It seems rare, these days, that Apple could surprise people when it comes to products, especially in the area of television. With all the talk surrounding Apple TVs, Apple’s potential HDTV, and Apple’s standings in the content arena, it is interesting to see that Apple has released a new Apple TV, model A1469, to the FCC yesterday. Though there is no immense news released in this filing, it is exciting to have a confirmation that Apple is still working on TV solutions, an area of its “intense interest.” The industry has been waiting on bated breath to discover what is next for Apple in this area. Perhaps, Apple is getting ready to tell us.

This box, alone, does not reveal much regarding Apples plans for what is to come next other than the fact that, in true Apple fashion, this device is half centimeter smaller than its predecessor and that it will be powered by Apple’s A5X processor and will use the same Broadcom WLAN+Bluetooth antenna/chip that the iPhone 5 uses. As of now, the largest change Apple made between its last  two “hobby” devices is the fact that one supports 720p and the other supports true 1080p. Could the next iteration be a similar jump? I foe one am hoping not! I am sure we can all agree that Apple needs to get back to innovating and get away from simply resizing.

To add a bit more fuel to the curiosity flame, 9to5Mac revealed that the latest Apple TV firmware (5.2), released this week, seems to include mention of a mystery Apple TV, named “3,2.” Our current Apple TV 3′s are known as “3,1.” It would seem that Apple has something coming quite soon. The question is if this a completely new box with some cool new capabilities, a peek at what Apple has in store next, or perhaps a simple rearrangement of internal hardware, now that parts are a bit cheaper?

What do you think? Let us know below.

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Mountain Lion, a new version of Mac OS X that has been unveiled in February, is now available to download from the Mac App Store for $19.99. Mountain Lion comes with more than 200 new features including the all new Messages app, Game Center, Facebook integration, Notification Center, Power Nap Dictation and Gatekeeper. But the coolest feature of Mountain Lion is undoubtedly AirPlay Mirroring that lets you wirelessly send an up-to-1080p stream of what’s on your Mac to an HDTV using Apple TV 2 or Apple TV 3 or send audio to a receiver or speakers that use AirPlay.

With AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS, you are able to stream whatever is on your desktop – webpages, photos, videos, presentation – directly to your HDTV, with only one click on an AirPlay icon on the OS X menu bar.

Mountain Lion automatically detects an Apple TV when it’s on the same network and AirPlay icon simply appears in the menu bar. Mirroring sends up-to 1080p video stream with stereo audio. All information sent using AirPlay Mirroring uses encryption.

Game Center

Now that Mountain Lion also includes Game Center, and thanks to AirPlay Mirroring, your Mac becomes a game console! At this year’s WWDC Apple showed a very impressive demo of an iPad and a new MacBook Pro (yes, Game Center for Mac is cross-compatible with iOS) playing CSR Racing head-to-head, with the Mac streaming to a TV with little to no lag.

Apple TV set

PCMAG‘s Edward Mendelson believes AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS X could be another evidence that the Cupertino-based company will unveil its own television soon: “Apple of course didn’t say anything about the much-rumored Apple-branded television, but I somehow doubt that AirPlay Mirroring got into OS X only because Apple wanted to sell a few set-top boxes,” he said.

Download Mountain Lion [iTunes link].

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Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

Apple announced yesterday at WWDC that Mountain Lion, a new version of Mac OS X that has been unveiled back in February, will be available in July for $19.99.  Mountain Lion introduces more than 200 features including the all new Messages app, Notification Center, Facebook integration, Dictation, Game Center, Gatekeeper and Power Nap. But the coolest feature of Mountain Lion is undoubtedly AirPlay Mirroring that lets you wirelessly send an up-to-1080p stream of what’s on your Mac to an HDTV using Apple TV 2  or Apple TV 3 or send audio to a receiver or speakers that use AirPlay.

With AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS, you will be able to stream whatever is on your desktop – webpages, photos, videos,  presentation – directly to your HDTV, with only one click on an AirPlay icon on the OS X menu bar.

Mountain Lion automatically detects an Apple TV when it’s on the same network and AirPlay icon simply appears in the menu bar. Mirroring sends up-to 1080p video stream with stereo audio. All information sent using AirPlay Mirroring uses encryption.

If you are dying to give AirPlay Mirroring a try and you don’t feel like waiting until July, you can check out AirParrot, an app that can bring AirPlay Mirroring to your Mac and Windows PC right now.

Game Center

Now that Mountain Lion also includes Game Center, and thanks to AirPlay Mirroring, your Mac becomes a game console! Apple showed  a very impressive demo yesterday of an iPad and a new MacBook Pro (yes, Game Center for Mac is cross-compatible with iOS) playing CSR Racing head-to-head, with the Mac streaming to a TV with little to no lag.

Apple TV set

PCMAG‘s Edward Mendelson believes AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS X could be another evidence that the Cupertino-based company will unveil its own television soon: “Apple of course didn’t say anything about the much-rumored Apple-branded television, but I somehow doubt that AirPlay Mirroring got into OS X only because Apple wanted to sell a few set-top boxes,” he said.

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

Apple today unveiled the developer preview of Mountain Lion, a new version of Mac OS X that includes new features like Notification Center, Messages, Game Center, Notes, Reminders and Twitter. But the coolest feature of Mountain Lion is undoubtedly AirPlay Mirroring that lets you stream what’s on your Mac to your HDTV via Apple TV 2.

With AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS, you will be able to stream whatever is on your desktop – webpages, photos, videos,  presentation – directly to your HDTV, with only one click on an AirPlay icon on the OS X menu bar.

AirPlay mirroring has already been available for some iDevices for a while, letting you wirelessly share whatever is on the screen on your iPad 2 or iPhone 4s to your HDTV using Apple TV 2. Now you can do the same thing from your Mac.

Mountain Lion automatically detects an Apple TV when it’s on the same network and AirPlay icon simply appears in the menu bar. Mirroring sends a 720p video stream with stereo audio. All information sent using AirPlay Mirroring uses encryption.

According to Engadget, Apple is also working to let users stream full-screen content directly from iTunes.

Game Center

Now that Mountain Lion also includes Game Center, and thanks to AirPlay Mirroring, your Mac becomes a game console. PC Mag is guessing that you’ll be able to use it with game-style input devices plugged into your Mac’s USB ports.

Both The Verge and Laptop Magazine report that Apple showed them a “very impressive demo” of an iPad and a MacBook Air (yes, Game Center for Mac is cross-compatible with iOS!) playing Real Racing head-to-head, with the Mac streaming to a TV “with little to no lag”. “What we saw was definitely amazing,” said The Verge’s Nilay Patel.

Apple TV set

Apple has been long rumored to be working on an Apple TV set that, according to Gene Munster, could be introduced around WWDC 2012. Edward Mendelson from pcmag.com believes AirPlay Mirroring built into Mac OS X could be another evidence that the Cupertino-based company will unveil its own television soon: “Apple of course didn’t say anything about the much-rumored Apple-branded television, but I somehow doubt that AirPlay Mirroring got into OS X only because Apple wanted to sell a few set-top boxes,” he said.

You may also want to read:
aTV Flash (black) 1.3 for Apple TV 2 released
Rogers and Bell already have the Apple iTV in their labs, controlled with Siri and hand gestures
Jefferies: Apple may introduce television called iTV

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Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

Little by little the apps are coming to the Apple TV. Hacker and iOS developer Steven Troughton-Smith and a hacker called TheMudKip have made it to run iPhone and iPad apps on an Apple TV 2, jailbroken with Seas0nPass. Using @TheMudkip’s MobileX window manager for iOS, and @chpwn’s MobileLaunchpad launcher to go with it, they managed to get multiple iOS apps running natively on Apple TV, without AirPlay. Later on, they even figured out a way to run iPad applications at a full 720p resolution.

Using a custom springboard, the software that powers the app launcher, also allowed for another new feature: side-by-side apps. This lets you see on the big screen all the applications running at a time, e.g. different chat applications.

“Nick had written this amazing window manager for the iPad that replaced the entire homescreen, allowing you to run multiple apps side by side, and I realized this could enable iOS apps on the Apple TV for the first time. We’ve spent the past 2 days modifying everything to work really well on the Apple TV screen size, etc, and getting apps to run,” Troughten-Smith told CNET.

Since the Apple TV doesn’t have a touch screen, the hackers are using a combination of VNC, SSH and the Apple Remote to launch and navigate apps. However, Troughton-Smith said he is working to make it Apple remote-only.

The hack isn’t publically available yet. For any enterprising hackers who want to make a UIKit Apple TV app, Troughton-Smith published an input library needed to get started (to add Apple TV IR input to an iOS app).

You may also want to read:
Apple TV 3 or Apple TV set?
FireCore releases aTV Flash (black) 1.0 to supercharge the Apple TV 2
How to install aTV Flash (black) 1.0 on Apple TV 2

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

There are apps in the App Store that can do similar things (e.g. IMDb, Fandango), but Showreel is claimed to be the first AirPlay-enabled app that lets you watch full length HD movie trailers on Apple TV 2. Although the developer promises to “showcase nothing but the latest and greatest movies”, the movies are, well, not the latest releases and the collection is still quite small. On a good side, trailers are updated weekly, there are no ads and pre-trailer commercials, and the browsing experience on iPad as well as viewing trailers on the big screen in 720p is great. The app is iPad only.

Showreel is available on the App Store for $2.99.

You may also want to read:
Real Racing 2 HD First to Support Wireless Gaming over AirPlay on Apple TV 2
AirPlay-Enabled Apps: Web Browser, Camera and Videos for Apple TV, TVOut Genie! (review)
AirPlay-Enabled Apps: Air Video (review)

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Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

Gizmodo reports that iPhone developer Steven Troughton-Smith has found out that iOS apps can be “easily” installed on the new Apple TV. He discovered that “if you give an app a UIDeviceFamily of 3 it will install on it when signed.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean we can run our apps on the new atv right now: according to Steven, “while you can install apps after modifying its type, you just can’t launch them – there’s no built-in facility to do that.” Someone has to find out how to do this but we don’t expect it will take long.

Steven also has some interesting thoughts on how developers are going to write apps. “The only option I see is UIKit,” he says. “UIKit is familiar to all iOS developers, is very Cocoa-like, and very powerful. In fact, since iOS 3.2, 1280×720 is a supported resolution for developers, mainly for those creating TV-out UIs in iPad apps. Developers have already started crafting ten-foot-UI experiences in existing iOS apps, so it would be a no-brainer for that to translate over to AppleTV wholesale.”

According to him, to make it work, Apple would have to build remote control support into iOS. “But hold on a second, Apple already added that in iOS 4! Effectively, all the pieces are in place to build a remote-control driven 720p iOS app. All Apple needs to do is build the distribution mechanism and open the floodgates, and ‘Universal’ apps would be a definite possibility,” he concludes.

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Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

“We’ve sold a lot of them but it’s never been huge hit,” Jobs said last week. How could we not agree: Apple TV wasn’t a game changer for the living room. But hey, there are hundreds thousands of users completely satisfied with the existing ATV (according to the analysts, Apple might have sold 3 million Apple TV devices worldwide) and most of them never even thought of hacking this mysterious box! That’s why here at Apple TV Hacks, we think Steve has figured it out very well: what the average customer wants from his/her HDTV in the living room is to play latest movies, popular TV shows, family vacation photo slideshow and maybe some music from time to time. We, geeks, need more, that’s obvious, and that’s why we are so disappointed with the new device. The only thing we can do now is to try to squeeze as much as we can out of this hockey puck when we put our hands on it sometime at the end of September.

But before that happens, let’s focus on what we know about the second generation Apple TV so far.

The box

• 3.9 inches (98 mm)x3.9 inches  x0.9 inches (23 mm); 0.6 pounds (1/4th the size of existing ATV)
• built-in power supply
• no power button

Connectivity

• HDMI (cable sold separately)
• Optical audio
• 10/100BASE-T Ethernet
• Micro-USB (for service and support); loses host USB
• Built-in IR receiver

Wireless

• 802.11n Wi-Fi (a/b/g compatible)
• 2.4GHz and 5GHz

Processor
Apple A4 chip (replacing Intel Pentium M that powered the old ATV)

Storage
No internal storage – instant online streaming (iTunes, Netflix, Flickr, Mobile Me, etc.) and local streaming (from your mac or pc via iTunes).
But Steve only said there will be no “storage management”, no details were given on what exactly is inside the box, no details on RAM.

Video formats
H.264 (up to 720p, 30 fps)
MPEG-4 (up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 fps)
Motion JPEG  (up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 fps)

No 1080p, only720p!
According to Engadget, Apple felt that using 720p allowed them to strike a balance between quality and bandwidth.
In comparison to old, hacked ATV, the new device looses 1080p

Audio formats:
HE-AAC (V1), AAC, protected AAC (from iTunes Store), MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV;
Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound pass-through

Photo formats
JPEG, GIF, TIFF

Controller

• Aluminum Apple Remote (included)
• iPhone or iPod touch running Remote app (free). Not so comfortable as Apple Remote device, but facilitates writing: use your device’s QWERTY keyboard to quickly tap out the title instead of clicking letters on the Apple TV screen.

OS
No details on the OS are given by Apple. According to Boing Boing, an Apple spokesperson said that the new Nano and Apple TV don’t use iOS, but other sources reports he has only confirmed that the new Nano doesn’t use this OS.

Since the second generation Apple TV is powered by A4 chip, like other iOS devices, it probably runs some form of iOS, just not identical as iPhone or iPad.

Content

• Movies

-          iTunes rentals available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom:
-          HD: new releases – $4.99, library titles – $3.99
-          SD: new releases – $3.99, library titles – $2.99
-          instant access; you have 30 days to start watching, and once you begin, you can watch as many times as you want in 24 hours
-          availability: often the same day they come out on DVD
-          searching by top movies, title, or genre; trailers, reviews, Rotten Tomatoes rating

Older Apple TVs will continue to work as they have been working up to this point, and they will continue to be able to purchase movies and TV shows even though the new Apple TV is rental-only.

• TV Shows

-          iTunes rentals only available in the US
-          titles from: ABC, ABC Family, Fox, Disney Channel and BBC America
-          commercial free
-          99¢ per episode (HD and SD)
-          once you rent an episode, you have 30 days to press Play. Then it’s yours for the next 48 hours
-          Apple TV keeps track of your favorite shows so the next time you turn on your TV, you can see which season you’re watching and which episodes are new

• Netflix

-          only available in the US
-          Netflix subscription required
-          watch your content right away or add it to your instant-watch queue

• Mobile Me (access to Mobile Me galleries)
• Fickr
• YouTube
• Slidshows (various slideshow themes, music from your iTunes library)
• Internet radio
• Local streaming

-          music, videos and photos streamed from PCs and Mac
-          iTunes 10 required

Coming soon: streaming from iPhone, iPod touch or iPad to the Apple TV with AirPlay, a new feature that will come with iOS 4.2 in November. There will be no need to rent or buy a movie or TV show again if you already have it on one of your iOS devices.

Price and availability
Apple will start shipping the new Apple TV at the of September/beginning of October for $99.

Sadly, there will be no updates for current ATV.

Possible hacks
Hacking the new Apple TV will be much more difficult since it has no USB host (no patchstick, no external hard drive) and hard drive (no room for additional files). “The hacking will probably have to be done via hooking the AppleTV up like a hard drive, and I doubt it will be as easy as the original one,” thinks NitoTV. And if the device is truly based on some form of the iOS, we will rather have to talk about “jailbreaking”, not “hacking”.

But we are sure that together with the great and creative ATV Hacks community we will soon make the new device more “usable”. “We’re committed to developing for the AppleTV platform, and will continue to do so once these new models are available,” said Firecore, the developer behind aTV Flash. Fingers crossed!

Interesting comment from our Facebook page:
“The real question is whether app developers will be able to utilize “air play” for their apps.. If so then apps like HuLu+ pandora ect will be able to work on the new aTV that way and apps like stream-to-me and airVideo will be able to deliver any video codec from your Mac or network storage drive (if you have an iOS device).”

Hands-on
Engadget
WIRED
Ars Technica
Boing Boing

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Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!

There was one more thing coming at the end of Steve’s show today and this time it was one more HOBBY… The new Apple TV is here! This tiny matte-black box (80% smaller than the previous generation) will stream HD (720p) movies for $4,99 and commercial free TV shows for 99 cents  (ABC, ABC Family, Fox, Disney Channel and BBC America are on board;  all rentals, no purchases) and your Netflix content if you are a subscriber. It has HDMI, Ethernet, USB and optical audio ports, Bluetooth and dual band WiFi (802.11 b/g/n at 2.4GHz and 802.11 a/n at 5GHz). There will be no local storage. AirPlay – the new feature that will come with iOS 4.2 in November – will let you to stream movies from any iOS device to your HDTV through the Apple TV. It will be shipping within 4 weeks for the “breakthrough “ price of just $99.

Visit What's on iPhone for the best iPad and iPhone app reviews!
Do you want to feel like a wizard? Check the Kymera wand in Amazon: You can control your Apple TV waving a wand!