- a 19.7 cm base, 2.8 cm thick, weighting 1.09 kg.
- Apple Remote
- Intel CPU (which one ?)
- 40 Go HD, with 33 Go for data (what's left is used by the system)
- wifi 802.11b, g, or n. The fact is that "n" will be welcome in order to benefit from HD resolution.
- HDMI for video and audio (mandatory for HD, up to 1080i)
- video component (3 RCA RGB) for video
- optical audio (necessary for 5.1, yet is it enabled?)
- RCA Audio (red and white, "classical" ones)
- Ethernet 10/100 base-T
- USB 2.0
Officially supported formats are those used with the iPod Video and those found on the iTunes Store. For video :
- h.264, protected or not, with a data flow of 1.5 Mb/s in 320x240 or 640x480
- Mpeg-4 up to 2.5 Mbit/s in 640x480
For audio :
- AAC protected or not up to 320 kbit/s
- MP3 up to 320 kbit/s
- Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV.
For pics:
- JPEG, PNG, BMP, GIF, TIFF.
Strangely enough, Apple announces a maximal resolution of 1080i, yet the Apple TV would be able to decode only 640x480. Either there's upscale in the air, or Apple forgot HD supported video formats. Knowing that the CPU is from Intel and given the product price, it is more than likely it is simply a 1.66 Ghz single core, unable to decode HD 1080i files... so you'll either have to use files from the iTunes Movie Store (none available in France yet), or to reencode your films in 640x480 if their resolution is superior.
It all works with iTunes. As for an iPod, it is by syncing your Mac with Apple TV, to transfer your musics, videos and pictures, that it works. Yet as opposed to an iPod, according to what we saw during the Keynote, it will also be possible to stream contents directly without using the integrated HD.
Apple TV might be bought imediately, but delivered only in February.
