Apple TV? More like Apple Jukebox.

I love how they limited AVC support to the main profile and excluded all other codecs. Do you really make that much money from your store, Apple? Do you make enough money to royally ****-off your loyal customers? I'm taking it back and looking for a media center put-out by a company without a store to push.

Message was edited by: madadre

XviD, you mean? Yeah, the people who use that codec were the A/V enthusiasts who encoded their OWN movie libraries before the H.264 standard was released. Imagine that, not everyone who has XviD videos is a pirate. I shouldn't have to re-encode my library every time a new standard is released, and as we ALL know from the hackers, Apple TV is well-capable of supporting XviD and x264 L5 but artificially constricts its codec interoperability for +some reason+. My guess is to improve store sales.

Hold your tongue.

Message was edited by: madadre

It doesn't support any h.264 spec. (like x264) above the main profile (L3.1) when it is clearly capable of doing so, speaking from a hardware standpoint. That's what I meant. As for "sprawling messes," those happen as a result of PROGRESS. Do you think that h.264 will be the end-all be-all video codec? No. I want interoperability with the other POPULAR codecs. MPEG-4 ASP and AVC would be nice. Those video streams combined with either MP3 VBR/CBR, AAC CBR/VBR or AAC-HC 5.1 streams in AVI, MP4 and MKV containers would be excellent and NOT DIFFICULT TO IMPLEMENT. Apple simply chooses not to do so.

Don't kid yourself about this, boys and girls. These restrictions are not about creating a "standard of digital media harmony." This is about monopolizing digital media, and since so many companies out-there are trying to do this, THEY are responsible for the codec mess. If you're going to support h.264, SUPPORT IT. Don't support half of it, instigate fury within your customers regarding their libraries and expect them to re-buy the media that THEY ALREADY OWN at your store so that it'll actually play. Apple TV is about killing amateur encodes and locking you into their DRM scheme.

My 360+TVersity is more of a media center than this thing. I'll have to remember that Apple is a good computing platform and nothing else.

Then you can get the answered question points if you can show me which product will provide what I need.

I chose ATV because I have a MacBook and everything works nicely on it. I mistakenly projected that appeal onto Apple's other products. I need MPEG-4 ASP L5, MPEG-4 AVC High, AC3, MP3 (VBR/CBR/ABR) and AAC (LC-CBR/VBR/ABR). I need all of these streams capable of being paired together in any combination I please within AVI or MP4 containers.

I would like support for MKV, AAC (HE-5.1), OGG & FLAC. The latter list is by no means a necessity. They'd just be nice. I can do without.

I don't think there is a product out there for me.

As for my interpretation of progress, there were a number of formats that, well, stunk. Them came along DivX! It was revolutionary at the time. A small group of people purchased the codec and began to encode their movie collections. THEN, open-source XviD arrived! Now, TONS of people began to encode their movie collections with this new free codec. As time passes, we progress further, and now we have AVC/h.264! The other poster implies that since we now have AVC, we should abandon ASP and re-encode our libraries all over again. That's bullsh-t. That's all I wanted to point out. The decoder libraries for MPEG-4 ASP L5 are not huge nor any more complicated AVC. There is no reason to exclude them from a media-playback device, other than the one that I posted above.

Message was edited by: madadre

But it's mind-boggling! Why are we crippling our media centers? There is no technical reason to exclude the ASP decoder libraries. I liked to think that Apple didn't use tactics like this. That is, ******* people off and hoping that they buy stuff from your store.