Apple MA711LL/A TV with 40GB Hard Drive
See it at Amazon.com for $198.99Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
Amazon Customer Reviews
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(5 out of 5)What it's designed to do, it does extremely well.
I was a little hesitant about the AppleTV when it was first announced, with the unofficial named of iTV, back in August of 2006. However, once I got one, and have had it for about a week now, I have become convinced. It does exactly what it was was designed to do, does it extremely well, and is utterly hassle free. If only everything were this simple!
Now, I have a huge DVD collection counting well into the hundreds, and I would rather own the movies I like on disc than download them. Then again, working in the Animation and Visual Effects industry, I tend to be very interested in watching all the DVD extras which are not available on the iTunes store. I don't care about watching my photo albums on my living room TV either, but what I DO enjoy immensely is being able to watch the numerous video Podcasts I already subscribe too... In fact, it is so much more enjoyable to watch them this way, I have subscribed to numerous more.
Again, working in the industry, the incredible ease with which one can subscribe to video Podcasts and get them on the AppleTV really struck me. With increased resolution, and better production values, this is the future of TV! Pick your shows, paid, free or ad supported, via iTunes and watch them in your living room.
Anyhow, all that aside... Here are some things to know about the AppleTV.
- The Apple TV is utterly silent.
- It is NOT a game console. If you want to play games, buy a Wii, PS3 or Xbox360.
- It is not a DVD/BlueRay/HD-DVD player. If you want to play DVDs, but a $50 progressive scan DVD player. If you also want to watch BluRay discs and HD-DVD discs, get the LG BH100. it's the ONLY player available that plays all three formats!
- It is not a DVR. If you want to record live TV and watch it later, get a TiVo (don't waste your time with those crap cable and satellite DVRs though - pure garbage)
- You need to buy the cables to connect it. The best connection, because it is digital all the way, HDMI is the best option - If your set has that connector, then get an HDMI-HDMI cable. If your set only has DVI, then get an HDMI-DVI cable. If your set only has component video, get an RCA component (aka RGB) video cable. For the audio, the best connection is the optical digital interface, which is usually not present on TVs, but is fairly common on better receivers. Otherwise, just use a a standard left/right DCA audio cable.
- Contrary to even Apple's own information, you do NOT need to have a wide-screen display to use the Apple TV. It WILL work with 4:3 televisions, though you MUST have component (i.e. RGB) video connections on your TV or A/V receiver (if used). However, it will not function in full-screen mode. It uses a letterboxed presentation style.
- It can support any audio format that the source recording happens to have. The iTunes store programs are all encoded with Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound, which is 100% backwards compatible with two-channel stereo (such as built-in TV speakers). However, if you connect up the optical digital audio connector to a DTS/Dolby Digital receiver, AND the program has DTS or Dolby Digital 5.1 (or higher) surround sound encoding, the AppleTV will pass this through to the receiver to be output properly. Just note that it is EXTREMELY unlikely that programming with digital audio encoding will be available to download from pretty much ANY source in the near future due to it's incompatibility with analogue 2 channel stereo.
- One last thing. If you are a user of a Mac that features Front Row and they are in the same room as the AppleTV, then remember to pair the remote for the AppleTV and Mac independently, so they will not interfere with one another.
Anyhow, all told, I think the AppleTV is really great, and will likely help to change the face of television as we know it.
(3 out of 5)Very limited applications
First, I love Apple products and wanted to like this one. Out of the box it installed as easily as you would expect from Apple, and I had it up and running within about 90 seconds of opening the box.
I then downloaded a Lost episode, and streamed a Lost episode to test picture quality on my 24" Sony HDTV. The picture quality was terrible. It wasn't "near DVD" quality, it looked like a heavily distorted 480i picture. My connection was HDMI, so I don't think anything about my particular set-up was a problem. The TV, as I mentioned, is a Sony I bought about 8 months ago.
Interestingly, the graphics quality of the menus and album art was very good, so it clearly wasn't a connection issue.
Bottom line for me was the picture quality was not acceptable (and not even close). Being stuck with Itunes content I could maybe live with, but not coupled with that kind of quality. I'm better off just watching the Lost episodes on my laptop and with my Shure headphones.
(5 out of 5)A very good Version 1
This is a very well-done product and the best Version 1 that I've ever seen. It will do what it says, and without fuss and with the smallest of setup. Out of the box, it's two cables and three clicks away from entering your network password, if you have one enabled. It then starts to sync with iTunes--all your ripped and bought music, your purchased videos, television shows, movies, from an ever-expanding list. It also syncs your photos from iPhoto. Like a good maid, it does Windows too.
If you have more media than its 40GB drive will handle, and I have a great deal more, it fills up with photos last, which is shame for they make a really nice screen saver--your life in photos, rising from the bottom of the screen, large pictures in front and fast, smaller ones in the rear and slower, nice false perspective.
It can be set to stream all your content from up to five iTunes computers at a time. You can control the syncing to limit it so the photos stay on. Syncing is important only if the computer(s) with the iTunes are off, for Apple TV can play anything stored on it and stand alone. You could schlep it along on a vacation.
Problems and suggestions. Three times the living room one has lost contact with Orpheus in the office while it was syncing but streaming from the playlist, and I couldn't get it to download the playlist again without surgery. This is a software problem and this is Version 1.
Suggestion. Allow the user to specify the priority of things to be kept, giving photos higher priority if you wish. Even better would be a different sort of syncing. Order all the playlists from all your iTunes, or even just the computer you're syncing with, and let Apple TV load as much as will fit, and use it as a disk buffer. This might cause thrashing of the WiFi though. But it would give access to everything when the computer was on and the most important things when not. And you could take your most important stuff on vacation. It's a small box.
Also every playlist has as its first option "Shuffle." The second option ought to be the repeat option stored on the iTunes playlist instead of having a system-wide option.
This is a model of very complex technology made very simple indeed to use; I don't think that anything, except possibly the iPod, even comes close, and that's not nearly as complicated a thing to do. I predict that this will do to DVDs what the iPod did to CDs. Neither will die but both will have to think. And cable companies will, I suspect, start to give more attention to faster download speeds and hasten Internet2 and perhaps lessen the number of channels flogging crap. Do you think? This may be the killer app/box. After all, if music is now sold as being the number one album on iTunes and then CD sales as an afterthought, and the iTunes store was launched in April of 2003, can you imagine what Apple TV might do? Death to dial-up.
(5 out of 5)Watch iPod video on your TV, Use your TV as an iPod
Think of the Apple TV unit as transforming your television into a large-format video iPod. All of the menus are very similar to how you use an iPod. It comes with a "front row" type remote control that allows you to select what you would like to play. The remote control is very simple, and uses an interface very similar to the standard iPod.
The Apple TV is capable of playing from either its internal hard drive, or streaming from your computer. The beauty of it is that you rarely know which it is doing. After syncing with the computer all of your titles are immediately available. If the title you choose has not been copied to the internal hard drive, then it is streamed. The hard drive only keeps what you frequently access. If your computer is off, you will only be able to play what you have downloaded.
Make sure that your television is compatible. There is no coax or s-video connection! Your TV must support either HDMI or component. You can also use optical audio if desired.
This is not a replacement for a Tivo or your DVD player/recorder. This device only supports playback from iTunes compatible files. If you would like to record or play DVD. But if you would like to watch your iTunes video at HD resolution, this device is great!
(1 out of 5)Mainly for video from iTunes
Why spend $300 on a hardware device that really is only good for playing video content downloaded from the iTunes store? Right now the quality of that iTunes video is not even as good as DVDs. Personally I own a few hundred DVDs. Although one can convert individual titles from DVDs to Apple TV compatible files using Handbrake, this process is very time-consuming and fruitless. The quality is not as good as the original. You lose all the menus, subtitle options, (true) surround sound, and director's commentaries. When I converted a dance DVD made from a telecast, the frame rate was decreased to 24 fps and the dancing became very jittery. When I used the 29.97 fps of the original, iTunes would play the file on my computer, but refused to sync it with the Apple TV. Although glitches like these may be fixed in time, they are very frustrating right now. I returned my Apple TV for a full refund.