Apple TV units have begun reaching the hands of consumers today, of note Apple also accompanied its earlier press release by updating the Apple TV technical specification page.
The new specs show that Apple TV can cope with the following;
Video
- H.264/Protected (content from iTunes Store), Up to 5 Mbps. Maximum resolution: 1280 by 720 pixels at 24 fps, 960 by 540 pixels at 30 fps
- MPEG-4: Up to 3 Mbps. Maximum resolution: 720 by 432 pixels at 30 fps
Photos
- JPG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG
Apple TV box. Image courtesy of Gizmodo.com
Gizmodo is the first site to publish unboxing photos of the Apple TV, but multiple customers are reporting that units are beginning to arrive.
Gizmodo offers a few notes about Apple TV that we didn’t already know, as well as a selection of galleries (Hardware | Menus | Unboxing)
Walt Mossberg Reviews Apple TV
Wall Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal has written the first review of Apple TV.
The columnist writes, “Apple TV is tiny, just about eight inches square and an inch high, far smaller than a typical DVD player or cable or satellite box, even though it packs in a 40-gigabyte hard disk, an Intel processor and a modified version of the Mac operating system.”
Mossberg had an Apple TV unit for around 10 days, and concluded that the device was, “beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers.”