip your music as MP3s or Apple Lossless and add them to iTunes, or do it within iTunes, itll work. And for movies, just use handbrake (or mediafork as it is now called) and rip them to a format iTunes understands (MP4) and you should be able to stream them no problem.

 

 

Watching my Apple TV right now with movies ripped using MediaFork that is streaming off my main machine, I can say first had that it works just fine. Quality is great (in my opinion).

 

 

As for why this device is wanted: I use it as a remote monitor more or less as my main computer is downstairs. It is the perfect way to get media on my machine out to my TV without having a complete computer connected to it.

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No tv tuner

No way to stream you own mp3s or ripped movies

Crappy quality movies on iTunes that cost nearly as much as the DVD

 

Am I wrong here? Why is everyone so excited about this?

You can stream MP3s from itunes, and if you ripped the DVD (not :unsure: ) to a format like Quicktime it's no problem. There's also efforts to get xvid and other formats working on it, and the HD is upgradable. It's also like 10% of the size of my XBMC which does matter.

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anything that quicktime plays, you can use it with itunes..

therefore you can use it with apple tv..

 

when you open the movie with quicktime, there is an option to save as referance library..

this does not require re-encoding the video.

when u drag the referance library file (assigned as .mov) to itunes, it will play it no matter what the original format is...

(as long as quicktime can play it, and proper codecs being installed.)

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I already have my whole dvd library in mp4 format, as well as plenty of TV shows and user-generated content from the net all in Mpeg-4. I set the bitrates for things I rip to a max of about 2500 kbps and i get VERY close to DVD-Quality stuff. I can drag them to my iPod quickly, watch them on any PC/Mac (in this house, only Mac!) in the house wirelessly over the G network. All this content could be easily accessed by the AppleTV. I couldn't ask for a better setup!

Thing is though, I'm not getting one [right away] primarily because it doesn't have a TV Tuner. I have an eyeTV Hybrid, and a Mac mini, So I'll be all set when I get my Samsung LCD HDTV this summer. I still like the ease of use of the AppleTV though...

We'll see i guess. But I'd say that right now, even with the modding, I'm waiting for someone out there to turn the AppleTV into a quasi Mac. It can be done. And when that happens, and I can download torrents with it or set it to do things for me overnight, etc, I may very well rid myself of the mini.

 

-Urby

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I said this in another thread, so for those that read it there, stop now.

 

Where is the hell is 'teh 5.1' sound?! Wasn't 2006 or 2007 (according to Steve J. himself) the year of the HDTV. And while I would say (IMHO) that the HD part of HDTV generally refers to the picture...but the sound is so very important as well. Again, IMO, 5.1 sound is HD sound. This to me seems to be a pretty big oversight, only because the hardware is -capable- of 5.1 sound. Why not enable it?

 

I hope some enterprising person who feels the same as me will find a way to enable this. (oh please oh please oh please). Until then, I'll deal.

 

Either way, I'll be getting my tomorrow.

 

joneSi

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Apple DRM got started with aac. So video trailers got aac 5.1. No AV receivers decode aac 5.1. So Apple needs to support ac3 in drm, then we get ac3/5.1 audio that our receivers can decode. Most likely coming with HD content at iTS. All other 5.1 consumers need to roll their own. Hence a52 codec, vlc, etc

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Apple DRM got started with aac. So video trailers got aac 5.1. No AV receivers decode aac 5.1. So Apple needs to support ac3 in drm, then we get ac3/5.1 audio that our receivers can decode. Most likely coming with HD content at iTS. All other 5.1 consumers need to roll their own. Hence a52 codec, vlc, etc

 

 

I think I follow...and I appreciate the answer. My only worry is that once we -do- get 5.1 it won't be for my library of ripped DVD's and that would make me :unsure:

 

joneSi

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In my mind user2 is correct, it's a bit confusing that Apple has named it Apple TV and it has no tunes which comes with.

 

The "TV" is wrong for this product in my mind - you could call a normal DVD-player "DVD TV" in case of that...

 

btw.

I use a Cinergy T2 by TerraTec here on my Hackintosh and it works without any problems.

 

Hmm... A USB2-Box for DVB-T, an Apple TV with an USB2-Port... do you think what I think? Man.. I need to have this thing to play with this :thumbsup_anim:

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Something like this would make a pretty good general-purpose computer for quite a few people I know that really just want web browsing and the ability to do some e-mail and write up a document or two.

 

On top of that, these things consume only 48-watts of peak power with a normal operating level of 28-watts.

 

That is a MAJOR power savings for things like a webserver, mail server, even a low-end database server. Hell, this makes a damn nice box for doing any of those things since it is a REAL computer inside.

 

Worst case scenario is that you hook up 20 of these together in a cluster and wind up with a pretty nice server with the same kind of power draw and physical size as a typical server, with the bonus of having 20GHz of processing power at your disposal.

 

Not really the most elegant solution, but it works for people getting into the whole idea of hosting a website, they grab one of these boxes and throw them in a colocation facility in many cases for cheaper than they could actually rent the slot on a hosting company's server.

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How is it the XBMC killer when it does exactly the same thing?

 

It's smaller, better looking, and more powerful (better chip, more memory etc). Not to mention it will most likely not need a softmod / modchip to get external os's to run.

 

However I think the best aproach would be for someone to figure out how to clone the itunes api and make a external app to push media to the atv w/o needing to change the host os (well with the addition of having to add external codec's)

 

Apple shouldn't care if people begin hacking it (as long as they aren't stealing the os to run on non atv hardware) since they are not losing money on each sell like Microsoft does with the xbox.

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