Posts tagged with "apple tv"

Apple TV Launches In Italy and Switzerland, Coming Soon To Seven More Countries?

This morning we noticed the Apple TV was finally available in Italy and Switzerland. As noted by 9to5mac, though, the device will likely launch soon in seven more countries, maybe even tomorrow, as international Apple Stores are returning the same errors the Italian and Swiss ones were returning when the Apple TV wasn’t available last night:

We checked out all the Apple online stores to replicate what happened in Italy and Switzerland and sure enough Taiwan, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Portugal, The Netherlands and Belgium are all displaying the same error message. What does this mean? It means that Apple’s second-generation Apple TV will be launching in those countries very soon, probably tomorrow, and maybe some HD movie rentals in iTunes as well.

We don’t know if the Apple Tv is ready just yet to appear in more countries, but surely the Apple online store suggests something’s moving, and fast. The Apple TV is doing great in the US thanks to its aggressive pricing and small form factor, although the promised AirPlay streaming functionality is still nowhere to be seen.

iTunes Movies Now Available in Italy and Switzerland, We Want An Apple TV Now

Good news, fellow Italian and Swiss MacStories readers: we haz iTunes Movies. Earlier today Apple indeed silently launched the new iTunes section in both countries, you too can check it out by following this link. Both normal purchases and rentals are available.

We say “silently” because no press release went out nor did Apple put any banners and / or links in the iTunes Store homepage to promote the new Movies (or, in Italian, “Film”) – it’s pretty much a hidden section with a rather straightforward interface. Read more

Plex Comes To Jailbroken Apple TV

If you own an Apple TV and you’ve managed to jailbreak it, then you must be happy about this: you can install Plex on it. As noted by 9to5mac, you can turn your tiny black Apple box in a dedicated Plex device, with the media server running, say, on your home Mac. Plex is a great looking and full-featured media center for OS X which recently released a great iOS companion app.

Instructions from the developer of the hack are available here, and require some manual hacking.

Steve Jobs Confirms iTunes Extras and iTunes LP “Coming” to Apple TV

Apple introduced iTunes Extras and LPs together with iTunes 9 in September 2009, but they never really took off. With a recent email reply to a MacRumors reader, though, Steve Jobs confirmed support for the two features is coming to the 2nd gen Apple TV, which being based on iOS doesn’t support Extras and LP out of the box.

Q: I’ve been a massive fan of the original Apple TV since it launched, in fact I have 2 of my own and have bought a fair few as gifts over the years. So as soon as the new Apple TV was released I bought one. Overall it’s a fantastic update for me as I always stream from my Mac mini anyway. But here’s the kicker - Where are iTunes Extras and iTunes LP gone? I’ve purposely been buying content with those features just for my Apple TVs. And now the features are unusable on my new box?! Is there an update coming to fix this?

A: Coming.

Sent from my iPhone.

Apple is expected to release a firmware update for the Apple TV to bring full support for AirPlay, and that would be the right time to bring iTunes LP and Extra compatibility back as well. The update could drop as early as next week, but when it comes to Jobs’ emails you never know if he’s joking or not. As MacRumors also speculates, iTunes LPs would make perfect sense on the iPad, with a larger screen capable of really enriching the experience of music albums and videos. Personally, I think that’d be the only way I could ever buy an iTunes LP.

The Apple TV Is Jailbroken

They promised and it happened: the new Apple TV is jailbroken. According to a picture tweeted a few minutes ago by Joshua Hill (who goes by the name of “p0sixninja” online), the jailbreak tool Greenpois0n has managed to jailbreak Apple’s latest iOS device.

As you can see in the screenshot below, a custom background has been installed, together with a brand new menu to “inject software”.

This means jailbreak apps (on Cydia, perhaps) will come very soon to an Apple TV near you. This is bad news for Apple on an event day, but I suspect they saw it coming all along. Being based on iOS, you can stay assured the jailbreak community is going to find a way to “pwn” it.

No word yet on how Greenpois0n for Apple TV will work, and when it’ll be available. Now I just want to see Cydia running on this thing.

Apple TV Sales Estimate: 1 Million Per Quarter

It’s nice when you can transform a geek hobby to a nation-wide consumer hit. It happened with the iPhone, it happened with the iPod Touch and it’s happening with the iPad as we speak. The latest research from JMP Research analyst Alex Gauna suggests us it may be happening with the new Apple TV as well. Read more

Ouch: New Apple TV Doesn’t Trigger 24 Hour Timer for Shows Rented On Mac

Interesting bug (or is it a feature?) discovered by MacRumors about the new Apple TV: if you try to stream a show rented on a Mac’s iTunes, the 24/48 hour countdown for the rental doesn’t get triggered. Instead, you’ll keep seeing the 29+ days message as if  you never opened that file.

This only happens when you stream the file from your computer to the new Apple TV which, as you may know, doesn’t come with storage capabilities like the old model. Read more