[Apple TV 3] ATV3 Teardown

What I am wondering is if it is worth the money if you already own an ATV 2.

Are there more benefits besides the extra RAM and 1080p? I hoped for Gb/s LAN, but that is not in it.

(2012-03-18 23:30)Basje Wrote:  What I am wondering is if it is worth the money if you already own an ATV 2.

Are there more benefits besides the extra RAM and 1080p? I hoped for Gb/s LAN, but that is not in it.

Not even a bluray raw will max out 10/100 ethernet.

I don't think so, unless Apple pulls an iPhone 4s and issues a new firmware that makes the AppleTV 2 run like crap .

(2012-03-18 19:43).:B:. Wrote:  Would love to see someone hack Linux on it. With 512 MB RAM it's definitely worth it, would be a perfect Xbmc box. Way better than the previous AppleTVs. The GPU will probably be a problem though...

What's wrong with iOS/Darwin? As iOS runs one app at a time, there wouldn't be much of a difference. As soon as you jailbreak the Apple TV, you have a neat little device running a POSIX compatible and UNIX certified OS, which is for the most part open-source.

(2012-03-18 23:40).:B:. Wrote:  I don't think so, unless Apple pulls an iPhone 4s and issues a new firmware that makes the AppleTV 2 run like crap .

1080p should be the kicker here. Although people may say that, given a far enough distance from the TV, you wouldn't notice a difference between 720p and 1080p, I personally beg to differ.

The ATV2 still remains an awesome device, though.

(2012-03-18 23:56)HansMayer Wrote:  

(2012-03-18 19:43).:B:. Wrote:  Would love to see someone hack Linux on it. With 512 MB RAM it's definitely worth it, would be a perfect Xbmc box. Way better than the previous AppleTVs. The GPU will probably be a problem though...

What's wrong with iOS/Darwin? As iOS runs one app at a time, there wouldn't be much of a difference. As soon as you jailbreak the Apple TV, you have a neat little device running a POSIX compatible and UNIX certified OS, which is for the most part open-source.

I don't think just Darwin by itself is POSIX certified. That being said, iOS/Darwin is pretty powerful and easy to port things to. The main reason I can think of to run a replacement OS on an Apple TV would be to remove overhead. On the ATV2, XBMC runs as a "plug-in" to the native Apple TV interface, so there's overhead there that we can't get rid of. The ATV 4.4.4 update did something funky and took a little more overhead, too (some won't notice, but if you watch stylized soft subs, you'll see stuttering). With a replacement OS we could theoretically have more room to play with, and maybe (a big maybe) even have better access to that hardware decoder (which should be able to handle more codecs than Apple uses).

You can actually install Ubuntu on some iOS devices already thanks to the iDroid project, which aims to port both Android and other linux OSes to iOS hardware. http://www.idroidproject.org

(2012-03-18 23:40)Ned Scott Wrote:  

(2012-03-18 23:30)Basje Wrote:  What I am wondering is if it is worth the money if you already own an ATV 2.

Are there more benefits besides the extra RAM and 1080p? I hoped for Gb/s LAN, but that is not in it.

Not even a bluray raw will max out 10/100 ethernet.

Very interesting! I was slightly concerned when I saw the specs quoting 10/100mb ethernet. I was expecting a gigabit connection.

My thoughts, of course, where that when XBMC was installed, if we were streaming large high res media files from a NAS the 10/100 might not handle the file size appropriately. Good to hear thought, thanks Ned!

i cant wait for XBMC at ATV3

already ordered one

then i can swap my Mac mini

(2012-03-19 00:06)Ned Scott Wrote:  

(2012-03-18 23:56)HansMayer Wrote:  

(2012-03-18 19:43).:B:. Wrote:  Would love to see someone hack Linux on it. With 512 MB RAM it's definitely worth it, would be a perfect Xbmc box. Way better than the previous AppleTVs. The GPU will probably be a problem though...

What's wrong with iOS/Darwin? As iOS runs one app at a time, there wouldn't be much of a difference. As soon as you jailbreak the Apple TV, you have a neat little device running a POSIX compatible and UNIX certified OS, which is for the most part open-source.

I don't think just Darwin by itself is POSIX certified. That being said, iOS/Darwin is pretty powerful and easy to port things to. The main reason I can think of to run a replacement OS on an Apple TV would be to remove overhead. On the ATV2, XBMC runs as a "plug-in" to the native Apple TV interface, so there's overhead there that we can't get rid of. The ATV 4.4.4 update did something funky and took a little more overhead, too (some won't notice, but if you watch stylized soft subs, you'll see stuttering). With a replacement OS we could theoretically have more room to play with, and maybe (a big maybe) even have better access to that hardware decoder (which should be able to handle more codecs than Apple uses).

You can actually install Ubuntu on some iOS devices already thanks to the iDroid project, which aims to port both Android and other linux OSes to iOS hardware. http://www.idroidproject.org

Well, Mac OS X is POSIX certified, and iOS is the ARM branch of it, which should make it POSIX certified, too. However Darwin itself is conforming to the SUSv3 and POSIX 1003.1 specifications for the C API, Shell Utilities, and Threads. OS X and iOS are really what in the GNU/Linux you'd call 'distributions of Darwin'

Let's see where the ATV3 stands performance-wise first with the bump in screen resolution, and whether the the percentage of overhead got less with the bump in speed.

As far as Linux goes, there might me devices that would be more suited to that purpose, like the Iomega TV or the Myka Ion which also give you i.e. USB ports and hard drives.
I really wouldn't want to reboot my ATV constantly to change from the Apple UI to XBMC either.

(2012-03-19 00:06)Ned Scott Wrote:  You can actually install Ubuntu on some iOS devices already thanks to the iDroid project, which aims to port both Android and other linux OSes to iOS hardware. http://www.idroidproject.org

Thanks for that link Ned, I will certainly look into that. I think the AppleTV 3 is a nice device, and would make an even more excellent Xbmc device.

(2012-03-19 08:53)HansMayer Wrote:  I really wouldn't want to reboot my ATV constantly to change from the Apple UI to XBMC either.

The way Xbmc works on the AppleTV it does not need any reboots; it just plugs in to the main menu. So that's a non-argument.

I think you mistake the intentions of people wanting to run Linux on such devices. I have wiped OS X from my AppleTV the very minute I got it. I don't care about Apple's software; I very much like the hardware integration and design that comes with it. That was my primary reason for purchase - after the fact I could run Linux (and Xbmc) on it.

The very reason you are able to run Xbmc on the AppleTVs at all is the sheer popularity of the devices, which makes them an interesting target for hackers. That's why you can now run Xbmc on your beloved iOS device. That's also why it will be much less likely that any of the devices you named will ever get a functional Linux port - or an Xbmc port, for that matter.

(2012-03-19 01:09)thescragster Wrote:  My thoughts, of course, where that when XBMC was installed, if we were streaming large high res media files from a NAS the 10/100 might not handle the file size appropriately. Good to hear thought, thanks Ned!

how do you connect your NAS to the atv? Will it make the connection via xmbc or can you get it connected rough the atv stock software without an iTunes servers?