This looks promising. For some reason Apple forgot one of the reasons iPod got successful. The ability to play a commonly used format, mp3. They crippled the Apple TV so that it only plays h264 encoded videos. But now the hacking community are fixing this. And it’s not the first time. I used to have an Xbox with Xbox Media Center that really did everything you need to play DivX and other formats. You needed a hacked Xbox to be able to run XBMC, and it was developed by a group of hackers around the world.
Now look at the mess you get with Xbox 360. You need a Windows machine to view movies. And it’s in Windows Media Format. There are some hacks that transcodes the video, but that’s just lame. This makes the Xbox 360 completely useless as a movie/media player.
This is the problem when you start to sell both hardware and content. Just look at Sony. The conflict of interest between trying to do the best hardware product possible, and the desire to cripple it to protect content. And now Apple has fallen into it.
So go hackers! Looking like I’m going to buy an Apple TV after all…
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