I was looking at the file support for the iPad on the apple site and it said that the new iPad supports 720p for both 24 and 30 fps. Apple TV only supports this for up to 24 fps. Surely Apple should understand that when their tablet device is capable of decoding higher quality video than their dedicated media device, it's time for an upgrade? WD are offering great alternatives and I don't see why anyone would buy the Apple TV right now when compared to the current offering from other companies. I don't expect better codec support, as I don't think that will ever happen, but I do expect to see an Apple TV that is capable of doing 1080p for up to 30 fps. Surely this isn't to much to ask in todays climate. Sure. The Apple TV is capable of playing back the HD rentals and HD movies in the iTunes store, but there are other, legal, places of aquireing HD content. Here in Norway for example the NRK (Norwegian equivelent of BBC) offer free HD downloads of many of their programs. Maybe Apple is afraid that if they offer an Apple TV that support 1080p, people will expect 1080p videos from the iTunes store.
Apple has said several times that the Apple TV is a hobby project, but how can they ever hope to turn it into anything more if they don't take it seriously themselves. They need to stop looking at it as a hobby and instead as an investment and find ways to sell more units.
My dream Apple TV would be:
Support for 1080p 24/30/60 fps,
250gb and 500gb hard disk options, but make them easy to replace,
give content providers a way to offer a video frontend to their products so that for example the BBC could make an Apple TV iPlayer,
Access to ITunes video content for the rest of the world.
A detailed specification document, clearly stating what h.264 functionality it supports so that it becomes easier for people to develope high quality encodes.
I've had my Apple TV for 2 years now. Just needed to do a bit of a rant to get this out of my system
