Engadget's tasty scoop on Wednesday suggests that the long-rumoured but still-mythical Apple TV hardware refresh would lack 1080p output. As is fairly routine now, weblogs, forums, and Twitter exploded with "ZOMG APPLE #FAIL" and similar thoughtful criticism. But assuming it's true, is this really that surprising? Everyone automatically assumes 1080p is the natural choice but I'm not sure it's that simple.
Notwithstanding (slightly dubious) recent rumours of a new video codec capable of pushing out 4096x2160, iTunes today can only offer high definition video in 720p. To move that to 1080p would require 2.25 more disk space on the iTunes servers and the same increase in dat
