Can Apple TV be a Game Console?
A number of Apple TV owners received an invitation to take part in an online study designed to find out how well Apple set-top boxes fit into their multimedia industry - see the news: “An online survey can be a prelude to an Apple TV update . ”
In connection with this, various rumors about the upcoming update of the set-top box Apple TV, up to such - “Apple will release the TV?”
If you look under the hood of Apple TV, then today it is something like a mini-computer like the Apple Mac mini , only with the cheapest and therefore the slowest processor = Intel Pentium 4M 1Ghz, with a minimum amount of RAM = 256Mb, well enough a simple graphics system = NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 [64 Mb VRAM] (for more on Apple TV read the article: “Apple TV: Or“ another reason to change the name ” ).
In the form of the operating system, Apple TV uses a modified, heavily stripped-down Apple MacOS X 10.4 Tiger, which has a special interface that allows the user to use the system only as a set-top box.
Since Apple TV does not have a DVD player, you can download all the movies to it from your home computer using Apple iTunes or directly from the Apple iTunes Store. Well, as a consequence of the limitations of this console, it has very low demand, as Apple has repeatedly mentioned. And besides, the constant attempts of users to expand its functions - see: “The Apple TV prefix has already been hacked” and again: “Skype was set up on the Apple TV prefix!” .
Apple’s desire to increase the demand for this device is quite natural, and for this there is only one way - to expand the possibilities of Apple TV!
Option 1: One of the simplest and most accessible extensions is the addition of the TV channel viewing functions to the Apple TV console.
To do this, you do not even need to build an analog TV-receiver with an antenna, and just need to add a few chips that allow you to receive digital TV-channels, since in the middle of summer all US TV stations will completely switch to broadcasting TV-programs in digital format - see the article “Almost the end of the world: the United States is ready to switch to digital television broadcasting in February” and another: “In February, 40 percent of US broadcasting stations will switch to“ number ” .
And Apple is in a favorable position here, because many Americans are just now going to buy special TV set-top boxes for watching digital TV!
Option 2: In principle, in order to cope with the function of watching movies, there is no need for Apple TV to use the Intel architecture of the IBM PC, and the iron stuffing that is used in Apple iPod touch can be quite enough.
It is curious that the Apple iPod touch player and the Apple TV set-top box on the Apple iPod’s “iPod + iTunes” page and in the Apple Store are always side by side :)
Now imagine why Apple would not use the ARM processors in the Apple TV, and Apple could even use the multi-core ARM processors it developed in the future - see the article: “Will the new iPhone get a quad-core processor?” .
Even in future Apple TV, PowerVR SGX543 multi-core graphics processors based on the developments of Imagination Technology can be used - see the article: “Imagination Technologies confirms Apple’s licensing of the PowerVR graphics engine . ”
Well, in order to control all this iron stuffing, it remains to use the slightly modified Apple OS X iPhone operating system with a special interface for Apple TV.
As a result of the transition to the new architecture, the Apple TV console, in addition to all the modern Movie Watch functions, can run almost all 20 thousand applications from the Apple App Store (see: “There are 20 thousand applications in the App Store!” ), Most of which are mostly are games!
And besides, the possibilities are completely legal, indefinitely, to expand the functions of the Apple TV set-top box - through programs developed for the Apple OS X iPhone and sold on the App Store, you can add new video codecs, as well as install it on the Skype set-top box and others. useful programs!
')
There are a couple of problems:
= this is the screen resolution, since all these 20 thousand applications are written to fit the screen resolution of Apple iPhone phones and Apple iPod touch players. But I think that the modern Apple iPhone SDK development tools used by the developers of programs from the App Store allow you to run programs on different screens using several screen resolutions and are not tied tightly to the screen of the Apple iPhone 3G (it's silly to think that everything is now subsequent versions of the Apple iPhone will always have the same screen resolution).
= and remote control of this device: of course, to use games from the Apple App Store, a more expensive remote control will have to be attached to the device, which should have a touch interface similar to the Apple iPhone interface, but of course there won't be a central processor or remote control other interiors of the Apple iPhone, but only interface chips and most likely motion sensors :)
And look at the future of Apple TV here:> Doom on TV running iPhone !
In connection with this, various rumors about the upcoming update of the set-top box Apple TV, up to such - “Apple will release the TV?”
If you look under the hood of Apple TV, then today it is something like a mini-computer like the Apple Mac mini , only with the cheapest and therefore the slowest processor = Intel Pentium 4M 1Ghz, with a minimum amount of RAM = 256Mb, well enough a simple graphics system = NVIDIA GeForce Go 7300 [64 Mb VRAM] (for more on Apple TV read the article: “Apple TV: Or“ another reason to change the name ” ).
In the form of the operating system, Apple TV uses a modified, heavily stripped-down Apple MacOS X 10.4 Tiger, which has a special interface that allows the user to use the system only as a set-top box.
Since Apple TV does not have a DVD player, you can download all the movies to it from your home computer using Apple iTunes or directly from the Apple iTunes Store. Well, as a consequence of the limitations of this console, it has very low demand, as Apple has repeatedly mentioned. And besides, the constant attempts of users to expand its functions - see: “The Apple TV prefix has already been hacked” and again: “Skype was set up on the Apple TV prefix!” .
Apple’s desire to increase the demand for this device is quite natural, and for this there is only one way - to expand the possibilities of Apple TV!
Option 1: One of the simplest and most accessible extensions is the addition of the TV channel viewing functions to the Apple TV console.
To do this, you do not even need to build an analog TV-receiver with an antenna, and just need to add a few chips that allow you to receive digital TV-channels, since in the middle of summer all US TV stations will completely switch to broadcasting TV-programs in digital format - see the article “Almost the end of the world: the United States is ready to switch to digital television broadcasting in February” and another: “In February, 40 percent of US broadcasting stations will switch to“ number ” .
And Apple is in a favorable position here, because many Americans are just now going to buy special TV set-top boxes for watching digital TV!
Option 2: In principle, in order to cope with the function of watching movies, there is no need for Apple TV to use the Intel architecture of the IBM PC, and the iron stuffing that is used in Apple iPod touch can be quite enough.
It is curious that the Apple iPod touch player and the Apple TV set-top box on the Apple iPod’s “iPod + iTunes” page and in the Apple Store are always side by side :)
Now imagine why Apple would not use the ARM processors in the Apple TV, and Apple could even use the multi-core ARM processors it developed in the future - see the article: “Will the new iPhone get a quad-core processor?” .
Even in future Apple TV, PowerVR SGX543 multi-core graphics processors based on the developments of Imagination Technology can be used - see the article: “Imagination Technologies confirms Apple’s licensing of the PowerVR graphics engine . ”
Well, in order to control all this iron stuffing, it remains to use the slightly modified Apple OS X iPhone operating system with a special interface for Apple TV.
As a result of the transition to the new architecture, the Apple TV console, in addition to all the modern Movie Watch functions, can run almost all 20 thousand applications from the Apple App Store (see: “There are 20 thousand applications in the App Store!” ), Most of which are mostly are games!
And besides, the possibilities are completely legal, indefinitely, to expand the functions of the Apple TV set-top box - through programs developed for the Apple OS X iPhone and sold on the App Store, you can add new video codecs, as well as install it on the Skype set-top box and others. useful programs!
')
There are a couple of problems:
= this is the screen resolution, since all these 20 thousand applications are written to fit the screen resolution of Apple iPhone phones and Apple iPod touch players. But I think that the modern Apple iPhone SDK development tools used by the developers of programs from the App Store allow you to run programs on different screens using several screen resolutions and are not tied tightly to the screen of the Apple iPhone 3G (it's silly to think that everything is now subsequent versions of the Apple iPhone will always have the same screen resolution).
= and remote control of this device: of course, to use games from the Apple App Store, a more expensive remote control will have to be attached to the device, which should have a touch interface similar to the Apple iPhone interface, but of course there won't be a central processor or remote control other interiors of the Apple iPhone, but only interface chips and most likely motion sensors :)
And look at the future of Apple TV here:> Doom on TV running iPhone !
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/51732/
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