appleTV

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whats up with apple tv??? sounds like it sucks.

I watched the product debute and even the apple guys were jacked that it doesn’t come with any component wires…lol… i found a funny article about the xbox1 vs. apple tv

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Why a $100 XBox can be better than the Apple TV
By Jonathan M. Gitlin | Published: March 26, 2007 - 12:33PM CT

I was out of town this weekend meeting a friend from back home who happened to be in Columbus, OH, on business. Originally we’d planned to go karting, but the threat of rain and the lure of beer took us in a different direction. Rob happens to be a big Gran Turismo 4 fan and is still gloating about beating my 5 min 42 sec Nürburgring time. Instead of spending close to $100 on an afternoon at the go-kart track, I decided to take my cash to a well-known national games retailer and instead picked up a used XBox and Forza, all with which to convert him in time for the sequel’s release.

In these days of PS3s and Xbox 360s, it’s easy to forget the consoles that came before them. But they’re still there, and with the prices falling by the day and huge libraries of games that you know will work without emulation issues, there’s still life in them. Just buying the XBox for a disposable weekend of Forza might be seen as wasteful, but Microsoft’s first foray into the games console market has more uses than just gaming. In fact, in the following ways it may even be a better media investment than competing products. What does it do better than the much hyped-AppleTV, for instance?

Lower price: $99 sure is cheap compared to $300
Open standards for types of files: Being able to play DivX or WMV content is good
It also plays games: It’s still a games console, after all
While in Columbus, we happened to pass through the Apple store, and I got my first look at the AppleTV. A slick piece of kit, to be sure, and one you’ll be able to read all about at Ars Technica shortly, but not quite suited to my needs. I want to be able to watch DivX files on my TV; it’s the only way to keep up with TV from back home, and legally, too (thanks, Auntie Beeb!). Apple’s beautiful little box can’t help me out, but give my wife a used XBox, and 20 minutes later an XBMC media center is the solution to my needs. Plus, it can stream BBC Radio 4 to boot! Sure, you can always open up and hack an AppleTV, but you do so at the cost of your warranty. With secondhand hardware that’s cheap, that’s not a concern.

The arrival of our XBox 360 meant that our first XBox could be repurposed as the living-room media server. Now I don’t need to keep plugging my PowerBook into the bedroom TV set, and Elle can pipe her music collection from her PC to her heart’s content. It’s not the sort of thing I’d suggest for my parents or anyone else of a technophobic nature, but if the AppleTV won’t do what you want or if you prefer rolling your own, pop down to your local used video game emporium and see what’s lurking in their stockroom. Apple TV certainly has its uses, but the original Xbox is easier to hack, cheaper, and has much more support from the hacking community right now than Apple TV. If you’ve not looked into XBMC, it’s absolutely worth it. Depending on your needs, it may be a far superior option to Apple TV, or any of the other PC-to-TV devices out there today.

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I agree whole heartedly that the modded xbox 1 is THE ULTIMATE choice for a set top media center but am disagreeing with the point in the article about it being legal. In his scenerio he mentions XBMC. This program is built using illegally licensed XDK - which makes the whole setup illegal, technically speaking. Also, depending on how it is modded, it may contain illegal MS code within the hacked BIOS. But that aside, he reiterates what I’ve been telling people for over 2 years now. Xbox 360 is pulling a lot of this momentum towards IPTV and downloaded media, but at a cost. With IPTV on the upswing I just wish Xbox 1 has more power behind it to be able to keep up. It already does everything else - why not live tv too?

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Agreed on the Xbox… but some people dont want to deal with that… I was in the Apple store in south hills village yesterday and they had it on display… I thought about buying it, but in reality, I dont watch that much TV. It looked really nice and simple to use, but the 40gig harddrive seems pretty small, good thing they have the USB on the back for an external HD. I think it would be a nice setup with a really big external harddrive hooked up to it. Not something I need until I get my own place… but im sure there will be hacks for the apple tv soon enough.

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give it like 3 weeks there will be hacks for it. that will be all said above and more.

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RE: apple tv and HD… just read the article today

NEW YORK (AP) Apple Inc. has graced the public with another smooth, white, exquisitely designed gadget, this time aiming at making it easier to play iTunes movies and songs on the living-room TV set.
Too bad, then, that where looks really matter - in the quality of the video on the TV screen - the $299 Apple TV comes up very short. It’s as if Apple had launched an iPod that sounded like a cassette player.

When I tell people about the Apple TV, they usually judge it by its name and assume that it’s an actual TV set. So to clear up any confusion, let me say right now that it’s not. It’s a square device the size of a hardback book that goes in your entertainment center. You connect it to your TV set via cables (not included). It also connects to your Mac or Windows computer, wirelessly or via cable.

Once set up, the Apple TV can play the contents of the computer’s iTunes library on the TV set, whether it’s music, podcasts, videos, TV shows or movies. It can also show your photos. XP is the only Windows flavor officially supported by Apple, but I connected the unit to a PC running Vista, and had no problems.
There’s a 40-gigabyte hard drive in the Apple TV. It will automatically copy over as much as it can from the iTunes library, so you can access your media when the computer is off. The hard drive doesn’t make the Apple TV a TiVo: it doesn’t record live TV.

The unit is controlled by a teensy infrared remote that looks a lot like a baby iPod. If hunting for the remote is a frequent activity in your couch, this one will be a nightmare. At least it’s so small that you could tape it to one of your other remotes.

On the TV screen, the Apple TV projects a very iPod-like interface, commendably clear and easy to use. It also looks great, especially on a high-definition TV. It uses your own pictures as an animated screensaver.

Speaking of HDTV, you more or less need one of those sets for the Apple TV. It’s not designed to connect via the older single-lead RCA video cable. You need a TV that takes either the three-lead component cable (the jacks are usually colored red, green and blue) or the all-digital HDMI cable. Newer standard-definition sets may have component inputs, but most TVs out there don’t.

It’s surprising, then, that videos from Apple’s online iTunes store look horrible on an HDTV set. The movies and TV shows have the same nominal resolution as DVDs, but look much blurrier, approaching the look of standard-definition broadcast TV.

To make it worse, these barely watchable movies aren’t cheap. “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” costs $15 on iTunes, almost as much as the DVD. TV episodes are more reasonably priced, at $2 each.

It’s possible to convert home footage shot with high-definition video cameras to play on the Apple TV, but not in their native resolution, known as 1080i, so some quality is lost even there.

I compared the Apple TV to Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 game console, which can more or less do the same things, acting like a bridge between a Windows computer and an HDTV set.

After having my eyes gently caressed by the Apple TV’s menus, the Xbox interface is like a slap in the face. It’s garish and confusing, and you have to press more buttons to get where you want to go.

But the Xbox does your HDTV justice. Microsoft’s Xbox Live marketplace has some movies in HD, and these look absolutely stunning - better than most broadcast HD, and almost indistinguishable from HD DVD or Blu-ray discs, which provide the best video quality available to consumers right now.

Even the standard-definition fare on Xbox Live looks much better than iTunes movies, despite nominally being the same resolution. They look almost as good as DVDs.

Xbox Live has two other advantages: the movies are downloaded straight to your Xbox hard drive, with no need to go through the computer, and you rent the movies for around $3, which is a lot cheaper than buying.

This is not to say that you should rush out and buy a $400 Xbox for use as a movie player. It doesn’t connect wirelessly to your computer, nor does it include a video-style remote. Both these omissions can be remedied with some extra purchases, but they’ll push the cost closer to $500.

The Xbox hard drive is half as large as the Apple TV’s, though that’s less of an issue when you rent movies than buying them. (There’s a $480 Xbox on the way with a 120-gig drive.) The movies can be watched only on the Xbox, while Apple’s movies can be viewed on a computer or iPod screen as well. You only get 24 hours to watch an Xbox movie, which seems unnecessarily harsh.

The Xbox is also a bit of a brute compared to the Apple TV. It’s noisy, and its power adapter really deserves being called a “brick” - it’s as large as the whole Apple TV, which doesn’t have a brick of its own.

So neither solution is perfect, but I far preferred the Xbox. I didn’t spend thousands of dollars on an HDTV to play substandard video on it, and I’m sure any new HDTV owner will sympathize.

Of course, Apple will at some point start selling HD video through iTunes. It has to. Will that play on the current Apple TV? Probably, but I’m wary of the result.

According to the company’s specifications, the Apple TV can play HD video with a resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels, but it doesn’t actually seem that well suited to it. The hard drive is small, and the low power consumption speaks of weak processors inside. And since Apple’s standard-definition video looks so bad, I’m not confident the HD video will look good either.

My advice: if you don’t want the Xbox 360, wait for upgrades to both iTunes and Apple TV that take HD seriously.

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lol