Apple to release the new iPad on March 16th and the new Apple TV 1080p the next week.

[garyopa]

Today's Apple Keynote resumed



New iPad with retina display, quad-core processor and 4G LTE, new Apple TV with 1080p support and more

Apple has just finished their keynote and we are offering you a brief resume of the more relevant highlights.

- Siri confirmed to speak Japanese

- iOS 5.1 to be out today

- iTunes on the cloud now supports movies on the cloud and 1080p movies and shows.

- The New Apple TV to supports all this 1080p contents. It will feature a revamped streamline interface. Will be out the next week at the same price at the current one, 99$. Pre-order available today.

And the new iPad:

Here is what it is having.

- It was not called neither iPad 3 or iPad HD, just new iPad or 3rd gen iPad.
- Retina display with 2048x1536 píxeles. 240ppi. 44% better color saturation
- A5X processor. Dual-core with quad-core GPU. Twice faster than Tegra 3 devices.
- iSight rear Camera: Same elements and configuration of iPhone 4S but with just 5MP. capable of recording 1080p video. Front camera is just the same iPad 2's Facetime camera.
- Voice dictation: Like Siri but just for text dictation. Support American English, British, Australian, French, German and Japanese
- 4G LTE: Up to 73Mbps speed. Different iPad versions depending on carrier: Verizon and AT&T in the US. Rogers, Bell y Telus as partners. 3G worldwide with HSPA+ and DC-HSPA+ speeds (21Mbps and 42Mbps respectively).
- Personal Hotspot capability if the carrier allows it.
- Battery life: The same as iPad 2, 10h normal use, 9h on 4G. That is amazing taking into account that we are talking about a quad-core processor and LTE connectivity which drains battery as fast as hell.
- Size: 9.4mm thin , weight 1.4 lbs
- Pricing: Same as iPad 2. WiFi only is 499$ (16GB), 599$ (32GB) and 699$ (64GB). WiFi + 4G: 629$ (16GB), 729$ (32GB) and 829$ (64GB). Pre-order since today.
- Availability: March 16th in US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Switzerland an Japan. March 23rd for the rest of the world.

A comparison between new iPad and iPad 2 can be seen here: http://www.apple.com/ipad/compare/

And after the big announcements, they have just announced a bunch of little new things:

- Namco to release a plane game to support up to 50 planes fighting at the same time. Console quality game that looks gorgeous.
- Autodesk to release Sketchbook Ink app.
- Epic Games to release a new Infinity Blade: Dungeos game powered by the all-might Unreal Engine. Better graphics than Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Looks delightful.
- iPhoto for iPad. Available since today for just 4.99$.
- iPad 2 to continue selling with a 100$ price cut. 399$ for the Wi-Fi version and 529$ for the WiFi+3G

And that was all. More details in the links below.

OFFICIAL SITES: http://www.apple.com/ipad/ and http://www.apple.com/appletv/

Our thanks to 'Kaos2K' for taking his time to watch the 'keynote' from Apple!

[Kaos2K]

Full keynote video here for those who want to watch it: http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.ne...ent/index.html

[IJTF_Cinder]

Wait...I thought the AppleTV 2 already supported 1080p?

[TinyBilbo]

Wait...I thought the AppleTV 2 already supported 1080p?

Nah, both gen1 and gen2 atv's downscaled 1080p to 720p.

You could get an add-on board for the gen1's and load xbmc onto it, then it would do true 1080p.

Can't wait for this gen(3) to be jailbroken, then I can get a couple to use xbmc, with true 1080p... and no faffing around upgrading hardware.

I was just about to find an old one on ebay, and order the graphics board from hong kong, now i don't have to...

[IJTF_Cinder]

Nah, both gen1 and gen2 atv's downscaled 1080p to 720p.

You could get an add-on board for the gen1's and load xbmc onto it, then it would do true 1080p.

Can't wait for this gen(3) to be jailbroken, then I can get a couple to use xbmc, with true 1080p... and no faffing around upgrading hardware.

I was just about to find an old one on ebay, and order the graphics board from hong kong, now i don't have to...

Yeah some misleading info out there, I'm happy with 720p though...I don't much care for HD content anyway, but it would be nice for the bit I do tend to view.
The Xbox's in my house (obivously) don't have the horsepower for even 720p content, and the Network Blu-Ray player in my living room plays 720p content just fine, but has ZERO support for jumping through by keyframes which REALLY sucks.
I either have to hit the INFO key and set the time I want to jump to, or fast forward and wait and hit play when I'm near where I want to be.
It doesn't handle 1080p content very well...you can make out that it's not quite as smooth.

How does an ATV2 running XBMC handle a 1080p source? Is it smooth playback or are there issues?

[billysastard]

Nah, both gen1 and gen2 atv's downscaled 1080p to 720p.

You could get an add-on board for the gen1's and load xbmc onto it, then it would do true 1080p.

Can't wait for this gen(3) to be jailbroken, then I can get a couple to use xbmc, with true 1080p... and no faffing around upgrading hardware.

I was just about to find an old one on ebay, and order the graphics board from hong kong, now i don't have to...

this might be dumb but what the hell is the point of paying $100 for one of these when something like a sumvision micro 2+ or 3 can both play just about everything you can throw at them in full 1080p from any usb drive (or sd card / mem stick) and they cost about a quarter and require no messing around with at all, just plug and play.

[TinyBilbo]

How does an ATV2 running XBMC handle a 1080p source? Is it smooth playback or are there issues?

Tbh, I have never used an atv for xbmc, I have a couple of xboxs around the house, and a revo (running xbmc) in the living room.

As far as I know from the xbmc ios forums, the gui experience is akin the original xbox, which is not as fast as the revo.
Playback on both is supposed to be the same, which is why I want one.

I have no trouble playing a full bluray rip (approx 35gb) over my wired (gigabit) network.
Fast forward and skip works just as it does on the xbox, although the larger the file, it takes slightly longer per skip,
however you are never left "hanging", waiting for the playback to catch up.

I want to exchange my old xbox's for atvs now, because, I am beginng to get more content in 720p now (mostly tv),
and I just don't want the headache of re-encoding (or re-downloading) stuff for the old xboxs...

this might be dumb but what the hell is the point of paying $100 for one of these when something like a sumvision micro 2+ or 3 can both play just about everything you can throw at them in full 1080p from any usb drive (or sd card / mem stick) and they cost about a quarter and require no messing around with at all, just plug and play.

An Xbmc, running on an atv simply put, offers more..., than a basic usb/card media player.

Once configured correctly, it can stream over your network (wired or wireless),
any content (it has a very wide range of codecs) from anything, Usb/card/PC(linux,Mac,Win), as well as nas units.

You can use a variety of different remotes, and configure as you like.

It will catalogue your movie/tv collection, and pull in all metadata, like cast, cinema poster, ratings, and trailers,
and allow searching for something via variety of different ways, like actor, genre, year, etc.
Whilst this may seem a little unneccasary, its actually quite useful, when you have a library of a couple of thousand movies on a Nas unit.

You can also set up multiple Vpn accounts to run in the background,
so that you can stream on demand content direct from the States (Hulu), or the Uk (BBC,Ch4,Ch5,Itvplayer).
(Which is great for me, since I live out of either of these 2 contries).

It can also do a few other things via plugins, like pull in lyrics for any music playing (for all you kareoke lovers ),
or be used as a frontend for a number of different PC-based PVR's (like MythTV or Mediaportal).

The only reason I'm looking forward to the new appletv, is that before now,
you needed a fairly decent specced pc (like the acer revo) which is about $200-$300.
Now apple are knocking these for $99, they are going to make a great base (and standard) to run xbmc from.
I have no interest in the apple software, and will make these boot directly into xbmc.

On a side-note, I run couchpotato, sickbeard, headphones, and sabnzbd, on my Nas's,
which completely automates the downloading, extracting, renaming, and moving, of all my tv, movies, and music content.

I now, maybe once a month, check out the new movies, and tv on the imdb.
I don't have to hunt or move around anything that I'm watching or listening to...

So between the Xbmc, and the Nas units, I have freed up a whole lot of time