Archive for category Apple TV
On iTunes 10
I had a post half written about my thoughts this week and decided everything was enough of a non-story so as to not say much. I mean most of what happened was expected and the (disappointing) AppleTV was at best a slight upgrade (Netflix streaming) along with a better price. I think Apple dropped the ball on this one pretty significantly. I would have written about iTunes 10 but it wasn’t out.
First the big news, Ping seems useless right now. (I find most social media stuff like that though — they tend only to work if you can convince all your friends to use them) The appearance is a mixed bag. I like that they toned down the interface from the Vista like color of iTunes 9. However they went too far into grey. If you want the iTunes 9 icons back there’s a program iTunes 109 that’ll restore the old sidebar and optionally other icons. Me, I wish more of the appearance of iTunes 8 could come back.
What bothers me is that iTunes seems to switch for switching sake. There’s no real concern with usability. In many ways iTunes is the worst of Apple’s software. It’s definitely the worst in terms of UI consistency.
On the “iTV”
So there have been a slew of rumors about the new version of the Apple TV out the past month or so. The latest is Kevin Rose’s “the iTV will change everything.” Color me a bit skeptical. The AppleTV (hereafter aTV because I don’t think there’s a chance in hell British network iTV will sell the name to Apple) is one of my favorite products that Apple just never quite finished. It’s so “almost there.”
While I’d really, really like 1080p, honestly it’s not a deal breaker. For a streaming product rather than having a hard drive to cache the data it makes sense to avoid 1080p. That said I hope they have a version that can do this. However I suspect they are after the elusive $99 and $199 price points. And that’s problematic. I will say a pure streaming device might be somewhat problematic. Having that 120G cache space is tremendously helpful while on a wireless network in the house.
Google TV – What Apple Should Have Done
Posted by clark in Apple TV, Commentary on 2010/05/21
Google’s announced their TV product and I think their strategy to undermine Apple is really taking shape. They recently purchased Simplify Media to have a cloud based iTunes like system. It sounds like they have a lot of partners Apple was unable to get for better video streaming. (The studios were afraid of partnering with Apple lest Apple dominate the segment like Apple did with music) The biggest thing Google did was partner include Google TV in all Sony BluRay players and Dish PVRs along with a stand alone box from Logitech.
So what Google will have is a series of boxes that does everything the AppleTV does and more. In one fatal swoop they’ve really set themselves up to dominate a market Apple’s struggled in for years. (Relegating it to “hobby” status) Last year, as I mentioned here, Dish was promoting iTunes movie rental. One suspects there was back channel discussion with Apple that fell apart. (Presumably because Google made a sweeter offer or because Apple wasn’t willing to take the market seriously)
Managing Multiple Sized Copies of Movies in iTunes
OK, I’ll confess upfront I’ve not tried this one yet although I hope to tomorrow. I got this info from Ars.
The basic problem is when you have a movie you’ve ripped but you want to watch it both on your Apple TV and your iPhone. Now ideally you’d want two different sizes. The iPhone doesn’t need the resolution you’d rip for the Apple TV plus you want the size to be as small as possible. Now if you’ve ever bought a show from iTunes you’ll note that Apple gives you both hi-res and low res versions. How do they do this? Well it turns out it’s just a tag on the MPEG-4 file. And there is a shell script to set those tags so you can do it with your own files.
Dish Online and Apple?
Posted by clark in Apple TV, Commentary on 2009/11/07
OK, so my Dish receiver started advertising Dish online which starts working if you hook your internet into it. (I’ve not done this yet since I have to configure wireless for it) What’s weird is if you go to the Dish Online website they prominently advertise HD movies off of iTunes. Is this part of Apple’s new TV move? Are they aligning with Dish? (I’ve been advocating this for a while)
It all seems pretty incomplete. And some of the movies come from Roxio which only works on Windows. So maybe this is their way of throwing a sop to OSX users? I don’t know. They also have the Sling technology working with Dish.
I’m curious to see how this shapes up. If I could take movies from iTunes and have them play on my Dish receiver (basically ala an AppleTV) I’d be in heaven.
Apple TV to Compete with Hulu
OK, this is interesting. iClarified is reporting that, “Apple has been pitching the idea of iTunes TV for $30/month to television networks for the past few weeks, according to a MediaMemo by Peter Kafka.” It’d work through iTunes so would also work with Macs and iPhones. It’s a great idea however I’m pretty skeptical the studios will agree. If one does, it’ll almost certainly be ABC/Disney.
The reason I’m skeptical is that it seems to me the studios are trying to avoid a repetition of iTMS’ dominance of the market in music. Thus you see them being much more willing to offer good rentals to Microsoft, Netflix and others but not Apple. So I’m excited but cautious. I just think there are too many who don’t want Apple to be successful.
Hack Your Apple TV Pt 2
OK, last time I talked about getting a hacked Apple TV up and running. As I said, my main reason was to get media files off my Apple TV after a hard drive crash. (They are in /mnt/Media/Media Files if you are curious) This time I want to talk about adding support for other media formats using QuickTime.
Perian is a popular plugin for Quicktime that lets you play a variety of other formats beyond those Quicktime normally supports. Probably you have it installed on your Mac. If you don’t, you should. Download it from Perian.org.
A Longish Tale of Hard Drive Crashes, Apple TV Hacks and Woe
OK, this is the set up for my next few posts.
So I had this very nice media setup. I had an old 1st gen 17″ iMac I had got when porting some software over to the Intel Mac. Apple had sent me this hacked Intel machine in a G5 PowerMac case to do the development but I had to return it. After returning it I got the 17″ iMac which I use at home for some development or when dealing with clients who are in India or other distant time zones. Anyway it had become primarily the media server and secondarily a backup machine for development.
I had one drive that I kept various odd stuff on and a second, 1 TB drive, just for movies. Now I kept meaning to get a second drive to mirror that media drive but somehow never had the spare cash laying around to pick one up. (Lots of medical bills due to sick kids) Now I did backup everything else and I’m ultra-paranoid backing up my business machine. (3 rotating full backups and 3 rotating daily backup disks with 6 individual days maintained per disk + infinite backups of source code)
I finally picked up the extra drive about a month ago and was doing a backup when my toddlers came running in and tripped over the cords. Hard drives went flying. I went screaming like someone out of a cheesy 80′s action movie yelling, “NOOOOO!” in slow motion.
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More Google Thoughts
Posted by clark in Apple TV, Commentary on 2010/05/24
Honestly, all of this is actually very good for consumers. It means some serious evolution is occurring. I doubt Apple would be working nearly as hard for the expected WWDC iPhone announcements were Google not chomping on their heels. Hopefully HP/Palm, Microsoft and Nokia can get in and be competitive as well. The more ideas out there the better.
I can’t help but contrast the current flurry of evolution in the mobile market with desktops over the past decade. Sometime after 2001 we reached the point where most people’s computers were powerful enough to do what they needed: email, light word processing and spreadsheets. Digital video complicated that a bit but overall the desktop has been remarkably stable. Compare a computer from 2002 to one from eight years earlier – say 1994. There is a huge difference in power and capability. But I compare my current MacBookPro to my PowerMac G5 from 2003 and while there is a difference it isn’t a huge one. The main difference today has been in power efficiency. The power available in a laptop in 2003 was weak with short lived battery life. I’m shocked at how long I can use my MBP before plugging it in. Read the rest of this entry »
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