It looks like Apple dropped the video out functionality for the iPhone. Last week the iPhone was clearly marked as a supported device for both the component and composite cables, now neither cables have the iPhone logo and the descriptions look to have been edited.
This is just another thorn in Apple’s side with new cable backlash the “community” is expressing across the blogosphere. The issue is the switch to requires these “special” cables for all new iPods, the old cables aren’t compatible. Unlike some others I’m not bothered by the switch, the cable should now provide better quality and you’ll be able to charge it without a separate dock connector and power cable. But the rub isn’t entirely the switch it’s that Apple is embedding an “authentic apple chip” that will hinder 3rd party makers for a short term.
So I planned on purchasing the cables for pre-order but with the apparent drop of iPhone support I can’t. Hopefully it was a recent mistake and the cables will end up being supported with or without a software update.
It’s a real bummer because if Video Out was supported by the iPhone I could get rid of my current video iPod instead of lugging it to work everyday.
We’ve had the Tivo HD for a few weeks now and this post has waited just as long. I initially wanted to post about the unpacking, setup and all it’s features; like a real review. Instead I’m going to make this short since the Tivo HD has been exhaustively reviewed around the web already.
Setup:
In order to get HD you’ll either need an OTA HD tuner or HD cable cards from your cable provider. I called our cable provider shortly after the online order and they stated all I needed to do was pick the two cards up from the local store, and as expected that was completely wrong. TW requires that someone to come out and spend about 1.5 hours sitting there waiting for the cards to activate after spending the first five minutes inserting the cards into the TivoHD and calling “home base”.
The experience of the cable card install wasn’t the best through Time Warner, especially since I had to call twice for them to reset the cards which resolved one card from not picking up our premium channels but we then had to have another tech come out in between sunrise and sunset to do nothing but call and get the second card to reset so the channels would show.
It also turns out that the techs for TW in our area do not work for TW directly, they’re just on contract with the company. I found this out because initially they said they don’t install cable cards on anything but TV sets. The guys were nice so they went ahead but I could see this being a huge problem since TW is required to provide cable cards but the contracted companies have policies of their own.
Luckily our cards are not Scientific America cable cards since a lot of people are having issues with artifacts and blocking. Time Warner gave us motorolla cards.
Use:
It’s a Tivo and that’s why I bought it. It’s very easy to use and very responsive. The only thing I wish they would add is PIP for the Tivo menu, that’s something I miss on the old TW moxi box and it’s just annoying to leave a show in order to get a season pass setup. With that aside it’s wonderful, did I mention it’s easy to use. The ease of use can be contributed not only by it’s navigation or season passes but it’s other features, e.g. suggestions.
I’m very surprised with the capacity the 160GB drive can hold, we have 98 suggested shows that Tivo has recorded for us and another 4 hours of HD content. It’s not like we’ll ever watch that much but the wonderful thing is if we sat down to watch TV and we had nothing pre-recorded the chances are we’re going to find something we like. Even a show we’ve never heard of could be suggested and it would turn out great.
Tivo Tranfers:
One of the best features, that we’re using a lot of since we have our Apple TV, is the ability to transfer the recordings to a computer and then export them for “archival” or playback on other devices, like an iPod. We use this a lot for Avery’s shows, this way she’s able to watch he show while I’m on the computer with her. It works on the mac BTW.
Conclusion:
If you want a PVR and you have HD I would strongly recommend a Tivo HD. The cable boxes I’ve dealt with in the past are slow and very clunky. The cost is of the box is $299 msrp but just a few days after the release I was able to purchase mine through Circuit city at $260 so I’m sure they’ll be lower this holiday. The one thing you need to expect is the subscription cost, it’s about the price of the HD box rental from your cable company (about $13). For us since we already have a Tivo the second is discounted to $7 a month (our first was already specially discounted so we’re not paying more then $15 a month).
Tivo is also actively developing new features through it’s beta programs, which I may or may not be a part of.
After just a few days of using the Apple TV I’m thoroughly impressed. The major reason I purchased the Apple TV was because of all the hacking that’s been going on and with Apple practically saying, “it’s your box do what you will” we can expect some more great hacks, if running full OS X wasn’t enough. I had planned at least to install some Xvid/divX playback through a very simple hack but involves cracking the case open. Instead of jumping right into doing that I’ve instead planned to just use it as intended.
I already live out of iTunes so the unsupported codec didn’t pose a big problem. All my TV Shows have already been encoded for iPod playback so 90% of my video was ready for use. The other 10% had been movies I ripped to DivX to playback on your Heleos DVD player. I truly dislike re-encoding video especially when the original format is already compressed (divX) but I tested out a few conversions and they looked great.
It took me a day or two to export 30-40 movies straight from Quicktime through the “Apple TV” export setting on my MacPro and I’m positive that exporting this much video isn’t practical for the majority. Especially since my assumption would be the majority having more video than I and wouldn’t have a fast pc or mac that could export 10 videos at a time.
After getting all my video to a codec that the aTV supported the device shines. The one problem I have now is whether to export my future video for iPod or aTV. It should be easy since I’m not getting rid of cable anytime soon so I’ll just export any full HD downloads for the aTV (like Lost or Sapranos), otherwise all other TV downloads will go for my iPod which I use daily at work. And all movies will be exported through QT Pro or if it’s a DVD I’ve found ripping it straight to from handbrake is the ideal process.
Quality of converted HD content looks surprisingly good. I downloaded a full HD tv show and converted it’s original format to h.264 through QT pro. After streaming it over wireless, on a g network might I add the video looked great. I didn’t notice any difference in quality from the original format of HD DivX playback on my computer then through the aTV.
Another majorly mentioned drawback to the aTV is streaming HD over wireless. Some say that anything lower then a n network wont work but I’ve got a G network streaming video perfectly fine with about 5 seconds of beginning buffer and solid fast forwarding. It takes forever for iTunes to sync with it in the beginning since it sends 30+GBs of data but ever since I’v had no need to drop a cable.
In conclusion the aTV doesn’t have any drawbacks (for me), other then the minor process of waiting 30-50 minutes for converted HD downloaded video to be supported. And it’s wonderful not having to worry about burning DivX cds or finding a CD/DVD to play some kid video. With it’s simple interface we can pull up a full media library from upstairs on our TV in seconds.
Including in that library is podcasts, photos and images. Watching video podcasts is great. I only wish now that I had a faster internet connection so I can drop cable TV and just download all our HD shows to playback on the aTV. Or what would help, HD content downloads from iTunes.
I’ll still be following the Apple TV hacking scene and I’m sure they’re going to compel me to break the box soon.In the meantime I’ll order a new 2.5′ drive so I can keep the factory drive untouched.
Work purchased a Black Macbook for me and I’m planning on triple booting it if I figure out why resizeVolume is error’ing out. I haven’t been able to use it until now because work has been crazy and I’m in the server room more than at my desk but already I like it. It’s going to take some time to get used to the desktop having less realestate, overall I prefer the smaller screen because it’s then a smaller computer. The black is cool and I can tell it’s going to get dirty and finger printed a lot which will be annoying for a few weeks until I just give up on cleaning it. Other then it being faster then my pro it’s noticeably cooler and quiet which are the “problems” I have with the pro.
Enough about me, Sara also got a gift today. I bought her a Macbook to replace her “old” iBook and she’s loving it. Maybe she’ll post about it, yeah right. Me being home late from work is the reasoning for the large gift, I also hated looking at that old replaceable ibook and it’s dark/low-res screen. I’m hoping it will last 3 years and I’m stoked to share a power cable again.
Anyone want to buy a 12″ G4 iBook?
I’m having a tough time figuring out my TV situation. There are so many factors and so many price variations all with different cost benifits. More importantly, what we need vs. what we want. Oh, I guess what Sara wants is most important. Some items in my variations include:
Apple TV
New Vizio TV
Tivo Series 3
HD Over-the-Air antenna
HD Tuner (for current TV)
Component … Read More »
January 09
The Apple TV was the first out of the gate at today’s Macworld and it’s by far the most thing I’m excited about. The device is a media streaming device as well as a media player that syncs your library from another machine on it’s own hard drive, very similar to how an iPod syncs.
I’m interested in a few things: … Read More »
So I bought the new iPod, I’ve had it a week and it’s pretty cool. Honestly there’s no difference except
the very noticeable screen brightness which helps at work. The search feature is awesome, but until I actually find myself using it it’s just another feature not to get excepted about. Oh, the headphones are great. I’m not too big on audio but they sound okay and most importantly they don’t hurt my ears.
All in all it’s a better iPod but if you couldn’t take your current 5G back and get your full $300 payment there’s not really a point in getting this one. I just figured getting paid $50 since there’s a price drop was worth it.
Apple is most likely releasing a true Video Pod later this year to take the $350 and $450 price market. I’d speculate that it wouldn’t be the standard iPod but it would be an entire new iPod line. It only makes sense. Would I get it? Maybe, it depends on whether we drop cable and if it would help, otherwise I’m content with what I have.
Our Harmony 550 Remote crapped out and instead of getting the same model or not getting one at all Sara agreed to get the more expensive one, the 880. I love the rare moments when Sara wants a gadget so much she doesn’t care about the price.
As you might know we are addicted to TV, this could be argued but we might as well admit we could watch less. And I’m so fed up with the monthly $60 bill that I might kill it off and strictly go bittorrent and iTunes. The iTV thing might help us logically figure out a better solution. If it’s not the iTV we’ll use it’ll be just my 5.5G iPod hooked up to the TV on a universal dock.
Either way I want to pay less for TV and I wouldn’t mind watching less. We just want: our HD local channels, which is free through rabbit ears; HD DVR, because we can’t sit and watch live TV with commercials; Cheap service and accessibility.
To follow up with my previous post, I’m surprised at how close I was.
They announced iTunes 7 with movies
They announced the new Nano’s with new casing and sizes
They announced new iPods with a new size increase
They did release an update to Quicktime but nothing substantial like I mentioned
And what I wanted to see was a Media Extender and they pre-announced it. The thing looks awesome and I would consider it if it did xvid and divx streaming, which I doubt. Because if I’m going to convert something I might as well convert it to a DVD or something. I’m also not likely to buy it if I keep my Xbox 360 after the Wii comes out. I do love how it has HD component hookups, you don’t see that on new HD devices anymore. I’ll post on this later, maybe when we see more specs but a device like this is something I really want, it something that could replace our current cable DVR and service altogether since we could just download HD shows the day after without having to pay dumb cable bills.
Other announcements were the new shuffle, which looks awesome. Way better then the old design.
And the iPod wouldn’t see much of an update, making me not care about a brighter screen. Unless I missed something and it could playback on a TV at the new high-res and the 5G version (the one I have) can’t.
Just joking around last night about how much I wanted to have the BB stealth. Saying I would move to T-mobile for it was a joke. It’s not reasonable and my current phone kicks ass.
Jason says my phone is “plenty cool” and I agree. I just fall into it not being the coolest phone which I know is a problem of mine. But lately I’ve been shedding that away and I’ve been in the mode of simplification. And I guess that’s the point of this post; I’m really in the mood of simplifying everything from furniture to gadgets. No matter what it takes, we just have so much stuff that has accumulating that we don’t either use don’t “need”.
Cool little things we are doing is cancelling our phone bill and using VOIP instead and I’m in the mood of cancelling our cable channels to just basic and the DVR. But we now have Time Warner and I need to research the new plans and prices. We’re going through or garage this week and Sara is doing a lot of spring cleaning. And I’m regretting some of my gadget purchases, even if I could just eBay them.
You might think WTF because I just bought a new phone and a Mac Pro, well let me explain why those count for simplifying my life.
The BB purchase was solely for work. So I didn’t have to carry two phones around and they would eventually pay my cingular bill and not pay the old BB bill which helps both of us in the long run.
The Mac Pro was so I could get rid of all my other computers and have just one tower. Financially it works out because I still have the money from selling my Powerbook, the two towers I’m going to sell, the iMac and I have a bunch of other little things that I’ve either saved or sold in order to pay for the hefty final 3K price tag (after monitor and add-ons) and I still have a lot left over from my recent website projects.
So, you might see me not sell so much stuff on eBay because my plan is to become acquainted to the reality of letting things I use regularly (gadgets) become outdated but still very usable.
