10 ms·
Upcoming Apple TV loses 1080p playback, gains apps... and will be renamed iTV
- donohoe 16y agoLet's forget the fact that ITV is a TV channel in the UK... Not confusing at all
- houseabsolute 16y agoFor all short pithy names there is a collision somewhere. It's not really that big of a deal.
- adolph 16y agoYes. Change your channel's name. Not that big of a deal. From: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/steve-jobs-to-developer-name-change-not-that-big-of-a-deal/#ixzz0wM5sPPWR http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/steve-jobs-to-develop...
- spicyj 16y agoChange your channels name. Not that big of a deal.
- electromagnetic 16y agoI doubt it'll be releasing in the UK as iTV, as ITV owns the trademark and has done since forever. The confusion will be great enough that ITV could easily get an injunction in place to prevent the sale of the device so as not to weaken their brand name. Why? Well because ITV is a video providing service, iTV is a video receiving service. You might get away with it, if ITV hadn't actually tackled the video receiving end of the market when they launched their Freeview (which they still partly own) which was a set-top-box for the receiving of free digital images. There's going to be no Apple vs Apple in this case.
- houseabsolute 16y agoUnless of course apple licenses the trademark. These things can be settled civilly.
- timthorn 16y agoIndeed, prior to Freeview (and after ONDigital), they called the service ITV Digital, if memory serves.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- astrodust 16y agoMay as well call it the iTelly in that market.
- mgrouchy 16y agoI was hoping for a refresh of the apple TV product line. Its too bad there is no 1080P playback, thats a dealbreaker for me.
- ams6110 16y ago720p is fine for a consumer device as long as the usability is there. That's why I still prefer VHS tapes to DVD, despite the lower image quality.
- CamperBob 16y ago720p is fine for a consumer device as long as the usability is there. That's why I still prefer VHS tapes to DVD, despite the lower image quality. How long has it been since you had a complete physical checkup?
- ams6110 16y agoHmm... probably about 15 years. On balance I find tapes easier to use and less frustrating. I am not prevented from skipping the FBI warnings, studio logos, legal disclaimers, previews, and other nonsense. VHS tapes are much more robust. I've never had to clean one, or have it not work. DVDs have conniption fits over a few fingerprints, and if they get scratched, forget about it. And if you do have to remove and clean a DVD to resolve a freeze-up, you then have to navigate through menus to get back to where you left off. With VHS, you can stop the tape, remove it, turn the player off, and come back later and pick up exactly where you left off. Yeah the VHS picture is not as good as a DVD, no argument there. But for a typical Hollywood movie on a TV at home, it's good enough. Certainly no worse than the haphazard stutters, pixelization, and freezes one experiences in a typical DVD viewing. Now, consider the iTV. Fingerprints and scratched media, not going to be a problem. Picture quality, at 720p, good enough for the masses, especially for a $99 device. If they can bypass the studio-imposed inconveniences and make using it a frustration-free experience, they will sell plenty of them.
- natrius 16y ago
- dmnd 16y agoSeems kind of strange to open the device up to such easy criticism. iTV? It doesn't even have 1080p!
- easyfrag 16y agoThis is Apple, no cut&paste on the original iPhone, no USB on iPad. I'm guessing the user experience wasn't what they wanted either with the performance of the playback, or with the speed of the download/streaming of 1080p from the store.
- elblanco 16y agoThe app bit makes it clear this is set to be a direct competitor to Google's Android based TV solution. Also interesting to move it to iOS4, the first previously OSX device to move to iOS? A sign of things to come?
- nixy 16y agoIf you are insinuating that the Mac lineup will be moving to iOS, I think you might be more than a bit off.
- grandalf 16y agoApple TV is only 720p for video now. The only thing that's 1080p is the menu!
- nrb 16y agoSurely that's so they can release the iTV 2.0 w/ 1080p in a few months for a few hundred more bucks?
- teilo 16y agoAnd no doubt it's still slow as molasses. Sorry, I'll take my Mac Mini w/HDMI, running Plex any day.
- glhaynes 16y agoThe current Apple TV certainly is too slow. But the A4 in the iPhone 4 isn't slow at all driving media on its retina display...
- flatulent1 16y agoConsumers will probably like this, geeks probably won't. The current model is x86 based (1 GHz or so, single core, something like a Celeron M) and runs a stripped down version of OS X. It's a bit underpowered, but with some work loading things it can run standard OS X apps. QuickTime can handle the same codecs used on OS X. With the current model, the more powerful but more costly Mac Mini is an alternative. As described, the new model has a much less powerful and Mac-binary incompatible CPU, but it will use MUCH less energy and can handle h.264 playback with hardware decoding. That'll pretty much rule out adding codecs for those XViD .AVI videos many have laying around. Lack of an Intel CPU lowers cost significantly. It seems it could run app store stuff except for the input device hmmm.... maybe it should have a touch screen? Add video out somehow to an iPod touch? Apple so far has stayed clear of directly supporting off-air or cable-tv PVR functionality. The USB tuners from Elgato Systems work well ("Eye-TV"), but with a Core 2 Duo it would take a dedicated hardware compressor to shrink archives down to h.264 etc at a decent quality level and in a reasonable amount of time. Locked down like an iPad/iPod touch/iPhone, much of the geek appeal would be gone. The thought of a browser without ad-blocking alone is a big deal to some. (perhaps someone can fine a clear way to do some ad-blocking in a router with open-source firmware?) Hopefully whatever Apple does will allow access to plenty of tv content that isn't costly. DRM issues (and poor support of video that people already have) could be a negative. It'll probably have (DRMed) HDMI output but no VGA or DVI. Or maybe Apple will prove us all wrong and do something really surprising?
- jsz0 16y agoThere are always some ways around things: Ads: Atomic Web on the App Store includes and ad blocker though I do like the idea of taking care of it at the router level. XVID/DIVX: The free app ServeToMe does real time transcoding. You install the server app and the client just streams H264. Works surprisingly well. Hacking: Jailbreaking is about the same as rooting an "open" device. I'd bet those guys would have a bunch of emulators and other forbidden apps out within a week or two of its release.
- lukifer 16y agoServeToMe does iPhone-resolution encoding... I doubt it would be easy to do 720p h264 in real-time.
- extension 16y agoDamn, I was rooting for "iTube"
- silversmith 16y agoCoincidentally, the Apple TV device came up in random office discussion yesterday, and general concensus was that it should have been called iTv. Maybe Apple has secretly bought my company?
- henrikhansen 16y agoWait a second, if it's going to have apps, what is the controller going to be like? My guess: iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad is going to learn a new trick. Imagine a driving game where the controller is your iPhone (accelerometer and gyroscope for control) the screen can be used to control gear, and watch stats. If this is going to be true, the new Apple TV will seriously be something unique!
- cheesey 16y agoiTV? That's going to cause some confusion in the UK. http://www.itv.com/ http://www.itv.com/