The Apple TV (somewhat rebranded now as iTV, but still being sold under that moniker) first arrived in home cinemas over three years ago, a curious oddity in a market torn between competing HD standards (Blu-ray and HD DVD). It had no support for either of the optical formats, and instead relied on an internal hard drive and streaming from a home PC running iTunes. Unlike the optical disc formats, the Apple TV was limited to the barest minimum of HD resolution; 720p. It was also very stringent on what types of digital media it would support (essentially, if you can’t play it natively on an iPod, iTouch, or in iTunes, it won’t play on the Apple TV either). Even with these limitations, the device sold very well and encouraged Apple to radically revamp the design in certain ways for its next generation release.

Apple TV 2.0 drops the internal hard drive (which ran as high as 160GB in size) in favor of 8GB of internal memory for buffering purposes. In return, the device is much smaller, about the size of a paperback book (though about a third shorter). While the original Apple TV had component and analog outputs, this new model gives you a HDMI port and optical out. That’s it. Personally, I think that’s a good move on Apple’s part, but if you’re (for some reason) still interested in component/analog connections, you won’t want to upgrade.



Link: TweakTown