Would you pick Door #1, or Door #2?

Jan/22/2008 20:14 Filed in: Mac | Commentary

The new MacBook Air is a cool computer, sure I'd prefer it had a gigabit ethernet port and preferably FireWire but otherwise I think it rocks. My friends think that Apple blew it and that they should have closer replicated the old 12" PowerBook which was narrower.

But the Macbook Air is what it is, like it or not.

My question is, would you rather have a MacBook Air 1.8ghz, or a standard 2.0ghz MacBook, an AppleTV, an iPhone, and a 500GB Time Capsule? Because the MacBook Air 1.8ghz actually costs more than all of those other items combined.

Door #1
$2,099 - MacBook Air
Apple MBA 1.8

Door #2
$2,026 - MacBook, AppleTV, iPhone, 500GB Time Capsule
Apple 4Play

I would certainly pick door #2.

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Red?, Blue?, or Take 2?

Jan/20/2008 00:15 Filed in: Content | Mac | AppleTV

Red [HD DVD] has seemingly taken it in the shorts recently with Warner Bros. going exclusively with Bluray. But might they both take it in the shorts by Take 2 (AppleTV Take 2) or other video on demand services?

I recently upgraded my entire AV system and a part of that upgrade was the cheapest HiDef DVD player I could find - a Toshiba HD-A2 HD DVD player. Admittedly I was pulling for the HD DVD format but it looks like a long shot now for it to become the dominate format over Sony's Bluray.

My consolation in buying the HD DVD is that it was very inexpensive at $140, came with 5 DVD's, and NetFlix has a really decent selection of HD DVD's that I've been watching. After I've watched all the HD DVD's from Netflix that interest me, what is my next choice? I ask this with the assumption that Bluray will be the dominant HiDef DVD format out there.

Well, actually, I don't plan on picking up a Bluray player in the near or medium future. Now that Apple has upgraded the AppleTV software to the 'Take 2' complete with HD movie rentals - I'm quite likely to hang up my long standing NetFlix subscription and simply rent HD movies from Apple directly to my AppleTV. Yes, a Bluray disc would have higher quality than an AppleTV HD movie rental due to the enormous capacity and high bitrates used. However, I have a feeling that the HD movies will look very good via the AppleTV. I've transcoded some HD rips that were on the Usenet, purely in the name of research. The resulting AppleTV compliant HD files are around 2.5 - 4GB in size and look awesome. I'm assuming that the AppleTV HD movie rentals will be encoded in similar or better quality, especially since they aren't going through multiple encoding steps (HiDef DVD -> MKV -> AppleTV MP4).

5.1 Dolby Digital audio will be offered on the HD movies, this is fantastic. As of now we're all waiting to see exactly how this is being accomplished since the MP4 format does not accommodate AC3 sound. It would be great if they are taking a 6 channel AAC audio stream and transcoding it to AC3, this would save a tremendous amount of disc space since AC3 is so very inefficient with regards to size.

The new menus for the AppleTV rental screens are simply gorgeous, well done, I can't wait to check it out very soon and rent an HD movie to scope out the quality.

sshot-9

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Would you pick Door #1, or Door #2?

Red?, Blue?, or Take 2?

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