Along with the new iPad, Apple announced a new third generation version of its Apple TV set-top box.
The Cupertino Company first announced that with iCloud users would now be able to store their iTunes movies in the cloud, in Full HD 1080p quality. That inevitably led on to the announcement of an Apple TV that could capably stream that sort of quality over the web. We’ve got an iPad that can now do that with its Retina Display, and now Apple has a set-top box capable of doing the same, albeit using your HDTV to display the movies.
Whereas the second generation Apple TV was capable of streaming content in HD, that content was limited to the ‘HD Ready’ standard of 720p. Apple TV 3.0 has an faster, more capable processor, which means it can easily handle beautiful Full HD content with ease.
To boost the amount of Full HD content available, Apple has signed up Netflix to provide a host of movies in 1080p quality.
Apple TV 3.0 features a new streamlined interface, and also allows the user to retrieve their iTunes music playlists from iCloud. It’ll still do all the same stuff as the current Apple TV; which means streaming TV and movies from various apps and suppliers, streaming images from your iPad and iPhone using Photo Stream and much more.
Interestingly Apple didn’t show the Apple TV 3.0 at the event, merely giving us a demo of the software in action. The device was shown to journalists after the company’s keynote, where it was plain to see that from the outside, Apple TV 3.0 is the same as the second generation.
The third generation Apple TV is available to buy now from Apple’s online store, with the same £99 asking price as the previous model.
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