Seas0nPass, the popular jailbreak tool for the 2010 Apple TV (720p) has just received an update that will allow it to jailbreak the latest Apple TV software. Apple has just released the Apple TV software update taking it to version 5.0.1; it is actually version 5.1.1 inline with other iOS devices but Apple still files the version numbers differently for whatever reason. Unfortunately the jailbreak is a tethered type which means if your device needs to be rebooted, it will need to be plugged into a PC or Mac as part of the reboot process.

Seas0nPass 0.8.4 released. Adds [tethered] support for ver. 5.0.1 (iOS 5.1.1) on ATV2. ATV3 update still in progress

If you have a 2010 Apple TV (720p) and need help jailbreaking it, be sure to check out our full how-to guide.

Source: @firecore

Apple has made 1080p TV shows and music available for streaming and purchase via the iTunes Store. The price is the same as the previous 720p HD content, but is the image quality better enough to justify the bigger download sizes and increased storage they'll require?

First of all it's worth remember that, as of now, only the new iPad and the new Apple TV, in addition to iTunes on the desktop, can even play back 1080p content. If you primarily watch your iTunes TV shows and movies on an iPad 2 and iPhone 4S or older device, 720p is all you can play. That makes the choice simple -- there is none.

[Clarification: As pointed out in the comments below, you can load 1080p content onto iPad 2 or iPhone 4S, but the screen density is insufficient to play them at native resolution. For streaming, there's no reason to go 1080p. For purchases, you may want to swallow the size difference and go 1080p simply to future-proof your collection.]

If you're getting the new iPad and/or the new Apple TV, however, you have the choice. With one flip of the Settings, you can go from 720p to 1080p. That makes the choice not so simple.

Ars Technica has taken a look and compared 720p vs 1080p content from iTunes, and the results are surprising. 1080p iTunes content isn't that much bigger than 720p, but still manages to look better.

n the iTunes 10.6 preferences under Store, you can select whether HD downloads come in 720p or 1080p resolution. In the iTunes Store, movies conveniently list the file size for the selected format. A couple of examples: Hugo is 1.74GB in SD, 3.99GB in 720p, and 4.84GB in 1080p. Monty Python and the Holy Grail is 1.00, 2.91, and 3.65 gigabytes, respectively. However, to determine the quality difference, I looked at two (currently free) TV episodes: episode 1 of season 5 of The Big Bang Theory, and the first episode of Awake.

The reason Ars gives is that the new Apple TV supports High Profile H.264 decompression up to level 4.0, while the iPhone 4S and the new iPad support it up to level 4.1. That means they can handle more bits per second, and otherwise better optimize quality vs. file size. However. Ars also found the amount of extra detail in the 1080p versions varied greatly between videos and even within videos. In other words, 1080p didn't always make a big difference to the overall quality of the experience.

While not directly comparable, if you want to look at the difference between 720p and 1080p without buying or downloading entire movies or TV show episodes, iTunes Movies Trailers is a good resource. I checked out a bunch of recent trailers, including The Avengers and noticed not only differences in quality but in color fidelity as well (look at the greens in the image up top). File sizes weren't outrageously different either.

Check out their full report via the link below, and let us know if you're going to be flipping your iTunes switch to 1080p.

Source: Ars Technica

Best Buy is currently running an online survey asking for its customers views on a potential Apple HDTV. The survey suggests that the Apple iTV television could be available as a 42” 1080p LED Flat Panel set that will run iOS applications, stream movies and deliver other entertainment programs from the internet. The cost could be as much as $1499.00.

Apple finally reinvents what a TV can do," saying that it'll run iOS, support iCloud, be controllable from an iPhone or iPad, and have access to Netflix, YouTube, and Flickr — in other words, it's an Apple TV wrapped in an actual television set, exactly as you'd expect.

Source: The Verge

iPad 3 is likely up next, and the big rumor is Retina display on the order of 2048x1536. Less certain but still desirable are quad-core chips and LTE networking. Much the same rumors apply to the iPhone 5, just replace the already-present Retina display with an oft-requested 4-inch screen. You could throw a 7-inch iPad in there for good measure to.

Is it something subtler you're waiting for, like NFC support, or something more dramatic like 3D?

Apple TV hasn't been updated in over a year, so are you really craving some 1080p or are you all about the Apple iTV televion rumors now?

Maybe it's the Mac you want -- more specifically a 15-inch MacBook Air? A redesigned Mac Pro? If you could get just one big hardware gift from Apple this year, what would it be?

Give us your vote up top and then give us the details in the comments below!

A huge Great White Shark was spotted in the wild by a boat owner and luckily for us, he was an iPhone 4S user. We already knew that the iPhone 4S was capable of capturing some fantastic 1080p video content but when you see the result with this magnificent 18 foot long shark in it, it really brings it home. [NSFW-L]

This great white circled our 21ft boat for 20 minutes and made contact with the boat (slapped its tail on the boat). We were about 25 miles southeast of Wrightsville Beach.

There are not many moments when you come face to face with such a stunning sight in the wild. No matter how bad your hat may be, Harry, there is no better phone to have in your pocket than the iPhone 4S!

Source: YouTube via Daring Fireball

Some major retailers seem to be selling the Apple TV 2 at a discount, leading 9to5Mac and TechCrunch to speculate a new model may be incoming and soon.

It's also being tagged as the 2010 Apple TV, leading to further speculation a 2011 model is nigh, though I think the Apple TV 2 has been referred to as Apple TV (2010) almost from launch to differentiate it from the original, non-iOS model.

If there is a new Apple TV in the works, here's hoping it gets an Apple A5 chipset for easy 1080p handling. (And no, there's no expectation of Siri so let's not anyone start going pre-emptively nuts, okay?)

Either way, if you want a cheap(er) gift for the holidays, head on over and grab an $89 Apple TV 2 on Amazon while you can.

Source: 9to5Mac, TechCrunch

A band claims to be the first to have shot a music video using just a couple of iPhone 4S's. With every release of a new iPhone, someone claims to be the first to have shot something in its entirety using the phones video camera. This time we have a band called Turnback who managed to get hold of a couple of iPhone 4S’s on launch day and set about shooting a music video.

On October 14th, 2011 we received 2 brand new iPhone 4S smart phones. On Sunday October 16th we shot the video at the famous NYC nightclub Webster Hall. Over the next several days, with little sleep and lots of coffee, the final video was finished.

Source: Razorianfly

Mark Gurman from 9to5Mac has spotted something interesting deep inside the iOS 5 file system -- code references to a next generation Apple TV 3,1. Given Apple's internal naming conventions, a move the current Apple TV 2,1 to an Apple TV 3,1 should signify a major upgrade, which could lend credence to rumors of a Apple A5 on the horizon, and perhaps even the 1080p video muscle that comes with it.

Another A5-powered, iPhone 4S feature that would be great to see? Siri, Apple's artificially intelligent voice control system.

Source: 9to5Mac

One of the many features announced on the iPhone 4S is 1080p HD video recording. This is a nice improvement over the iPhone 4's 720p HD video recording. The goodness does not stop there, however. In addition to 1080p, the iPhone 4S is equipped with video stabilization to help steady those non-professional, bouncy video recording skills.

Since the iPhone 4S video camera is the same 8MP camera used for stills, it will benefit from the larger aperture and improved illumination sensor, bringing you more accurate colors and better low-light videos.

You can see examples of the camera and stabilization on Apple's website. I encourage you to check them out, it really shows off how great video recording on the iPhone 4S will be.

Source: Apple

If you have an iPad running iOS 5, it looks like you can now sync 1080p videos. Previously, iTunes would refuse to sync 1080p video to iPad, and it still won't sync to an iPhone or iPod touch. However, since the Apple TV also runs iOS, could we be seeing support for 1080p in the near future? Will iTunes begin to support 1080p movies? Will our bandwidth?

A string has also been spotted in the iOS 5 SDK which seems to allow 1080p video-exporting to iMovie, Photos and third-party apps. Does this confirm the rumour that the iPhone 5 will have a 8MP camera which may support 1080p video recording? May the iPad 3 get a better camera too?

What do you think?

[9to5Mac] [9to5Mac]

XBMC is now available as a jailbreak app for the Apple TV (2010), iPad and iPhone 4. XBMC, for those that do not know, is a free open source media center application, that until today was only available for Linux, OSX, Windows and the original Xbox.

The Apple TV version is a full XBMC install and allows full network sharing of media, hardware decoding of 720p and 1080p movies plus everything else that XBMC has to offer. The iPad version also offers full hardware accelerated video playback and network access to media. The iPhone 4 has been included in the release however the devs do point out that navigation is a bit frustrating.

The app is jailbreak only and you will not find it in the App Store anytime soon. It is free to install, so what are you waiting for? Check out the videos after the break, one running on the Apple TV and the other on the iPad then let us know if you’re going to be jailbreaking and installing XBMC!

[xbmc]

As Apple TV (2010) makes its way out into the world people are figuring out more of what you can and can't do with it, including Engadget who says there's 1080p in (but not out) via iTunes:

We just ran some tests on the AppleTV's playback limits by streaming 1080p movie trailers in iTunes and managed to verify murmurs saying the device can accept 1080p content. Unfortunately, output is a different story, since it downscales the image back to 720p on your display

TUAW meanwhile plugged it into PhoneView to access the AFC service area, tried Ping (the network IP command, not iTunes social music!), VLC, used TinyUmbrella to save SHSH blobs, and more:

You can register your Apple TV device in Xcode (it shows up immediately) to the iOS developer portal but you cannot perform any actual development -- yet. Xcode complains that Apple TV does not "support development". Bummer that.

Sounds like there will be fun times ahead, especially for the Jailbreak community.

[Engadget, TUAW]

Can the iPhone 3GS play back 720p and even 1080p source videos, perhaps even output them to an HDTV? Looks like it might, according to WeiPhone.com who claim to have gotten just such functionality working via the FileAid app.

Of course, we've heard the iPhone 3GS chipset was capable of recording in 720p before. Hey, this time last year we even heard the older, less-powerful iPhone 3G might be able to handle 1080p.

So, while not surprising, it's important to remember that the iPhone 3GS has a 320p (480x320 to be exact) display, so actually playing the files on the device -- aside from heat and battery life concerns -- would result in downscaling to such an extent that it's pretty much pointless (perhaps why Apple doesn't surface it as a feature at this point?)

It is interesting to consider, however, that Apple has another music event just a couple weeks away, and that Microsoft is making noise about the Zune HD outputting 720p to an external display. If Apple could flip a switch in iPhone 3.1 and enable 720p or 1080p overkill out via AV cables (better yet -- HDMI cable!) then that's one less checkbox in competitors' corner, and one more feature for iPhone and iPod touch users to enjoy.

(Of course, bigger video means more storage, like 32GB in an iPhone and 64GB in a presumed third-gen iPhone touch... Hmm... Maybe I was only partially crazy to predict an iPhone HD last year?)

[via iLounge]