Ben's Bargains Serving Fresh Deals 24/7

This is such a fraud.

Wow it does 1080i now. do you have to buy all shows u want? can't actually just stream?

It does upscaled 1080i from 720p. You can rent or buy movies to play on it. With a variety of other free programs (DVDFab HD Decrypter and Handbrake) you can also rip your own.

Note, this does NOT stream video from an iTunes server. Nor does it actually work with a NAS iTunes server. It has to be paired with an instance of iTunes and sync'ed.

Oooh ooh!!! #1 speaking of frauds check out this link to see what a fraud bacon has been all along http://bensbargains.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=70146 !!! LOL!!! ROFL!!! LMAO!!!

do you have to sync it w/ it tunes on yer puter?

#5: no, you can rent and/or buy movies directly from the AppleTV without having to sync it with a computer.
#3: it doesn't upscale 720p to 1080i! whether it upscales or not depends on the resolution of the source material. If the content you're using is 1080, you'll get 1080.

It's a great box, and there's also plenty of information on the web on how to hack it to make it even better (you can even hack it without opening it up using the "patchstick" method). Once hacked, you can add tons of useful features, the coolest ones being support for AVI DiVX, SMB and AFP file sharing, and external USB drive.

Not much of a discount for a refurb tho. By the time you pay taxes on it, you might as well get it brand new from Amazon.

#6 do you own one? Wouldn't mind having a decent replacement for cable. I only watch a couple channels, sux paying $50/mo for channels I don't watch.

#6: thanks for the info. So you MUST pair it with iTunes on a PC? Can I stream content from a Windows share? I have all my photos, videos (dvd rips, home movies, etc), and music (mp3, flac) on a Win2k3 machine. It's WAY more than 40 GB worth, so I'd like to just stream through my 100BT wired network and I'd rather not put iTunes on it if I could avoid it. Can it do that?

Also, how is the photo viewing interface? Easy to use? Responsive? Can you Pan/Zoom/Rotate? Thumbnails?

Any links to good hacking info?

Thanks!

#7: yes, I bought one last year and hacked it the old way, by opening it up. Be careful if you do this, the IDE cable is fragile (and I had a hard time finding a replacement).

#8: you don't HAVE to pair it with iTunes. You can if you want to. It can totally work as a standalone unit: you enter your iTunes account info and it lets you very easily rent or buy movies from there.
You can connect to SMB shares, but don't expect to be able to do it unless you're good at locating info on the web; it's not the easiest thing to do. Haven't used the photo viewing feature so I can't comment on it, sorry. Honestly from your description I think you'd probably be happier with a hacked XBox...

http://www.awkwardtv.org
http://www.appletvhacks.net

Is this better option than going w/ DTV or something like it?

Let me guess, purchased content is only compatible with Apple products.

The grin on the T W A T to the left confirms my assumption.

LJW is correct in that if you want to rent/buy movies or listen to purchased iTunes music, in proprietary format available on all apple video capable products, you do not need it sync'ed to a PC iTunes. If you want to use MP3's, your own ripped movies or display your pictures, it must be paired to a local iTunes PC/Mac.

Downloaded AppleTV v2.0 HD content is at a resolution of 720p, NOT 1080i. If you have your own HD rips at 1080i, it should play them at 1080i. Not sure what it would do to a 1080p video.

AppleTV is a bit particular about the video it displays. It doesn't support DIVX or XVID. I can't remember if it will play .mp4, but know that it plays .m4v encoded video quite nicely.


*note, if you are hacking your ATV, the above statement does not necessarily apply.

Yes, I probably wasn't clear enough about the fact that there's no way to get non-iTunes content onto the AppleTV unless you hack it. It does play MPEG4 content without hacking (since MP4 is natively supported by iTunes) however you will need to use iTunes in order to get it over.
Once hacked, it can play pretty much anything out there without conversion (see http://www.perian.org) and that includes Matroska video files (.mkv) and subtitle files (.srt) for any .avi DiVX movies you might find out there.

iTunes movies are 720p for now, but there's nothing to prevent them from selling 1080 at any time.

just get a phillips dvd player with usb port.

Get a TiVo HD. Don't support terrorism.

#4, you know what would really be funny, if Ben bans your stupid ip banned. That way you and all the other 500 fake usernames you've created will dissapear and shut the hell up.

#16 That would only be funny if he had a static IP address.