apple tv does not access iTunes - 4/17/2014

jimpal wrote:

MagnusVonMagnum wrote:

. . . It's obvious Apple simply doesn't care about its customers . . .

Absolute nonsense! Raman70's comments are correct. Who else supports old gear as well?

I love my ATV1, and still use it regularly for music, but have long recognized that it is obsolescent and will fade away at some point. That's why I supplement it with ATV3. For $99 a couple of years ago I was spared all of the woes of this lengthy thread. Pretty darned good deal.

Apple may inadvertently screw up, as all organizations do, but to say they don't care is ridiculous. MGM, please tell us which company in this line of business is better?

The ATV1 has a hard drive, a superior user interface, and more video output options than the ATV3. It is not "obsolete", Apple has simply chosen not to support it anymore. It's one thing when a manufacturer chooses not to support a product that is technologically obsolete, but it's frustrating when a manufacturer withdraws support for a product that is superior to it's successor. That's like Audi deciding it won't service the 3.0 liter Supercharged A6 anymore because people don't need any more power than is provided by the new, smaller, more fuel efficient A3 - and then wondering why people aren't rushing to the nearest Audi dealer to downgrade. We aren't clinging to our ATV1s because we refuse to spend $99 on a new device (I spent five times that on my home theater's surge protector), we're still using the ATV1 because the ATV2 and ATV3 are inferior technologically, functionally, and suffer from a degraded user experience.

If there was a technologically superior product on the market today, I would buy it right now. It's upsetting that Apple expects us to downgrade in order to benefit from continued, timely support.

Totally agree, the ATV1 is not obsolete not by a long way. Many of us were worried that Apple had pulled the plug because, well, they have a habit of making Mac and iDevices obsolete at a time of their choosing. We've already lost HD Trailers, I mean, that just petty. I suppose it won't be long before we can't rent HD films.

I for one would upgrade tomorrow if Apple gave me a reason to with better hardware. I do not want to have to keep a computer on just to access my media, I should be able to do that from the STB with HDD (ATV1) or from a NAS. What is so hard about providing this functionality?

Apple are making a big thing about being Environmentally friendly at the moment, so instead of having multiple computer on round the house to stream media to the AppleTV, how about a iTunes serving Time Capsule netowrk drive?

Bansche wrote:

. . . If there was a technologically superior product on the market today, I would buy it right now. It's upsetting that Apple expects us to downgrade in order to benefit from continued, timely support.

Yep, you said it. "If" there was a technologically superior product on the market today.

But, there isn't. And when there is, who else will do it? Perhaps MVM will tell us.

Downgrade is a matter of opinion, not obvious to us who own and use both types of ATV's. And what do you know about the new one coming out in a few months?

ShakeGuy wrote:

. . . I do not want to have to keep a computer on just to access my media. . .

Why do you have to do this? Perhaps you don't understand that's not necessary for ATV2 and ATV3?

"...a product that is techinically obsolete by 3 generations, close to 4."

That is a false statement. There was the Apple TV 2 and then the Apple TV 3 and then a barely updated CPU that used less power Apple TV 3, but still an Apple TV 3 as it offers no additions or benefits over the first ATV3 release and Apple still calls it the ATV3.

If you could even call it obsolete, it is only by 2 generations because there have only been 2 ATVs released after the first one.

There's really no doubt that ATV Gen. 1 is obsolete. It's internal processing power is limited such that it can't handle full 1080p broadcasts, much less 3D or 4XHD.

That said, it does have several pluses not available in the newer iterations, including some of the ports and more significantly the hard drive.

Ideall, I'd like to see a new generation ATV with all the processing power, hard drive and ports. Then we'd be talking. As it is now, it's destined to one day be displayed in my personal Apple museum, alongside my original Mac, Duo and 1st Gen. Airport.

Apple was forced to cave in to the demands of the movie industry. They (the movie industry ) do not want any product that has a hard drive to contain and store movies. They are paranoid that movies will go the way of music. In their ideal world, they want a royalty every time you watch a movie. In any case that is a seperate discussion.

For this reason the new versions of Apple TV do not contain a hard drive. Neither do the units provided by Netflix, Amazon etc. I am not sure if you have ever heard of Kaleidescape. They design movie servers for homes that contain screening rooms, which can be accessed throughout the house. With DVD's they got away with storing the movies on their drives. However with Bluerays they were not. In order to play a Blueray, a copy of the actual blue ray that is going to be viewed needs to be sitting in a drive bay for it to work. Price tag of a Kaleidescape system is $5000 up to $50k! This is a device that many people in the film industry such as producers and directors use in the own homes.

With regards to the original AppleTV the $1000s of movies that you presently have purchased and own arent going to suddently evaporate. You will still be able to use it, the same way I can go dig up a VHS and plug it into my current system if I want to. Apple isnt going to access your ATV first gen and do a remote wipe.

In the near future, you may not be able to add to those libraries with the same ease.. but there is always a work around.

Why isn't this thread done. Apple fixed the problem. Someone made a mistake over the Easter Holiday weekend. Lamenting the inevitable obsolecence of legacy equipment (Steve warned everybody that it was a hobby) is like complaining there is no optical disk slot on a new iMac. Get over it, time marches on and things change. My first Mac was a Centris 610 bought in 1991 I think. It still worked perfectly on OS 9 when I through it in the recycal bin.

impal wrote:

>>Absolute nonsense! Raman70's comments are correct. Who else supports old gear as well?

Absolute? Please. You clearly don't know what you're talking about and obviously didn't even read what I wrote at all. See below. And in case you haven't noticed, Apple is NOT supporting the Gen1 hardware anymore. There hasn't been an update in several years. In fact, people that bought one just prior to AppleTV Gen2's release got totally HOSED by Apple with almost no support what-so-ever. That has NOTHING to do with Akamai's servers offering 720p rentals and purchases as they always have that are compatible with both ATV Gen1 and Gen2 boxes. CONTENT support is not the same as HARDWARE support. You need to learn the difference and what is useful and what is less useful. An upgraded ATV Gen1 blows away Gen2/3 in almost every respect save the ability to run Netflix, Hulu-PLus, etc., which is something almost every BD player out there now supports already and who needs total duplication of services? Even if Apple hadn't gotten the content fixed, I could still install CrystalUbuntu on my Gen1 devices with a CrystalHD card and have a killer XBMC 1080p movie machine that can handle most audio/video formats out there save 3D. ATV Gen3 can't do that either so it's moot.

HalGeek wrote:

There's really no doubt that ATV Gen. 1 is obsolete. It's internal processing power is limited such that it can't handle full 1080p broadcasts, much less 3D or 4XHD.

That said, it does have several pluses not available in the newer iterations, including some of the ports and more significantly the hard drive.

Ideall, I'd like to see a new generation ATV with all the processing power, hard drive and ports. Then we'd be talking. As it is now, it's destined to one day be displayed in my personal Apple museum, alongside my original Mac, Duo and 1st Gen. Airport.

Have you ever heard of the Broadcom CrystalHD BCI 70015 decoding card? Plug one of these babies into a Gen1 ATV where the WiFi card currently sits and you've got 1080p decoding in hardware which means the CPU doesn't have to do squat any longer when running XBMC. Install CrystalUbuntu either on the ATV as a replacement or on a plug in USB drive and you've got 1080p output all day long. Obsolete? In what universe? You can replace the internal hard drive with very fast solid-state sata drive with a simple adapter and plug in external drives as well (my backup media drive from my server works quite well plugged in with NitoTV enabling it and allowing movies to be watched from the Apple interface or XBMC to use it as a local drive. AppleTV can output DTS-ES 6.1 discrete soundtracks from MKVs using XBMC (in 1080p HD with a CrystalHD card). AppleTV Gen3 can't do *ANY* of these things (thus far un-jailbreakable) and lacks storage. It transcodes 44.1kHz CD music and DTS CD Audio to 48kHz (bad bad bad and ruins DTS Audio CDs). With Remote-HD installed, Gen1 can receive Airplay video signals as well (no thanks to Apple). The sad thing about 48kHz audio transcoding is that it's just laziness on Apple's part to add proper 44.1 support to iOS's audio driver. Frankly, Apple could add DTS support to M4V and what not, but they don't want you making your own encodes. They want you to buy their junk from the iTunes Store.

Obsolete? You've got a funny idea of what obsolete means. Almost every Blu-Ray player out there has Netflix and HuluPlus support now. I don't need it duplicated in AppleTV so the Generation 1 model modified a bit is vastly superior to AppleTV Gen2 or 3 in every other respect. The only thing I like on AppleTV Gen2/3 is Airplay monitor support, allowing me to send video games to living room to play with a PS3 Blue-tooth gamepad (e.g. I played The Cave on it the other day with zero issues).

James Peebles wrote:

Why isn't this thread done. Apple fixed the problem. Someone made a mistake over the Easter Holiday weekend. Lamenting the inevitable obsolecence of legacy equipment (Steve warned everybody that it was a hobby) is like complaining there is no optical disk slot on a new iMac. Get over it, time marches on and things change. My first Mac was a Centris 610 bought in 1991 I think. It still worked perfectly on OS 9 when I through it in the recycal bin.

It'll be done as soon as people stop trying to lecture us on how obsolete our ATV Gen1 units are. No one is making them or you continue to read this thread, regardless. Click on "stop email notifications" if it's bothering you so much. :-/

OK, where do I find the Broadcom CrystalHD BCI 70015 decoding card? How much does it cost me? And how hard is it to open up the ATV and put that card in there? And what happens to me WiFi in the process?

Everybody okay?

Thank God our (inter)national nightmare is over.

HalGeek - the ATV1 is no more "obsolete" than the iPod Classic. A faster processor is nice if you want to do things besides watch movies and listen to music, but if I wanted to play Doom III on the thing, I'd have bought a Playstation. Removing functionality is not an "upgrade", and that's what Apple did with generations 2 & 3.

Jimpal - The ATV2, just like the ATV1, requires a computer in the mix in order to consume "owned" content (I use a Mac Pro Server). Yes, you can stream content you buy from Apple, but if you were say a DJ in a previous life and you spent weeks digitizing your entire music library and storing it on MP3 format, you cannot consume this content without a computer in the mix. Also if you want to look at the 5,000 photos you store locally, you're out of luck. NAS support is a no-brainer and I explained this to the Apple TV team back in 2012 right after they launched the ATV2, but they apparently weren't listening.

Let me be clear - I own BOTH the ATV1 & ATV2. I use the ATV2 in the bedroom where I need Netflix because the BlueRay upstairs doesn't have it, and I keep the ATV1 downstairs hooked up to the 70" Samsung via component video and to my Dolby 7.1 surround system via fiber-optic audio. I am very familiar with both devices and if you have a tremendous amount of owned content as I do, then the ATV2 is most definitely a downgrade! I guess for people who rent all their movies and stream all their music, the ATV2 isn't that bad. Personally I keep all my content in a RAID NAS for security and I like being able to keep my entire music library and our entire photo album locally stored on the device. I can't even watch a slide-show on the ATV2 because it always seems to have network issues, and the photo gallery on the ATV1 is one of the main sources of entertainment in our house when family and friends come by to visit.

I don't know what Apple has planned for ATV4 in a few weeks, but I have zero confidence they'll get it right this time. I was in Cupertino the week they announced the ATV2 and I have to tell you I was a zombie after that let-down. I was expecting Blue-Ray, NAS support, a terabyte hard-drive, and a USB port I could use to connect external storage. Now I'm expecting a $49 game box for my kid's bedroom.

Trying to download a rental movie at the moment and after every 5% or so I get the message 'Download Error (-3253)'

Any suggestions much appreciated

MagnusVonMagnum wrote:

. . . as soon as people stop trying to lecture us on how obsolete our ATV Gen1 units are. . .

Wow MVM! Your ATV1 really means a lot to you. I understand that, as I have had two of them, and still regularly use one. For certain purposes they are great! But, just like 100 years ago when automobiles got electric-starters, hand cranks became less desirable.

I still don't see how all this emotion leads to the conclusion that Apple "doesn't care about its customers" as you said before. I did ask, who is better at this?

Suggest you try an ATV3. Any good system that can make use of an ATV1 and ATV3 (like mine) has the best of both worlds. And Apple may not seem quite as bad to you.