Looks like Apple has temporarily turned on streaming of purchased TV shows on the Apple TV for customers in the UK, Canada and Australia on Wednesday. Users from these countries have been able to purchase the episodes directly on Apple TV 2 and stream it to the device. These were actual purchases, not rentals, and cost between free and $2.49 in Canada and about $2.99 AUD in Australia. According to GigaOM, only Aardman Studios, A&E, History Channel, PBS, PBS Kids, Vivendi Entertainment and Viz Media appear to have made their content available as of yet.

Yesterday, users started reporting that TV Show menu has disappeared from the Apple TV, so it looks like Apple removed this feature again. According to iPhoneinCanada, Apple did it because “the update was mistakenly sent out early, or the fact it wasn’t working properly.”

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Apple TV 3 or Apple TV set?
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FireCore releases aTV Flash (black) 1.0 to supercharge the Apple TV 2

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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!

Back in October, 9to5Mac found an evidence for a next-generation Apple TV being in the works – a reference to ‘Apple TV 3,1’ (current model is listed as 2,1) inside the iOS 5 file system. The number changing from 2 to 3 should signify a major upgrade. 9to5Mac’s Mark Gurman believed the device would get a dual-core A5 processor (that would open door to true 1080p) and a bluetooth support.

This Monday Gurman found that a new codename – J33 – has been assigned to Apple TV in iOS 5.1. According to Gurman, iOS release history tells us that Apple assigns a proper codename to products that move closer to release.

Now 9to5Mac has found that the next-generation Apple TV will include Bluetooth 4.0 technology, what is believed to be further evidence that an Apple TV refresh will soon be upon us. Gurman speculates that low-power Bluetooth 4.0 technology could bring a bunch of new input devices to Apple TV: Bluetooth remote with a built-in noise-canceling microphone to take Siri commands or some sort of touchscreen game controller – like a standalone version of the iOS Remote app. With the FM Radio chip in the new Apple TV, Apple could theoretically include radio streaming support.

On the other hand, there is a lot of evidence that Apple is working on its own TV set. The new rumors come, once again, from an Apple analyst Gene Munster. Munster just said at Business Insider’s IGNITION: Future of Media conference that Apple is going to launch a TV next year. Not a set-top box, a TV set. According to BI, “Munster is so sure an Apple TV set is coming that he told anyone in the audience who is thinking of buying a TV to wait, because Apple’s is going to be awesome.”

Here is what Munster thinks:

• Apple TV will be a full-fledged TV set, not an external gadget like the current Apple TV that you have to plug into your TV set.
• This is because Apple thinks people hate to plug in external gadgets.
• Apple TVs will come in a range of sizes, in contrast to most Apple products, which are one-size-fits-all. Part of Apple’s goal here will be to appeal to young Apple fanatics who can’t afford or don’t have room for a 50-inch flat screen.
• Apple’s TVs will be priced at TWICE the prevailing market price for a normal TV: $1,600, for example, for a TV of a similar size from another manufacturer that might cost $800.
• The magic of Apple’s TV will be seamless integration with your other Apple devices and service. The TV will come with a standard remote, but you’ll also be able to control it with your iPhone or iPad or via Siri. You’ll also be able to download console and other games, content, etc., from iTunes, the App Store, and iCloud.
• Apple’s TV will be the first TV that thinks the way you do. Instead of trying to remember what channel is ESPN is on, for example, you’ll just fire up (or say) “ESPN.”
• You’ll still have to have a cable subscription and cable box because Apple doesn’t have enough content otherwise. But the only thing you’ll have to do is screw the co-ax cable into the back of the TV set.
• Apple will launch its TVs for the holiday season next year.

There is no doubt Apple is working on its own TV set but the 2012 release seems highly unlikely. Most probably, Apple will release an updated Apple TV box (Apple TV 3?) sometime next year, and we will not see the Apple-branded TV until 2013, maybe even 2014.

You may also want to read:
Sony CEO: No doubt that Steve Jobs was developing an Apple TV set
Bluetooth coming to Apple TV 2 with iOS 5
How to Jailbreak Apple TV 4.4.3 with Seas0nPass – Tethered
Giveaway: aTV Flash (black) for 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!

Both Amazon and Best Buy are now selling the Apple TV 2 for $89, $10 lower than the original price. Amazon also added “2010” label next to the product name, suggesting there will be 2011 or 2012 model coming soon. When? According to AppleInsider, the price drop doesn’t suggest an imminent release of an updated model “as it is likely too late in the holiday season for Apple to launch a new product. The last time the company released new hardware in November was the Core 2 Duo MacBook in 2006.” However, TechCrunch’s Matt Burns believes that the new Apple TV may be released in the coming days: “The holiday spending spree is in full effect and Apple isn’t one to ignore shopping trends. If it’s not out soon, the next version probably wouldn’t be released until 2012,” he says.

There are rumors flying that Apple has already started the production of the Apple TV set. According to analyst Gene Munster, the new Apple TV, controlled by Siri, “will be the most revolutionary product ever created.” Munster believes that the device will be introduced around WWDC 2012.

Last week Sony CEO Howard Stringer said that he has “no doubt” that Steve Jobs was developing an Apple TV set. “That’s what we’re all looking for”, he noted.

You may also want to read:
Sony CEO: No doubt that Steve Jobs was developing an Apple TV set
How to Jailbreak Apple TV 2 on iOS 5 (Apple TV 4.4) Using Seas0nPass – Tethered
How to Watch Hulu 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!

Speaking at a breakfast hosted by The Wall Street Journal, Sony CEO Howard Stringer said the company is working on a “different type of TV” to re-energize the television market. Hi didn’t give any details on what Sony is developing but said “there’s a tremendous amount of R&D going into a different kind of TV set”. Stringer also said that he has “no doubt” that Steve Jobs was developing an Apple TV set. “That’s what we’re all looking for”, he noted.

Stringer admitted that he spent the last five years building a platform so he can compete against Steve Jobs. “It’s finished, and it’s launching now”, he said. He was referring to Sony’s “four screens strategy” designed to seamlessly sync smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions. This includes Sony’s own acclaimed network services, like the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network. Stringer believes the company it’s well positioned to produce the changes needed in the making and selling of televisions, even as it faces design-savvy competitors like Apple.

There are rumors flying that Apple has already started the production of the Apple TV set. According to analyst Gene Munster, the new Apple TV, controlled by Siri, “will be the most revolutionary product ever created.” He believes that the device will be introduced around WWDC 2012.

You may also want to read:
How to Jailbreak Apple TV 2 on iOS 5 (Apple TV 4.4) Using Seas0nPass – Tethered
Apple TV 4.4 Software Released
Media Player 0.9.4 for Apple TV 2 Now Available

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!

A freshly baked version of Media Player for Apple TV 2 has been released by Firecore. Version 0.9.4 adds new folder artwork in Grid View, loop and shuffle playlist options, support for large photo collections and comes with a bunch of improvements and bug fixes.

What’s new in version 0.9.4?

• Added new folder artwork in Grid View
• Added loop and shuffle playlist options
• Added TV Show series cover art in Grid View and Top Shelf
• Added top to bottom and right to left navigation in grid view
• Added global setting for enabling/disabling subtitles
• Added support for large photo collections
• Added support for folders containing dot (‘.’) in their name
• Added (watched) view options in List View (use Play/Pause button to switch mode)
• Improved metadata caching logic
• Improved TV Show filename parsing
• Improved Grid View stability
• Improved metadata fetching speed
• Resolved issues with audio file metadata fetching
• Resolved issues with chapter selection screen layout observed on short files
• Resolved issues with metadata reloading in Grid View
• Resolved issues with TV Shows aired date
• Resolved issues with hangs on certain DVD menus
• Resolved minor memory management issues
• Resolved issues with scrolling in Top Shelf
• Resolved issues with folder names overlapping in Grid View
• Minor UI improvements

Media Player 0.9.4 can be installed on your ATV2 (with aTV Flash black already installed) through the Maintenance –> Manage Extras menu.

You may also want to read:
aTV Flash 4.4 for original Apple TV now available
aTV Flash (black) RC1 for Apple TV 2 Now Available
How to Jailbreak Apple TV 2 on iOS 5 (Apple TV 4.4) Using Seas0nPass – Tethered

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!

This week in “Apple TV News from the Web”:

1. Steve and the TV puzzle
2. Apple is already building prototype TV sets
3. The Apple iTV gets mocked up
4. Hulu Plus coming to Apple TV
5. Apple TV and Siri

We are open for submissions: if you find anything related to Apple TV and you think it may fit here, send us a tweet or a Facebook comment and we’ll post it the coming week.

—————-

1. Steve and the TV puzzle

From the new biography of Steve Jobs author Walter Isaacson said that the new Apple TV could be the best innovation from the iPhone to the present. With this TV you will not have to use your remote and also you will not have to struggle with movies, everything will be just a “touch” away. The new TV would be synced with all of the devices and with iCloud, Steve Jobs didn’t want users to complicate with DVD players and cable channels.

TUAW, Steve “finally cracked” the TV puzzle, says bio
Computerworld, About this Apple TV revolution chatter

2. Apple is already building prototype TV sets

The analyst Gene Munster, who anticipated Apple TV set from a long time, says there are rumors that the company have already started the production. According to Munster, the new Apple TV, controlled by Siri, “will be the most revolutionary product ever created.” He believes that the device will be introduced around WWDC 2012. Also, on Sept-11, an Asian component supplier said that the prototype from Apple TV is in works.

CNN, Piper Jaffray: Apple is already building prototype TV sets

3. The Apple iTV gets mocked up

Soon after the rumors about the Apple TV set started to fly around, the new product got mocked up. Guilherme M. Schasiepen an artist on Flickr, said that iTV combines the best of Apple, with a multi-touch screen, iTV application, HD effects, Siri and iCloud.

9to5mac, iTV gets mocked up

4. Hulu Plus coming to Apple TV

The Hulu Plus app may run in the Apple TV 2. The first thing crossing your mind is that there has to be some technical issues, that the service isn’t available on the atv yet. Well, there are only political. Seems that the Hulu Plus app could get more sales that iTunes, and Hulu also wanted to sell itself to Google. But 9to5mac has gotten word that “inside Apple there are Apple TVs running the Hulu Plus app natively. The app is feature complete and ready to roll out to Apple TV users on current builds”. We should wait and see.

9to5mac, Hulu Plus app and Apple TV

5. Apple TV and Siri

As you can read from the news above, Steve Jobs was quoted saying that he made the final invention on Apple TV. The rumors are spreading to the web and many are speculating that the new Apple TV set could be controlled by Siri. Here, you can already see what an Apple TV without any physical controller can be, thanks to the newest episode from “30 Rock”, where Alec Baldwin boasts with his new voice recognition TV.

[image by Guilherme Schasiepen]

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!

Firecore has finally released aTV Flash (black) Release Candidate 1 for the Apple TV 2. RC1 adds a number of new features including a brand new ‘grid view’ browsing mode (allows you to browse through media by simply viewing a grid of posters, instead of a list), huge subtitle related improvements, support for Apple TV 4.4 (iOS 5), and other performance and playback related improvements.

Here is the complete list of new features and improvements:

• Added grid view and pre-playback view options
• Added bulk metadata fetching with growl-like status
• Added fetched names in list view
• Added hardware decoding for .m2ts files
• Added support for embedded subtitles (MKV, M4V, etc…)
• Added support for ISO (DVD) files
• Added TV Show metadata fetching
• Added metadata correction for Movies and TV Shows
• Added movie title in Top Shelf (instead of filename)
• Added DSI ping for better operation with AFP shares
• Added folder tagging
• Added metadata view indicator
• Added support for metadata overriding using xml files
• Added DVD menu buffering
• Added support for subtitles with invalid timestamps
• Added support for AppleTV 4.4 (iOS 5)
• Added subtitle ‘Weight’ setting
• Added option to show/hide local files
• Improved data buffering and playback performance
• Improved XSUB subtitle support
• Improved network error handling
• Improved filename parsing for metadata fetching
• Improved NAS drives support and increased connection timeout
• Improved video loading process
• Improved DVD menu handling
• Improved playback position detection
• Improved memory footprint
• Improved SMB share handling
• Resolved DVD subtitle issues
• Resolved Voiceover related issues
• Resolved audio synchronization issues
• Resolved problems when streaming from an AirPort Extreme
• Resolved AFP related issue when resuming after a long pause
• Resolved issues that caused the first subtitle section to be skipped
• Resolved performance and crash related issues for certain DVD files
• Resolved audio playback issues when the connection to Last.fm fails
• Resolved potential issues in shares handling and filename processing
• Resolved AFP related crashes
• Resolved .dvdmedia extensions and folder images not hiding
• Resolved floating crash during metadata fetching
• Resolved various cloud backup issues
• Many other miscellaneous fixes

RC1 is available through the Downloads tab in your account. If you’re already running aTV Flash (black) on your Apple TV all the new features can be installed through the Maintenance –> Manage Extras menu.

Note: Installing RC1 requires Apple TV 4.2 or later.

You may also want to read:
How to Jailbreak Apple TV 2 on iOS 5 (Apple TV 4.4) Using Seas0nPass – Tethered
Media Player 0.9.1 for Apple TV 2 Released
aTV Flash (black) Beta6 for Apple TV 2 Now Available

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!

This week in “Apple TV News from the Web”:

1. Siri on Apple TV?
2. Real Racing 2 AirPlay and Party Play
3. Coming to Apple TV – iTunes Match
4. Movie streaming

We are open for submissions: if you find anything related to Apple TV and you think it may fit here, send us a tweet or a Facebook comment and we’ll post it the coming week.

—————-

1. Siri on Apple TV?

Now here’s an interesting idea, the intelligent personal assistant from iPhone 4S, Siri, could be integrated in your Apple TV. It would be amazing for us to get away from the remote controllers and finally use this great assistant. In the near future, we will be able to simply talk to our TVs, let’s hope they will talk back.

9to5mac, Is Siri coming to your television

2. Real Racing 2 Airplay and Party Play

Real Racing 2 comes with an amazing update, like AirPlay with the Party Play mode. They also fixed the bugs and increased the memory optimizations. The popular car racing game from Firemint will definitely take advantage of the new iOS 5 and iPhone 4S/iPad 2 so you can enjoy a great performance.

Firemint, Party Play Update

3. Coming soon to Apple TV – iTunes Match

Apple is bringing another great feature to the owners of little black boxes. If you will subscribe to soon-to-be-released  iTunes Match, you will be able to access your entire music collection from iCloud — including songs you’ve imported from CDs or bought somewhere other than iTunes — right from your Apple TV. The service will be $24.99 a year.

iTunes Match has a scan-and-match feature — all the songs in your iTunes library are scanned and then matched with those available on the iTunes Store. Matched songs are instantly added to your iCloud library with no uploading needed. Any remaining songs are automatically uploaded from your computer to iCloud.

4. Movie streaming

Apple could be streaming movies on iTunes Store, in fact, they are negotiating with the film studios to make this happen. Imagine that in the near future you can stream movies or TV shows to your favorite devices from Apple with transferring them. You don’t have to search for films that can be played only with an iOS device. In the future we may have a simple solution for this.

TUAW, Apple negotiating for streaming movies on iTunes Store

You may also want to read:
How to Jailbreak Apple TV 2 on iOS 5 (Apple TV 4.4) Using Seas0nPass – Tethered
Apple TV 2 Software Update 4.4.1 – Released and Pulled (Updated)
AirServer 3.0 brings AirPlay to your Mac (Updated: Giveaway!)

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!

Firecore has just updated Seas0nPass to support a TETHERED jailbreak of the new Apple TV 4.4 (iOS 5) software (also supported is the 4.4.1 update). A tethered jailbreak means every time there is a need to reboot your Apple TV, you will have to connect it to a computer. The new Seas0nPas doesn’t support XBMC, Plex, Remote HD and Rowmote plugins yet, so think twice before deciding to upgrade to 4.4 and run the jailbreak.

If the support for Media Player, Couch Surfer, NitoTV, Last.fm, Weather, RSS Feeds and Overflow and the new Apple TV 4.4 features, like AirPlay Mirroring, Photo Stream, NHL and WSJ Live are enough to convince you to update, you can then jailbreak your atv following these steps:

1. Download version 4.4 (9A334v) or 4.4.1 (9A335a) and save the IPSW in an easy to find location.
2. Download the latest version of Seas0nPass.
3. Open Seas0nPass then Option + click (Mac) or Shift + click (PC) the Create IPSW button and select the new IPSW file that was downloaded in step #1.
4.  Seas0nPass will complete the jailbreak and restore process automatically.
5. After the restore is complete, move the AppleTV to your TV and follow the steps for performing a tethered boot:

Using Seas0nPass for a ‘tethered boot’

After jailbreaking your Apple TV with Seas0nPass your device requires a tethered boot. This means it must be connected to a computer for a brief moment during startup.

Note: The Apple TV MUST be disconnected from the computer (for at least a brief moment) after restoring in iTunes for the tethered boot process below to work properly.

Step 1: Open Seas0nPass and select the ‘Boot Tethered’ option.

Step 2: When prompted, connect the AppleTV to your computer via USB. Wait for the rapid flashing light then connect the power. Once both are connected hold both the ‘MENU’ and ‘PLAY/PAUSE’ buttons for 7 seven seconds.

Step 3: Seas0n Pass will complete the tethered boot automatically. Once complete, remove the USB cable and connect the HDMI cable.

Done!

You may also want to read:
Apple TV 2 Software Update 4.4.1 – Released and Pulled
Apple TV 4.4 Software Released
How to Watch Hulu 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!

Apple has released a minor software update for Apple TV 2 on Monday. Version 4.4.1 (build 9A335A) was supposed to fix an issue that required a “small number of Apple TV units” to be connected to iTunes in order to complete the update. There were no new features in this release. Apple later pulled the 4.4.1 update after reports from the Apple TV users that the new update was causing even more issues (bricking the devices) than version 4.4. We will let you know as soon as the new software is out again.

Update: Apple has started pushing iOS 4.4.1 again. Let us know in comments if you have any problems with this update.

You may also want to read:
Apple TV 4.4 Software Released
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How to Watch Hulu 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!