AppleTV Rumors: iTV, 720P?

Engadget has posted something, that I’ll consider a rumor until official, regarding a much speculated AppleTV revision expected this Fall.

Good News:

  • The new version of AppleTV seems to be more and more likely.
  • Supposedly will be priced at $99 which isn’t too bad.
  • There would likely be an App store in this scenario since it will basically be a little, iPhone 4 without the phone or screen.

Bad News:

  • The insides supposedly will be iPhone 4 like:  A4 CPU, 16GB of flash storage
  • Supposedly can only handle up to 720p video – not 1080i or 1080p video!  I personally can’t believe they would do this but that’s what Engadget reports.
  • Apple will be officially changing the name of the device to iTV.

Take this information with a grain of salt, as it’s a leak – we won’t know for sure until Apple tells us.

This post republished from GeekTonic.

17 thoughts on “AppleTV Rumors: iTV, 720P?”

  1. “Supposedly can only handle up to 720p video – not 1080i or 1080p video! I personally can’t believe they would do this but that’s what Engadget is saying.”

    I have no idea on Earth why you can’t believe this. It was reasonably obvious long before the Engadget story.

    Apple has never sold anything above 720p through their store, even though its low-end computers can playback 1080p, and the new AppleTV is likely going to revolve around the store.

    And even beyond that minor issue, I mean, seriously, no one is streaming above 720p. (Or am I missing somebody?)

    To go above 720p, you need a CableCARD or a Blu-Ray player. Why would you expect Apple’s new box to change that equation?

    —–

    As always, the only interesting question about the new AppleTV is how heavy-handed they’re going to be about “curating” the apps.

    In other words, how much competition will they allow to their store? Will they allow Netflix and Hulu on? Etc, etc.

    Apple can absolutely own the “second box under the TV” space if they don’t build walls around the garden. But I’m sure there is a temptation inside Cupertino to use the new AppleTV mainly to drive their own content distribution channel…

  2. Guess it depends how we define streaming… do progressive downloads count? Zune on Xbox is 1080p. Vudu did 1080.

    I assume it’s cheaper and easier to re-use iPhone or iPad hardware, which is why they may end up in this place. Apple targets the mainstream – so 1080 versus 720 may not be an obstacle for most in that audience. HD is HD to them.

  3. “Apple targets the mainstream – so 1080 versus 720 may not be an obstacle for most in that audience. HD is HD to them.”

    Some semi-random notes here:

    For the median American household, I’m not sure it’s even a matter of HD being HD to them. Anything cropped at 16:9 is going to be HD to them.

    As we move away from broadcast to IP distribution, terms like “HD” and even “720p” are going to become increasingly fuzzy. For example, what if Hulu Plus is technically 720 lines, but with an incredibly high degree of compression. Is that “HD”?

    Finally, I don’t think the median household currently has the last-mile and in-home infrastructure to even handle decent 720p streaming at the moment, let alone 1080p…

    —–

    The AppleTV, if done correctly, (and that’s a big “if”) will move IP streaming TV from the bleeding-edge to the leading-edge.

    But when that happens, get ready for all the terminology and standards we’ve grown used to undergo a bit of a revolution.

    CableCARD is on its way to becoming archaic, but at the very same time, we’re smack in the middle of the golden age of CableCARD…

  4. The other big question (other than how much competition for their store that they’ll let in) is what they’re going to do for a remote.

    It’ll be interesting to see if they use the current remote, steer folks into using an iPhone/iTouch (yes, iTouch is what its called, no matter what Apple sez), or come up with something completely different.

    Long-term happiness with lean-back systems revolves around the remote.

  5. Supposedly, another item is rumored cloud storage, i.e. your purchases are stored on Apple’s servers and then streamed to you (and that’s why it’s only 16GB of storage).

  6. So engadget posts a rumor, confirming their own rumor and now it’s fact? Sorry. I like Joshua Topolsky but their coverage of this story, even if it proves out to be true, is a little too factual with no facts / sources. Just odd.

  7. “Supposedly, another item is rumored cloud storage, i.e. your purchases are stored on Apple’s servers and then streamed to you”

    I’d say the odds of that being true are around 99%…

    They’re going to sell a lot of Airport Extreme units along with the AppleTV’s.

    Two interesting side effects, assuming Apple gets it right and sells a tons of these:

    – This will be the grand rollout of 5ghz in-home infrastructure.

    – Shouldn’t we anticipate a return of The Great Wireline Bandwidth Cap Debate about 3 months after they go on sale?

  8. “So engadget posts a rumor, confirming their own rumor and now it’s fact? Sorry. I like Joshua Topolsky but their coverage of this story, even if it proves out to be true, is a little too factual with no facts / sources. Just odd.”

    Welcome to the magical land of Cupertino. There are almost never any “facts” available prior to Steve-o standing up on stage.

    But assuming the widespread ongoings rumors of an iOS TV box are true, and assuming the widespread ongoings rumors of the $99 price point are true, most everything in the Engadget report just follows pretty straightforwardly.

    They may not have everything correct. I have my doubts about the name, for example. But just by operating on publicly available rumors, my imagination of what the gizmo is going to be was already pretty much in line with what Engadget is posting today.

    In short, take it with a grain of salt, but it’s likely pretty accurate.

  9. Andy, yeah I’m not a huge fan of blogging rumors (although speculation is fun). But, while Engadget won’t name their source they do say they have one and he/she is trusted — they’re pretty adamant that something new is coming. Of course, assuming Apple hasn’t given up on the 10′ experience, the scenario sort of seems like an obvious progression based on the iDevice ecosystem.

  10. I would be curious to know if any of the new features/app store will be supported on the “old” AppleTV…or will AppleTV owners be forced – even though it is only $99 – to buy the new device.

  11. “I would be curious to know if any of the new features/app store will be supported on the “old” AppleTV”

    I don’t believe they actually sold any of the “old” AppleTV’s, so the issue seems somewhat moot.

    The slightly less snarky answer is that given the fundamental switch in architecture, the 17 owners of the “old” AppleTV are likely SOL. But my confidence level in that prediction is only about 75%.

    —–

    Ever since Apple officially Took Over the World in 2007, they’ve started treating the installed base with an increasing amount of disdain.

    From 10.0 to 10.5, every rev of OS X actually ran faster on existing hardware than the previous rev. (I know Microsoft customers can’t even begin to fathom that, but it was true.) That all changed with 10.6.

    Or take the suckers who had the misfortune to install the new iOS rev on their iPhone 3’s and had them permanently turn to molasses. No way back to the old iOS rev. Just buy a new iPhone 4. And don’t hold it that way.

    Steve-o is a good guy when he’s not on top of the world. When he needed the installed base, he treated them like kings. But when he is on top of the world, he turns into P.T. Barnum. He thinks there is one born every minute.

    It was that way in the mid-80’s between the time of the Macintosh intro and when he was forced out. And it’s happening all over again during the past three years.

    Planned obsolescence is being taken to extremes in Cupertino of late.

  12. My guess is it will only support 720 from iTunes sales/rentals. Local/BYO files may be a different story.

  13. For streaming off the internet, I couldn’t care LESS if it supports 1080i/1080p. 720p at 5 or 6Mbps is about all most people, potentially including me can handle. I certainly don’t want to blow my internet cap or have to wait for movies I rent just to get 1080 lines. Seriously, who are the people who care about this? You do know that going to 1080 at the same bit rate will look WORSE right? And that the bit rate is more important than the frame size right? Right?

    I don’t know if the described device would be successful. If all it does is the same stuff as the existing Apple TV (photos, music, movie rentals) even if it sold for $99 I doubt very much it would be successful. I quite like mine, but without a vibrant app ecosystem, I don’t think the price point changes anything here.

    What apps exactly? Well, if you opened it up you’d get games of course. But the obvious ones as Chucky points out are Hulu, Netflix, and so forth. And it isn’t clear whether Apple would allow that. Stupid if they don’t of course, so maybe things will change.

  14. The thing I wonder is, what support the old AppleTV will have in this scenario. Should we jailbreak them and turn them into full fledged MacMini’s instead of the limited interface (like most people have)?

  15. It sounds like a device that will be total trash without a jailbreak. 720p? A 60 buck wdtv will do 1080p ffs… I’ll bet anything other than their crappy mp4 container will be unplayable too. Forget the fact that nearly every serious streaming htpc user uses mkv or the full on iso. It would have been nice to see a decent streaming box from apple. A wdtv live plus will outdo this for 20 bucks more and an nvidia ion box for 300 bucks will r@pe it.

  16. @Glenn

    It isn’t difficult to stream 40 Mbit blu ray iso/mkv files via network which a good majority of htpc users are already doing. It is better to have a media storage server sitting in a closet while you stream all over the house. If the 720p nonsense is true, they ignored almost the entire htpc market to suck in trendy idiots.

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