How would you change the Apple TV?
By Evan Blass 
posted August 12th 2007 9:01PM
posted August 12th 2007 9:01PM
posted August 12th 2007 9:01PM
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I'd like to see a weather page with radar maps. Seem like this is a basic feature in the atv variants (media pc, myth, etc).
I Just would like to have the possibility to switch it off......
I would add:
1) Location Free Server/Player - to sling AppleTV content to a network client, and to act as a client (like Slingplayer Client).
2) Act as a Wireless-N Bridge (the way Airport Express does)
3) Additional Codec Support
4) Upscaling
5) DVR capabilities
6) Itunes Movie Rentals
7) Netflix/Blockbuster VOC integration
8) Bluetooth for input capabilities
I have an Apple TV and I like it quite a bit. I have a ton of movies stored on my NAS so this adds a ton of functionality to my setup at home. I did have to hack it to add more codec support (thanks Perian!) and to be able to mount and browse NFS shares, but that was pretty easy. It would be nice if that stuff was built in out of the box though.
I don't really see the need for it to have DVR/PVR functionality. That just isn't what this device is designed to do. I would like to see a more powerful processor to decode higher bitrates and resolutions. I imagine that the second version will have more horsepower.
My guess is that downloading HD content directly to the box from the iTunes store is coming in September when the new television schedule begins. Let's be honest, adding direct downloading is a no brainer and I think the reason we haven't seen it yet is because SD content looks like garbage. Stuff like the Washington Post HD video podcast and Macbreak look stunning on the Apple TV. So until stuff downloaded from the iTunes store looks that good I don't think there will be direct downloading to the Apple TV.
HD
DVR/Satellite Tuner
BluRay or HD DVD Player
Optional add ons for a DVD/HD DVD/Blueray dock to rip existing movies.
1. Make the AppleTV Front (Back) Row accessible via the LAN. I don't want to power up my 50" HDTV just to listen to music, change playlists, or genres.
2. Make the USB accessible to add storage to the AppleTV. I don't want to have to open my AppleTV just to upgrade my storage.
3. HD Content on iTunes. This is after all the year after "The year of HD". Bandwidth on Apples iTunes site not withstanding, a typical hour long show at 720p H.264 would be around 1GB, could take awhile.
Cheers!
KJ
Visualizer.....simple yet cool on a LCD Tv....
I'd add a DVD drive so I can play disks with it, too. That's something I could do with a Mac Mini that this device doesn't do, and there's no way to stream DVDs from my laptop.
As a happy owner of an AppleTV, I'd wish for three things: Open up that freakin' USB port for additional harddrive space, start a movie rental option through iTunes, and make the Apple TV smart enough to merge playlists from more than one computer (as an option).
more tie downs and opening rear doors.
1. External hard drive
2. netflix-like subscription for HD movies
3. Make it a pass-through box for a TV signal. That way, you can watch TV through your cable provider's box and use the Apple TV without changing inputs. It could activate the same way Front Row does: hit the 'menu' button and the screen fades in to the background to show the interface. This opens the door for streaming cable to your computers throughout your house, too.
4. Add a DVD player
What next? Last100 has an in-depth post
http://www.last100.com/2007/08/06/whats-next-for-the-appletv/
U knnow what, they should add 1080P as well!
As well as include a HDMI cable in the package for free!
Add MPEG2. I want my ATSC stream sent to my AppleTV!!
Add more codecs, give me no reason why I can't display my own media on this device without spending _hours_ transcoding it to MPEG 4.
As an owner of an AppleTV I would like to see:
1) 1080x, no rush though.
2) itunes movie rental at least on par with Amazon Unbox and TivoOnDemand.
3) RSS reader
4) bluetooth Keyboard support
5) the iPod games made available
6) better iPhoto support (ie streaming of photos)
7) Flickr access, like YouTube
8) improved sound output. 5.1, whatever.
Things I'd be happy with but really don't care about:
1) USB port working (essentially I stream everything to my AppleTV so the HD size isn't really an issue)
2) Web browsing (would love RSS, see above, but I have plenty of ways to browse the web already)
Things I wouldn't want at all:
1) built in DVD, Blu-ray, etc...
2) PVR/DVR, I like my TiVo just fine thank you.
Crazy things I want just to fit in with 50% of the people here that also want crazy stuff:
1) ATM machine for when I need money at home
2) Built in GPS in case I forget where I am
3) DirecTV and DISH Network tuners, with free subscriptions of course
4) Apple should buy Tivo and incorporate it into the AppleTV (somewhat contradictory to my above list)
5) iSight for video conferencing
6) VOIP
7) 2TB network storage drive
8) photo printer (4x6")
9) CF/SD/etc card reader
10) DVD burner
11) iWork 08
12) Pizza Oven Expansion kit
13) Finally I'd like the whole thing to glow and pulsate.
1 PVR
2. Purchase/rental ability in Canada -- we've got nothing
3. Blu-Ray drive -- I'm in the market for a player soon
4. Let me boost storage with an external -- fire-wire -- HD drive
THE BIGGEST THING THAT I HATE ABOUT IT IS THAT I HAVE TO CONVERT ALL MY DIVX TO MP4. I HATE IT.
This thing is a complete piece of trash! I say that as a professional that's worked in a Post Production company for the last 17 years. It would be SO easy for Apple to create a Hard Drive and paired down OS to drive around just the media we'd store on the thing...in ANY resolution or format. But it's obvious why they won't. I currently use a Mac Mini and an 8' wide projection screen for my HTPC needs, and I've got a 1 TB drive hanging off for direct attached media and a 5TB (useable) Raid 6 array in the background for whole house use and backup. None of you who are talking about any Signal suppliers ( Comcast, DirecTV, Dish, ETC. ) get the fact that it is all horribly compressed. Really ugly signals with huge resolution loss to begin with. Further compressing it onto this piece of shit box does nothing for you. And if you did have 5.1 to begin with, it's gone when it gets on the box. This thing could have been absolutely great. I watched it from the first rumor of it. I expected when I heard HDMI out, that of course it would be at least a decent grade box. It's nothing more than a compression utility hovering in a poorly constructed box with meager video out. I don't say this as an Apple basher, we are all far past that. These days an Apple computer can do *anything* you want it to do, windows, linux, OR OSX. Doesn't matter, as it never should of in the first place. You are either a user, or a pretender who plays with toys. If you know what you are doing, you can still sort of get this thing to do fun stuff, but my anger is in how easy it could of and should have been. More sales = more development. HD and Hi Res file formats are already difficult to use for the great unwashed masses. Why make it more of a dissolution??
Browse, tag and rate photos.
My wife hates computers. We cannot sit at one together without arguing.
Sounds familiar?
It would be a godsend to be able to sit on the sofa and for us to pick which photos we like, without me telling her she's clicking the wrong thing.
Do any of you actually own one? For the people that do....
Volume control from the remote should be a big freaking no brainer for apple.
and control from the mac/pc i.e. squeezebox/slimserver like.
g
Software suggestions for a firmware upgrade
* Support for streaming internet radio
* support for browsing and buying via the itunes music store
* music should continue to play when leaving the music section to the main menu.
* add option to change how often the artwork flips from side to side.
* option to subscribe to RSS feeds
* ability to download podcasts you've subscribed to right to the appletv, why should i have to turn on my pc to sync them to the appletv?
* option to rate and change ratings of tracks
* more codec support! Why ohy why is there no support for Apple Quicktime .MOV files! I was very disappointed to first sync my AppleTV last month to find that only 2 of the 100 or so video files I have on my computer already are appletv friendly MP4 files. Quite a lot of these files even play in iTunes already. Please allow for MOV and maybe AVI. I'm not too bothered about DVIX that much and don't expect Apple to add it.
* simple games (music quiz could be fun!)
* ability to manually choose (drag and drop) which content to go on to Apple TV (why does it **have** to be automatic).
* easier option to turn the device to standby (holding play for 6 seconds is a hassle)
* dashboard widgets (weather display would be great!)
I'd add games and a downloadable games service. I'd add bluetooth (with an a2dp option) so that you could use the iphone as a touchscreen input via bluetooth.
And use the iphone as an amazing media remote for the Apple Tv.
I would make the Apple TV more car friendly: song position memory, and a portable lithium-ion battery pack.
I have a few comments on AppleTV. I have 7 running in my home. I have 5 synched and 2 that can play streamed, from 2 different libraries. I have 250+ movies and abour 3,000 TV Shows either purchased or ripped from my quite extensive DVD collection. My house is a "Smart" house with Crestron distributed audio and video to 24 seperate locations (panels) within the home and about 16 TV's altogether. This system (including the wiring) ran me about $235,000. For the AppleTV haters out there, I have been able to reproduce about 85% of the Crestron System in my second home for about $3,000. Anyone see a difference? Look, AppleTV isn't going to displace TiVo anytime soon (January hopefuls aside) but it does serve a purpose and it does it quite well. There are always going to be people whoe say $40 is too much to pay for an entire computer. You can never satisfy them. However, for its price, it is actually quite a powerful tool and has already made Crestron and other high-end distributors sit up and take notice enough that my installer now offers them along side their $8,000 video servers. Limiting HD will be a justifiable complaint until it is upgraded, however, it is a marvel for what it does do. Anyone want to buy my old 25+ pieces of Crestron distributed server equipment???
Seriously, I would say we watch about 10-12 hours cumulative per day in this household on AppleTV's. I have written scripts to transfer and convert TiVo programs and of course, have a large video library as discussed earlier. These are some of the features I have thought are seriously lacking from my extended use of my deloyed network of AppleTV's.
1. HD capability in the 1080p area.
2. Adult Ratings locks (Parenta; Controls). It seems insane that a device bringing video into the family room has no way to limit R rated videos.
3. iTunes needs to allow the user to modify ALL of it's video tags such as MPAA or TV ratings, etc. just as products like "Lostify" do.
4. iTunes needs to permit "massive" video library backups in a more meaningful or "realistic" way than they do. Of course my network servers are backed up, but nearing 1tb of video, I have no idea other than to tape, how to back the library up. Perhaps being split amongst multiple drives for the libraries like Final Cut allows spanning for scratch disks.
5. I think a "login" for different libraries is needed and would help keep the kiddies out of entire libraries. Once a unit is synched, it is an all or nothing deal.
6. Provide for an external antenna jack or make the receiver unit better. I get slow playback on 2 units, even though my laptop says it's 4 bars on airport. DR. Bott would love an external jack...
7. Movies need to have collection folders same as TV shows do. For those of us who want to put "extras" and "previews" etc. in a "folder" for the movie instead of having them follow each other in the main list.
8. I would like to see the scrolling search act more like the iPod scroll search displaying a large letter as you fly through our listings. Once they get into the hundreds, it is a pain to constantly have to slow down to see what letter you are up to. An iPod like search bar to jump to a specific letter would be great too. Simple stuff to implement in an update.
9. Season nesting inside of TV shows. For shows like Friends or Frasier, that have 10,11 or 12 seasons, it would be nice to see at least one more level of nesting within the TV folders. so it goes SHOW, then SEASON, then SHOW.
10. iTunes MULTIPLE change to INFO needs to have a lot more tags addressable for multiple edits, such as season, Ratings, Network, TV or Movie, etc.
11. The episodic versus season hierchy needs a little tweeking for home videos. Season (year the video was shot) is fine, however, to get my videos to display in chronological order, then in sequence order (say I took 5 videos on the same day on vacation) then there really is o way other than making some ridiculously long Episode ID like 2007061501 for June 15, 2007 clip 01. Has to be a better way. I have about 180 home videos converted now for AppleTV and my extended family loves coming over to watch the old VHS stuff shot 20 years ago (or so) now on the big screen in the comfort of the family room. We have rediscovered these lost archives and now that they are in digital, they should last a lot longer than their VHS lifetimes with no further loss of quality, no matter how many times we watch them. Even Apple hasn't stuck to its own standards of episodic encoding as iis evidenced by the many iTunes season passes I have to modify to list chronologically correctly.
12. When dragging new items into iTunes that are Video in nature, I would love to see a "Just added" folder for easy finding such as in iPhoto's "last import" folder.
13. These units run really, really hot as many people have stated. It needs a fan or something. I don't care at all if the thing is 3" bigger.
14. A "Suggestions" folder which could randomly draw TV shows at random (unwatched or watched) would be nice.
15. At the folder level, it would be nice if there were a visual way to know new shows (or unwatched) shows were in the nested folder.
16. An "Unwatched" folder would also be nice, much like the concept of the "Now Playing" on TiVo except for they are all new additions.
17. Playlists for video would be great. How do you play music videos at a party in the background if it stops after each one? Silly.
18. Auto-Repeat would be handy for videos also, just like iTunes does for music. It would play the video or playlist over again. Why? Well, at this weekend's party, I have a digital fireplace I want running the entire evening. It is 54 minutes long, so every hour it would need to be reset, or I have to string together 4 hours or so for one long play. I may just have to do that.
19. The 5 unit limit, within the same LAN, is silly to me. When I play a song in my house, it can play out of close to 60 speakers, in every room, hallways, patio, garage, etc. Why can't video's be streamed to more locations within the same IP LAN? I get the video issues, but if AppleTV is to do for distributed video what iTunes did for distributed audio, then it has a lot of work to do.
20. Apple has given us a lot of ways to get our videos created to iTunes (AppleTV format) through Final Cut, Compressor, iDVD, iMovie HD, QuickTime Pro, etc. However, I don't believe in any fashion any of these apps permit editing of tags. This is silly, since editing the tags in iTunes adds another step that shouldn't be necessary within Apple's own applications.
21. Streaming photos is a must. I have to admit, I can't use my current setup for photos since it would mean deleting most if any video files (Movie & TV) on the devices. That is just dumb.
22. I would like to see a user set hierchy for what you want your AppleTV t give priority to. For example, it kind of follows the tabs in iTunes from left to right in priority Movies first synch, then TV shows, on down the line to photos. Well, sometimes I want my recent photos to always be on the unit and if unwatched movies don't fit, then let the movies not synch. I really hate the way this was devised, it needs updating badly.
23. A tag in iPhoto for "unwatched" if you will, would be very nice too, so that I could have a smart folder in iPhoto synch to my AppleTV of any photos that have not been viewed yet on that device.
24. I have tried a dozen times, and the select album in iPhoto under AppleTV's just don't seem to work consistently.
25. If a complete photo album doesn't fit, then at least the part that does should be synched to the AppleTV. Right now it is an all or nothing deal.
26. Better FF & REW capabilities when watching video. For anyone used to watching TiVo, you will want to shoot your leg off when someon in the room misses something and says "can you back that up a minute". This usually consists of the scrfeen locking up, then standing still for 20-30 seconds, then it jumps back too far, then - oh you get the idea. What the hell, where is the video buffer that this thing can't REW fluidly even for it's own HD store files. no excuses - if my TiVo can do it, AppleTV cna do it. Poor programming.
27. Video rentals (as everyone else wants)
28. Any kind of DVR capability would be awesome, but I am not holding my breath on this one - but it's a hopeful wish so I don't have to keep recording on TiVo, converting with Roxio, command line stripping the wrapper, then converting it for AppleTV.
NOTE: I have heard comments to do away with the internal hard drive. Why would you ever do that? I keep my unwatched stuff local and synched so that I can better FF and REW the video. Ever try rewinding streaming 720p video over AppleTV? Good luck. The HDD needs to get larger (as an option is fine) so the heavy duty users can get their video without crunching their LAN. Let the units update overnight, it is a good method already in place.