Filed under: Hardware, Apple, Apple TV
Apple offers 160 gig Apple TV

Apple's official press release announcing the YouTube component of Apple TV has some interesting tidbits on it. Firstly, a new built to order option of a 160 gig harddrive on Apple TVs that will be available tomorrow for $399. The new beefier Apple TVs will hold 200 hours of video, 36,000 songs, 25,000 photos, or a combination therein.
Also of note is that not all YouTube videos will be available on the Apple TV at launch (mid-June). At first part of the catalog of YouTube videos will be available with more and more added each week until everyone available on the website will be available on your Apple TV.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Andrew said 5:05PM on 5-30-2007
Press release says $399 not $499.
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Jenny said 5:05PM on 5-30-2007
it'd be great if Youtube supports HDTV to match the Apples huge screen :)
Jenny
http://www.spaml.com
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Scott McNulty said 5:06PM on 5-30-2007
Thanks, Andrew.. I mistyped that! Fixed the post.
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brian said 5:13PM on 5-30-2007
Sweet! Given the low quality Flash encoding that YouTube uses, 160 GB oughtta be just about enough to mirror the whole damn site. :-)
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Matt said 5:15PM on 5-30-2007
YouTube, now all we need is ABC.com and every other station that allows people to view episodes of shows for free online
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Modano said 5:25PM on 5-30-2007
It kind of ticks me off that they have quadrupled the size of the disk only 60 days after shipping the original. I love my AppleTV but this is such a huge upgrade in such a short time that I feel sort of punished for being an early adopter.
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oj said 5:25PM on 5-30-2007
now all they need is dvr support like el gato eyetv or others and external drive support(through the usb). and use it with something like the hdhomerun
http://www.dvrupgrade.com/dvr/stores/1/hdhomerun.cfm
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JeffDM said 5:25PM on 5-30-2007
I suppose the option would help. That's not that bad of a deal either, that I can tell. If Apple intended that this thing was only going to stream, then they probably could have stored the OS on a flash card and done without the hard drive. Now, with this upgrade, it should be hard to complain that there isn't enough storage. At least that gives you access to a much bigger library without having to resort to streaming it.
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Blue Sam said 5:58PM on 5-30-2007
blah... Still NO Closed Caption or Subtitle support.
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WILL said 6:22PM on 5-30-2007
With the 160 GB drive I wonder if will I be able to move my iTunes library to the Apple TV and free up some space on my poor little Powerbook?
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YodaMac said 6:48PM on 5-30-2007
Unless something changes, you won't be able to remove content from your Powerbook once it's Synced to the AppleTV - if you do, then the AppleTV will remove it as well. No way around that . ('cept for using some weird workarounds)
I'm bothered about this increase in Harddrive space, since AppleTV was originally meant to be a streaming option for iTunes - not media storage.
I stream all but my photos and small amount of music, and even HD stuff works fine. I'm not worried, just curious about the direction Apple is taking with this...
Steve even mentioned it as a DVD replacement for the living room.
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Jason Golden said 6:51PM on 5-30-2007
I'm kind of bummed about buying a 40GB in March and now seeing the 160GB option for only $100 more. Oh well, such is the early adopter life.
What I'd like to know: will Apple upgrade mine for me for, say, $129?
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mentalsticks said 8:26PM on 5-30-2007
I agree with Modano and Jason Golden. I'm rather pissed of with this upgrade. 40GB is just not enough for this kind of machine but as there was no other option available I decided to get an AppleTV anyway. And now I'm being punished for my early-adapting, which sucks. Big time. Let's just hope there's some kind of upgrade program.
I'm quite angry.
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mentalsticks said 8:28PM on 5-30-2007
If there's no upgrade program, the very least is to give official support to home upgrading.
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JeffDM said 10:37PM on 5-30-2007
"punished for being an early adopter"
You do know that being an early adopter of any technology from any company is like an S&M session, right? In many cases, you pay more only to become the beta tester. The company will likely either introduce a better successor at a lower price, or discontinue support and kill the product line, leaving you with a potentially buggy product.
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Matteo said 4:29AM on 5-31-2007
I also feel weird about having purchased the AppleTV with 40Gb as soon as available. The problem I currently face is not the 160Gb HD, but rather the complete lack of content in Europe. I really didn't buy such a device, HD capable, to watch home made videos by some student... I wanted to:
- watch my own home made movies in HD (I can do that)
- watch and buy/rent TV series and Movies (this option is nowhere near in sight outside the US, and I honestly did expect this and not You Tube to be on top of Apple's list)
- Attach an external HD via USB so that Apple could have spared time in upgrading the device (they only have to enable AN EXISTING USB port and I wouldn't have any problems)
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nick said 5:42AM on 5-31-2007
I live in Europe & I have found if you buy iTunes prepaid cards you can use the US store to get video content. Just a possible work around to get the content you want (I have seasons of The Office, History Channel stuff, etc - never had a problem)...
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artifex said 8:19AM on 5-31-2007
Never buy a first generation product from Apple, guys. Be glad you learned the lesson so cheaply, and your units don't actually have real problems. :)
BTW I bought my black Macbook less than 60 days before they updated the specs. Should I get to whine, too? :)
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Modano said 10:22AM on 5-31-2007
artifex: Did you buy your MacBook on the model's release date? What if you had, and they released an 8 GHz model 2 months later? Yeah, you could whine then. I've bought 1st gen Apple products for 23 years and this is the first one I regret.
JeffDM: My only complaint is such an enormous upgrade in such a short time. If it had been a more incremental upgrade, say, to 60 gigs, it wouldn't sting so much. I know, I know, c'est la vie, caveat emptor. But this is like they're admitting an error. Still, I love my AppleTV.
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Phil said 12:59PM on 5-31-2007
Sort of bummed too. I was going to wait to buy one until the first upgrade appeared but then one day while cruising Best Buy my wife made the mistake of saying "you can buy one", so I did.
Oh well.
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