Is there anything apple tv can do that an HTPC can't? - Page 2

Never tried the AirPlay for WMC, but I did read about the plugin.

I don't entirely understand the point with AirPlay. Is it for putting pictures up on the big screen tv? My TVs are already tapped into my WHS picture library, so I don't have a need for it except in the case where I have just taken a few pictures on my phone and want to show everyone without passing it around. I think that's a brilliant idea, and I've been trying to find some workaround solution to get WMC to be able to do this with Picasa, flickr, or dropbox?

I would also prefer to setup Google Music Manager and have some sort of Google Music Plugin within WMC. This whole unified TV interface really needs more work on the "unified" part, because right now everything feels largely dislocated but with lots of potential.

Also the fraction of a cost argument is pretty asinine since the ATV is $99 (70-80 deal priced) and HTPCs are not approaching that cost anywhere I've seen. You get a lot more freedom with the HTPC, but some people are a lot happier in the garden and it's hard to argue with how ridiculously simple the unification of all your music, pictures, videos, games, notes, mail, etc are across apple devices. I'm just too big of a cheapskate to pay for all of it only to see it locked away to the itunes world
Edited by Dark_Slayer - 8/7/12 at 2:30pm

Gotta love buying a device that needs to be instantly hacked to function decently.

Isn't that what adding codecs to a (HT)PC is? Hacking it so it can functionally play back an mkv (with HD Audio being a further hack).

For video, I agree with you. It's basically pointless. But music is where it really shines. The key difference is that to listen to music (non-critical listening obviously), you don't have to sit still. I can set my receiver to output to speakers all over the house, and I can walk around cleaning the house, working on a car in the garage, or playing with the dog in the back yard. And at any point I can pull my phone out of my pocket and change the music to whatever I want. I can also change the volume. That's what AirPlay accomplishes. As long as I'm within range of one of my wireless access points, I have immediate control of the music right in my pocket.

Possibly that could all be done with a remote desktop app of some kind on my htpc. I'm not totally sure. But it certainly wouldn't be as straightforward to search for a different album on a phone screen.

AirPlay for WMC is very interesting. I didn't know that existed. I'll look into it.

I can do that now with the android app for my Denon on my phone. Not pretty but it gets the job done. I don't even have to turn on the system. The AVR comes on from the ethernet signal it receives through my wireless from my phone. As I have no apple devices using airplay is sort of out of the question for me.

That definitely makes me envious. Fortunately, I do not currently own a house, so I've got time for this kind of tech to mature.

On my wish list for Apple or Google (both are frontrunning in voice recognition) are some hooks that I can latch onto a home control software that's dead simple and filled with options.
From the device control point of view it would be more like

• browse videos push play then -> TV1, TV2, etc
• or like you already do fire up a playlist -> choose zone1, zone2,
• dim the lits
• turn on the A/C
• remote start the alarm if you forgot
• auto detect the "control" phone presence with bluetooth or something similar

All this with voice control would definitely make me feel like Tony Stark

So with an Apple TV can you watch the NBC Olympic internet feeds?

They're really quite good. I don't know for sure, but my suspicion is that they aren't available on Apple TV or most other "boxes."

It's things like this why I choose an HTPC (and why I choose not to be boxed into XBMC or other front ends as well).

There is a wealth of great content on the internet. I choose not to have Apple or Google or Roku or anyone else decide what I can and cannot get access to.

Not imo. A pc is made to be customized. You are adding functionality with a codec. By your logic installing an app on an iphone is a hack. It's not. Your just adding functionality.

With the appletv you have to break the "lock" that Apple has on it. Which is against their TOS and probably borderline illegal with the stupid laws we have these days.

I'm not saying I feel that way at all. Just showing how the two don't really compare.

I agree. I consider installing a codec pack to be like installing Flash Player. It's an add-in to enable you to play certain type of content. Not a hack at all.

Isn't that another one of those things you can't do on an Apple?

Okay. A PC lets you add codecs to it whereas the ATV doesn't without having to jailbreak it, which apparently is a violation of the TOS, so it is more of a hack to do it.

So no one has answered my question above whether you can watch all the NBC Olympics feeds on an Apple TV. (Or the NCAA Basketball Tournament on CBS. Or college sports directly on the various university athletic department websites. Can you even watch ESPN3 on an Apple TV?) I ask because I don't know the answer.

If the answer to this is "no" I'm wondering why anyone would choose to use as their gateway to the limiteless world of content on the internet a device which dictates what strictly limited amount of content will be permitted. If the answer is "yes", then maybe I'll have some new respect for the device.

Having unfettered access to everything on the internet is a major reason to me why I choose a HTPC rather than a "box". I would think that especially any sports fan would feel the same. (Heck, my TV, my BD player, and several other devices in the house provide Netflix. I certainly don't worry about whether my HTPC provides that, in the unlikely event I ever actually want to join Netflix.)

Anything that can't play native bluray is behind in the game as far as I am concerned.

Do you mean like WMC, XBMC, and Mediabrowser?

Or do you mean to say, "Anything that can't play some re-muxed form of blu ray at native resolution?" I think if you re-encode to MP4 it plays nice, gotta drop audio down

Don't know either. I know that the NBC Olympics verify that your accessing from an internet subscription that's paired with a paid TV provider, but I don't own an ATV.


I think everyone's missing the point. An ATV is not for someone with an existing large library of non-itunes movies, tv shows, music etc.

It's perfect for someone who

1. Already keeps all of that in itunes for iphone, ipod, or ipad reasons
2. Wants to start paying for that kind of content within itunes
3. Wants to import their existing stuff into itunes acceptable formats

As for the OP, I don't think anything outside of itunes syncs EVERYTHING to all your places as brainlessly as itunes. When I've seen friends use it to stream an iphone "captured" video to their TV, it wirelessly streamed the video flawlessly and the whole thing is preset at the ready. I just don't happen to ever do this, which is why I don't understand the idea behind it. Also, there are supposed to be some cool ipad games that let you use the ipad for control and the ATV for display

Not letting image url do uploads, airplay urls

http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airplay/

http://www.apple.com/appletv/airplay/

No, I mean bluray iso or folder structure. I'm sure you are aware that WMC with TMT handles this flawlessly along with 3D as well. Appletv isn't coming close.

That`s what i do all day long by using XBMC Constellation (a remote app for the iPhone/iPad), control what is playing in the background without being there, being in another room. And XBMC has supported AirPlay since version 11, without any plugins.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/xbmc-constellation/id437807301?mt=8

I have an iPad, Android tab and smartphone. All can control my HTPC.

Good to know. Then scratch that from the list of things that ATV can do and a HTPC can't.

The only other hard to match trick of ATV that I can think of, and it's a pretty minor one for most people, is fitting in a teeny tiny space. I've never seen a HTPC as small as an ATV. They're getting closer, and maybe they'll get there with something similar to a Raspberry Pi. But so far I haven't seen it.

Otherwise it sounds like a HTPC has all the bases covered if functionality is the goal. But the ATV's shortcomings there shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Apple has never been about maximizing features or functionality. That's not their model. What they're about is maximizing simplicity. Personally, I'm glad to have a full-fledged HTPC hooked up in my viewing environment. But I'm also very glad to have the single function simplicity of AirPlay for most of my 2 channel audio systems. In my opinion they both have a place, and it's not always about "what can one do that the other one can't?"

Have you seen this? Basically it is just big enough to hold a mini ITX Mobo and is less than 2" tall.

Don't know what this post was really directed at, but if you look at the airplay urls I posted then you would see
Airplay is to ControllingHTPC as the Olympics are to swimming
Controlling an HTPC or any PC has been possible since the introduction of 3rd part applications for Andriod/iOS and long before that with WinMo, but that's only a very small part of what airplay can potentially do
The XBMC AirPlay wiki says that it doesn't work with music, but only for Windows. It also mentions it doesn't support mirroring.

I remember looking for something similar to wireless mirroring because I use Android/WMC but do have some envy of those iphone/macbook/appletv users who can use their TV without dragging out cables and plugging crap in.

I'd like to see that, but I look more to Intel's WiDi to get some kind of Surface and future chipset integration for us Windows users to have the same functionality. I doubt this is even on the linux radar, so I'd never imagine that community would come up with a robust solution unless some Linus-caliber dev really dug into it.

Well what's the purpose of Airplay? To control your music library to your AVR from your phone, mostly?

If you can remotely control your HTPC which in turn can play back music through your avr with an app on your phone where you can select tracks or albums or whatever you want haven't you accomplished the same thing without having to give up control of content you have to iTunes? If you can stream music from your own library stored in your own computer using a codec that is open-source through the internet, haven't you accomplished the same thing?

Yep, you've pretty much got it. While I can't say that I've really experimented that much with remote desktop apps for a mobile phone, I wouldn't want to use what I have seen to control my music from another room. I haven't seen anything remotely close to the simplicity of choosing a different album or playlist using the ipod app. If you're fine with controlling your music via some kind of remote desktop app from your phone, that's great. If the question is just whether it can be done, then I guess that's answered. But personally, I hardly find that in line with the idea of "reach in my pocket and change songs simplicity". I might rather just walk back in the house to the HTPC and change songs.

As I eluded to in another post, nobody will ever choose to purchase an Apple product based on what it can do that competing products can't. That's not Apple's business model. Their bread and butter is in making things easier to use. Airplay is exactly that. It's doing something that's possible but fairly clunky with other systems and making it dead simple to use. They aren't perfect, even at their specialty. Itunes, for example, is a complete disaster. And they aren't the only ones that can make a nice interface either, as WMC proves. But in the case of Airplay specifically, I haven't found anything that works better.
Edited by pitviper33 - 8/10/12 at 2:26pm

I'd say no, if interested just take a quick look at these links (still can't embed these pictures into this forum)

http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airplay/
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/airplay.html

I think the appletv airplay url shows the best images http://www.apple.com/appletv/airplay/

I never found a way to mirror or display a game (leaving controls on tablet/phone) with android/wmc

I'd like to, but like I mentioned before, I feel that MS is relying on Intel


EDIT: I realize now that in each link the very first thing it says is, "Control your music wirelessly." What I find much more used is mirroring, and I've come to realize that I never saw the point in using it for my pictures and videos because I don't have a way of doing this with my setup

How's it look when you take a picture or video intended for and looks great on a 3" to 10" screen and put it up on a 60 Plasma? The music thing I get but am not sure about sending video and pictures from my phone to my HDTV. I have no desire to share my phone's screen with everybody in the room when I'm surfing the web or responding to an email on it. I just don't get it.

I have no idea how that would look. My ATV was actually hooked up to another 3.5" screen. As far as I was concerned, music was its only reason for existence. That was all the point it needed. It's since been replaced by an Airport Express to further simplify operation and act as an additional wireless access point. The ATV just takes that music streaming ability and combines it with an internet streamer for those that don't want to spend the money on an all out HTPC. Or those that like the simplicity of it over an HTPC. As you've correctly identified, it's screen duplicating ability is just an extra gimmick for most consumers. In a business environment in a meeting room, I could see it being really handy. But I've never personally seen one installed in that environment.

Yah I think very few people use that feature. Its all about the music.

It always looked pretty good, but I've never dug in and researched the "magic" behind mirroring. If I were to take my GNex and directly connect it via microHDMI to my 61" HDTV it would look better than a DVD. It happens to be 720p. I have to assume the new ipad would just rescale down to 1080p. The newer iphones all operate at better than DVD resolutions, which people still find fairly acceptable.

I can agree to that, but I still really like the concept. It's also on my wishlist for Android and Windows

I use airplay for video quite a bit, both from my macbook and from ipad.

BUT, I don't use video optimized for a 3" screen... I use video that's output at 720x480 or 1080p. Using Handbrake, I can encode a DVD rip under 2gig in size that's visually as enjoyable as the original DVD on a 52" display.