Now with 1080p.

I wrote about the new AppleTV (AppleTV2) at considerable length a couple of years ago, seeing it as a transformative device for living room entertainment.

And so it is proving. Any image or video on an iPad can be viewed on your big screen TV and with the latest OS X Mountain Lion upgrade the same can now be said for your laptop or desktop Mac or Hack, as long as it is a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge CPU model with an integrated GPU. The latter is used by the mirroring technology, which does not run through discrete GPUs as used in older Macs. You can check in ‘About this Mac->More Info->System Report->Graphics/Displays’; if ‘Bus:’ does not say ‘Built-In’ mirroring will not work.

Mirroring in use on the MBA 2012.

Apple quietly refreshed the AppleTV a few weeks ago upgrading it from 720p to 1080p definition (AppleTV3). If your TV, like ours, is 720p that’s not a problem. AppleTV3 will render a 720p image. However, if your TV is 1080p then an upgrade to the latest AppleTV3 will use the full definition of the LCD screen. In practice I cannot tell the difference betwen 720p and 1080p until the screen size exceeds 50″ diagonally, but the device remains priced at $99 and works well with all flat panel displays with an HDMI socket. For those with overhead projectors with large display screens, the upgrade is a meaningful enhancement if the projector supports 1080p.

The 720p version was quickly hacked by enthusiasts many of whom want to add XBMC (Xbox 360) functionality to their AppleTV2. Obviously it will be a cold day in hell before Apple does anything to help Microsoft, so hacking is the natural response. At this time, best as I can tell, no one is working on hacking AppleTV3, so if you want the added functionality of a hacked AppleTV2, stick with it, even if it means you are not exploiting the maximum possible definition of a 1080p display.

However, if you like your AppleTV2 as it is, and I do, I recommend upgrading for the simple reason that AppleTV2, when sold on US eBay, averages a selling price of $160, or $60 more than an AppleTV3. The premium results from the devices ‘hackability’. So, even if your TV is only 720p, it’s a free, nay, better than free, upgrade for the day you move to 1080p.

One very notable addition to AppleTV (2 or 3 – just do a software upgrade) is the addition of Hulu Plus, a low ad content TV service. That does not thrill me especially, for even one ad is one too many and I rarely watch TV, but along with your $8/month (you can cancel at will) subscription comes access to all of the extraordinary Criterion Collection of movies. That is very much worth it to this movie buff, when most Criterion DVDs run $20-40. The catalog includes some of the great classics of the cinema, and you can see the complete list by clicking the picture below.

Click the picture to view.

The size, shape and remote codes (for those programming their universal remote) for AppleTV3 are identical to those for AppleTV2, as is the new price. Should Apple market a TV set, you can bet that the functionality of AppleTV will be included, maybe enhanced with voice controls or soemthing like Kinect which recognizes motions.

At its best.

I stand corrected on my column the other day bemoaning the miserable, humorless, crass commercialism of the Olympic Games.

There was one happy moment in which the BBC excelled itself with this humorous video though, being the BBC, it remains unavailable in the US in clean form. An English friend graciously converted it for me and here it is.

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The glory of London seen from the air is well shown, and the whole thing, right down to the Monty Python moment, is outstanding.

And let’s all be grateful for that.

As the McDonald’s Olympics conclude with yet more foreign profits sheltered abroad by our multinationals from the American taxman and its people, I have one admission and two statements to make:

• My time spent watching this tribute to bad food and Big Pharma was precisely 00:00:00
• I saw many of the still photographs taken on auto-everything gear with super-everything lenses, which even Grannie could have taken and remain unimpressed
• The greatest Olympic photograph taken was snapped 44 years ago and it had nothing on earth to do with this sham that purports to be sport

And here it is, from 1968:

Tommie Smith and John Carlos destroy bigotry.

The lord of the Olympics, the American bigot Avery Brundage, had no issue with the German master race and its victors giving the Nazi salute to the assembled crowd in 1936, yet concluded that two black men making a statement of their race’s lot in 1968 was grounds for disqualification. No one remembers that red necked fool today, but Tommie Smith and John Carlos are alive and kicking. And they made a difference unlike any other athlete.

It’s the best thing ever to come out of the Olympics.

Congratulations, however, are due to England, that perpetual underdog in all things competitive. They ran the trains on time, they ordered up good weather and they felt good about themselves, even if their coffers remain empty.