Click here for more information Disclaimer: I am a huge (but no longer kool-aid-drinking) Apple fan.
It's good enough, and the rest of the reviews here attest to that, but now having my own, I have to touch on a couple of things that nobody has mentioned yet.
1) There is no way to shut it off. It sucks 18-22 watts down at all times. 22 watts when playing a movie, 18 watts in "hibernate" mode (which is obviously not the laptop-style hibernate mode one would think... I think it merely turns off the video output). You literally have to unplug it to get it to stop. There is no "shutdown" option or power switch. This I find a little ridiculous. Especially because they bothered to put in a neat startup movie- Did they expect you to watch it only once?
2) It runs very hot (no fan), even when it is "hibernated", and thus cannot be covered by anything or you will affect heat dissipation.
3) It is laggy sometimes. The worst offense an interface can have is to be laggy. If it's busy syncing, fine... just prioritize the user interface, please. (Edit: Even after syncing, it gets laggy sometimes.) A few times I'd hit a few buttons, wait 20 seconds, and then the audio feedback kicks in and does what I had commanded a half minute ago. This is pretty unforgivable. (Perhaps it's because it only has a half gig of RAM.)
4) No 1080p. Just to let you know. 1080i, yes. 1080p, no.
5) If you intend to hook this up to any sort of computer display via a HDMI>DVI cable, be aware that you will be unable to watch rented movies because your computer display will not support HDCP and you will get an error. Why it is still quite feasible to rent the very same movie on a computer via the iTunes Store and watch it on a non-HDCP computer display is left as an exercise to the armchair IP lawyers out there.
If you can get past those things, it's a nice little device. Apple TV with 160GB Hard Drive - MB189LL/A
Apple really needs to advertise and explain this thing better. It's an awesome device that does many things, but it's easier to understand it if you think of it really having only two distinct functions:
1) It's for renting HD movies. Give that new HD TV something to make it shine. Sure Blu-ray has won the format war, but what format war is next? Skip the wars and just stream the video. No clutter of DVDs and players to buy. Yes the selection is small now (it just started a month ago) but it will soon build up to include newer movies as they are released. Beware of old movies being released as HD. Renting "Blazing Saddles" in HD is not going to impress you. So, the only REAL new HD movies are the ones in theaters now and will soon be released for rental. We actually kept our Netflix account for renting the bulk of the older movies and TV shows we still like. Renting an HD movie for $5 is a cheap night of entertainment. I have a 6.0 Mbps internet connection and the HD movies are ready to play in about 1-2 minutes. You watch the movie as the rest of it downloads. I never had it stutter during playback.
2) It's an iPod for your TV. If you use iTunes and have photos, music, and home movies, this makes it easy to view them on your TV. I made my last vacation video in HD by using Final Cut Express and exporting it in the Apple TV format. Just drop that movie into iTunes and it will sync with the Apple TV. Viewing the still shots in HD is really amazing. Being like an iPod, Apple TV only shows content that you already have in iTunes. Don't think of it as some kind of backup drive for your music or movies.
Sure it does some other stuff like watching You Tube, but if the top two features are what you need, then this is for you. The simple "spouse friendly" remote is great too. My wife can now easily play our music collection without my computer being on.
ps: I bought the "take one" version of Apple TV. All I had to do was run the firmware updater and mine is now the same as the Take Two version (5.1 sound and all). The old and new Apple TV's have the same hardware.
One last thing - rentals are paid through the iTunes store so you can use iTunes gift cards to pay for movies!
Enjoy!
PS - one more reason - the $0.99 movie of the week. Apple has started offering a $0.99 movie rental each week. We've had Escape from Alcatraz, The ghost and the darkness, The Dead Zone and others. Not blockbusters, but certainly worth $0.99 and gets you used to the renting experience in an easy way.
What a joy it is to have all my home made movies, originally shot in Super 8 (remember that format?), on my Apple TV.
I had tons of old Super 8 movies, some of them filmed by my dad some 60 years ago. Watching them now required setting up the old family projector, and pulling up the portable white screen. Some movies became dry, and tore in the projector, so watching one of the old movies became a process of stop, remove film, glue it back together, and continue watching.
My brother eventually gave all the movies to a specialized company that converted them all into mpeg format. Once in mpeg, they were transferred to iTunes, and then to the Apple TV via the home network.
What a pleasure it is now to watch my family's old home made movies on my TV screen. It is now a snap to switch between my movies, and by being so accessible, I can now show them to other family members and friends.
The Apple TV is really like an iPod. It is controlled by a very simple remote control with one menu button, a play/pause button, surrounded in a circle by the forward and rewind buttons, and the volume control (`+ and -` buttons also used for navigation). You are going to wish all remote controls were that simple.
Navigating the Apple TV is like navigating an iPod. You can store video, music, and photos. There is a slideshow feature for your pictures that will display your pictures on your TV with background music of your choice. The background music can be chosen at random from your music library.
Though as simple as an iPod to operate, the Apple TV is itself a stripped-down Mac mini, running a version of Mac OS X. When you plug in the Apple TV to your TV, you will not need to do any configuration. It's basically plug-and-play. Audio and video cables (not included) connect it to your TV. There is an HDMI output.
The Apple TV comes with a wireless feature allowing you to wirelessly connect to your home network. However, in order to sync your Apple TV with your iTunes, I would recommend you use an Ethernet cable to connect to your home network. The video, music, and photo transfer will be faster through an Ethernet cable. Once you sync your Apple TV for the first time, you may then disconnect the network cable and use the wireless feature in the Apple TV to update its content.
I also recommend you first start syncing at night. In this way, the syncing process will go on while you are sleeping. My Apple TV is 160 Gigabyte strong, and to put that much information on it might take the better part of a day! In most cases, depending on your hardware, connecting through the network Ethernet cable will make the transfer much faster than connecting wirelessly, particularly over 802.ub, 802.ug, and 802.un networks.
You can sync content from only one computer at a time, and you can't add content manually--for example, by dragging it from iTunes library to the Apple TV icon on iTunes' Source list, as you might do with an iPod. If you choose to sync with a different computer, all the data on the Apple TV will be replaced.
Another nice feature of the Apple TV is its ability to connect to the iTunes store, through your computer (either a Mac or PC), where you can download music and videos. Like the iPod, the Apple TV will neatly categorize your media for you, and automatically download the covers of the music albums and films.
One negative comment I have about the Apple TV is that you cannot transfer the media files on your Apple TV to your computer. It is only a one way process, with files moving from your iTunes to your Apple TV, and not vice versa. So if you want to send an Apple TV to a friend, loaded with your music and video library, your friend cannot connect it to his computer. If he does so, all the media on the Apple TV will be erased when it tries to sync with your friend's iTunes, replacing it with the media files on your friend's computer. This also applies to the iPod. There are software on the internet that claim to address this problem, but I have not tried any of them.
Be careful about earlier versions of Apple TV. Earlier versions don't support streaming videos. Newer versions shipped give you the option of navigating YouTube, and streaming their videos. I think that older versions can be updated to support streaming videos.
Apple TV also has limited support for video formats. This means that you will have to rely on tools like Techspanion's Visual-Hub to convert videos to Apple TV-ready formats. You can also use Apple QuickTime. You cannot directly burn a DVD into iTunes. DVDs also need to be converted in order to have them transferred to your Apple TV.
You can stream movies, however, you can't stream photos. Instead, on the computer synced with the Apple TV, iTunes formats the pictures you select and copies them to the Apple TV's hard drive. Once they're on the Apple TV, you can view a selected album or your entire photo library as a slide show. You can choose from a variety of transitions, as well as determine the display time for each picture.
Apple has chosen to say that generally, 5.1 audio is not supported.
The Apple TV does not offer true HD quality.
Apple Computer Inc. has changed its name to Apple Inc. With the name change, Apple is now promising us gadgetry other than computers. The iPhone is one example. There's more to come. - Mac - Electronics - Wireless - Apple
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