W3matter

Looking at the rear of the new AppleTV is a study in simplifying and looking forward to the future. 

All power is onboard. No need for bricks. With simplified and modern power controllers, this started with the new Mac Mini.

No composite video or audio outputs. Arguably the majority of TV's now have HDMI inputs. Your room pounding AV Receiver probably has 3 of them. They left in the optical audio outputs for purists like myself.

USB Port. Wondering why they left it in. There's no drive, but conceivably you could hack the box through there, or maybe add some kind of external drive?

So, you download all your TV shows off the torrents. You have a paid account on the shady places where you can get all the latest stuff you want for free or next to nothing. You have hundreds of HD movies in your collection. Terabytes of movies and music that you got for free.

Yet you complain that AppleTV does not support your codec.

Wake up, do you think content providers would even have any support for Apple TV if they supported your codec? Even though ATV sells a very small number of units -- still more than Roku, Boxee, and other hardware solutions (combined) are selling.

Why? Because no content producer wants to be associated with a platform that explicitly supports the "pirate" codecs. Thats why. I know, it suxxors, but thats the way it is in the present.

Stick to your Xbox, Happauge boxes, Dell Zino HD, Popcorn Hour or the Xtreamer Pro to handle your pirated content, Cable rips, or other sources. Or man up, and rip your content to mp4 when you've downloaded it. That way at least it can play on everything, and every device out there (goodness, even Apple!!).