Really cool alternative to apple tv

http://maddhat.com/?p=31

Lookie! I've wanted an apple tv for a while, but frankly, the price, and most importantly, the lack of supported file formats have kept me from buying one, and I've never heard of another solution as simple and apple-y as the aTV. This new device from Western Digital looks freakin awesome though! And only $100! The only downside I guess is you can't stream content, you have to manually add it to an external drive (though wd recommends you use their passport series, which are pretty cheap anyway, $90 for 250GB) and then connect.

The most impressive thing is how it flawlessly plays high bitrate 1080p videos without a hitch, and the list of supported formats is pretty awesome! So If you bought the device plus a 250gig passport drive, you'd still spend less than the $229 aTV.

What do you guys think? Should apple start supporting more file formats??

 

I think apple should stick with the macbook, let someone else have this market. WD look worthy to me !

 

That actually looks pretty cool! Congratz on the puchase, be sure to tell how it works before Christmas. *wink* *wink*

 

That looks like a really neat thing.
Since my parents were impressed by my Xbox360, that streams even 1080p content straight from my PC via my WiFi network at home.
They have been looking for something that they could watch pics, listen music and watch videos from, in their home. They knew about the AppleTV thingy but I wasn't quite sold on it and I simply wasn't confident enough to recommend it to them.

Although Xbox doesn't support .mkv files, wich is the main format for HD content, because of that I had to look really hard to find a HD quality movie rip but with a format that Xbox understands. I might look into it myself

Thanks for that little news piece, I'm really impressed with it.

 

i seen that the other day and it sound good for the price,here in the uk its around 80£,but i dont have any passport drives. but the fact that it can play 1080p fine is great. how does the thing play these files without the need for a computer. i think ill wait for other players to come out,now that this and popcorn hour are playn mkv etc formats.

ps3 needs to update to play mkvs lol.

 

I do not think that apple TV is a successful product. The format that they support is not too many, which is the key drawback.
I think that apple wants us to buy movie from itunes.

 

If you want to improve your AppleTV just install Boxee on it. It's fantastic. Streams Hulu, Comedy Central, video RSS. Really great stuff.

www.boxee.tv

 

Does boxee add support for other video formats as well?