[N4kame0]

What is up with this XBMC for the price of 99$ in a small form factor.
If this is going to be supported I will buy one even if I support apple :/

http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/sh...TM3NTM1Nzk

[fonzie]

Says on that page that it can play up to 720p, so watching 1080p content is out of the question. I'm thinking it won't be able to run XBMC smoothly, but that's just my guess without reading any of the specs.

[N4kame0]

Yeah just read about the 720p maximum. Never mind.

[poofyhairguy]

I think the new AppleTV can serve as a good compliment to an XBMC Box, seeing how it provides Netflix and DRM content....

[Deejayy]

No storage? pointless. I don't want to have my macbook switched on everytime i want to watch a movie.

it should at least come with a bay for optional expansion if they wanted to keep the price down.

[.:B:.]

If you can get it to run Xbmc, that would be nice, but you'd need to know the internals. It's probably Apple's own A4 ARM CPU, its iOS and a bit of flash storage. I'm curious about the amount of RAM as well.

You can still use NFS or Samba to stream stuff, you don't really need a lot of local storage. The question is also if there is an expansion slot in it like in the first gen AppleTV, if not then I see no way to go 1080p on that thing. Personally I'd only get it if you could run Linux & Xbmc on it though.

[noshua]

If it gets supported, it's perfect for those with NAS or a storage computer that streams media.

[.:B:.]

For those interested, iFixit took the new AppleTV apart, interesting pics, but I don't think people will ever be able to play back Full HD with it - no expansion slots whatsoever, and the RAM is soldered on and as generous as Apple's previous AppleTV offering - 256 MB.

8 GB of flash is plenty to put an Xbmc install on though .

[topfs2]

The BeagleBoard has only 256 RAM and its enough to have linux and XBMC on it, heck its even enough to have gnome and xbmc

xbmc may be rather heavy weight in the embedded market but the use of RAM is very low, thanks to being designed to run on xbox. It will use RAM more and more though but its the team intent to scale it well to still run on little ram.

[.:B:.]

I can't say how much RAM e.g. VDPAU requires, I can say though stock Xbmc indeed consumes very little in comparison, but CrystalHD eats a lot of RAM, and the 256 MB is really limiting the AppleTV if you want Full HD .

[topfs2]

Not sure what DPAU is but new ATV won't use CrystalHD so you can't really compare it to that. The new ATV is using some hw accel for sure but if it doesn't need more than 256mb on iOS it likely doesn't need more with linux. (harder part is to actually get linux to have hw accel).

256mb on an embedded device isn't little and it should be enough for us, granted 512 would be better.

[.:B:.]

I should have mentioned I was talking about the 1st gen AppleTV (which I have). I assume since the 2nd gen variety can do 720p on iOS it will also be able to do that on Linux (provided drivers are available), but I don't see Apple using 1080p-capable hardware in such a device only to market it as 720p max. Whereas the 1st gen allowed that through its miniPCI-E expansion slot, I don't see any similar options for the 2nd gen.

[davilla]

I should have mentioned I was talking about the 1st gen AppleTV (which I have). I assume since the 2nd gen variety can do 720p on iOS it will also be able to do that on Linux (provided drivers are available), but I don't see Apple using 1080p-capable hardware in such a device only to market it as 720p max. Whereas the 1st gen allowed that through its miniPCI-E expansion slot, I don't see any similar options for the 2nd gen.

Apple markets to what they support in iTunes Store streaming, ie 720p. It's what the masses can support as not everyone has a fast fiber connection in the USA.

The 2nd gen AppleTV has already been proven to handle 1080p decode of certain flavors. It's very early in the investigation process for this device.

[.:B:.]

That sounds really nice . 1080p at < 10W .