Apple TV with 160GB Hard Drive - MB189LL/A
See it at Amazon.com for $290.00Average Customer Rating
(4.0 out of 5)
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(3 out of 5)Good, but I must ding it on a couple of important items
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.
(5 out of 5)A great box for your old home-made movies.
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.
(5 out of 5)Wow, this is awesome
They're calling it Apple TV Take 2. In other words, any review before February 12, 2008 is a review of the old model. A huge update--a complete revamp of the system was released as a free upgrade by Apple to make the Apple TV and entirely new device.
You watch the TV shows you want, the movies you want, when you want. We had Tivo and loved it, but Tivo can only record what the networks feed you. With Apple TV, if you want to sit down and watch one of those first episodes from Season 1 of MythBusters, you can search or simply navigate to The Discovery Channel, select MythBusters, Season 1, pick your episode, and begin watching it within a minute or so. All on your big flat-screen TV from the comfort of your couch, using your Apple remote. No computer needs to be turned on. You just need wireless Internet access. You can buy television episodes, movies, or now you can rent movies for about $3.
We cancelled our DirecTV when we bought the original Apple TV last year, but this new update makes live television obsolete. Add to that the ease of an Apple interface, and it's like having an iPod Touch for your TV. We're very, very impressed.
Apple iPod touch 16 GB without Software Updates
(4 out of 5)Now a viable option with latest software update
After Apple released the free "take 2" update for the Apple TV (applies to all models), the box became quite a bit more useful. I would now not hesitate to recommend it to people with flat panel TV's looking for a great way to watch Podcasts, TV Shows, Movies, and YouTube. The built in movie rentals are great - they literally start playing about 30 seconds after renting and are great quality (even the non-HD ones). I also enjoy instant streaming of any podcast available on the iTunes store - I find myself using the Apple TV instead of watching regular cable TV. However, why can't you rent TV shows yet? The only way to get TV shows is to BUY them for $2 each, whereas you can rent an entire movie for only $3.
As a music hub, the product also shines - I can have all my music permanently hooked up to my stereo, and by using an aux input on the stereo, I don't even have to have the TV on to listen to music. This new version also allows you to stream *and control* the Apple TV from any other Mac (or PC?) via iTunes, so you can stream music wirelessly to your living room. The old version could kind of do this too, but you had to set it up via the Apple TV which required turning on your TV set. Now, I can just turn on my stereo and start streaming while I'm sitting at my computer.
YouTube is also fun, and as a photo sharing box, the Apple TV really shines. Photos synced from iPhoto, Aperture, or just a folder on your computer look stunning. Built in Flickr and .Mac support is also nice, although the Flickr option only shows public albums which is kind of disappointing.
(3 out of 5)Hamstrung by software limitations
The Apple TV is an outstanding piece of hardware that is unfortunately married to less than impressive software. Technically, features like wireless N, integrated HDMI, a solid video card, an array of ports and a nicely compact form factor would make this little box the perfect companion to your TV... if only it actually did what it was capable of.
The Apple TV software Take 2 is at best a hard to navigate, slightly overpriced video store. The catalog is limited and true new releases (movies that have just released to video) are mixed in with "new to iTunes" releases so you end up with a murky mix of lame films from the late 80's next to films that came out this year. The software itself offers very limited user customization (such as increasing the font size to make titles legible from across the room) and is picky as to what video formats it can play.
Beyond that, the inability to utilize mass storage (external drives) via USB, the inability to use a keyboard via usb or wireless and the inability to integrate this product with complimentary devices like those from Elgato (Eye TV, Turbo.264, etc) make the Apple TV overall pretty limited, but not for any physical reason. Again - it is the way that Apple designed the software.
The take away that I have from Take 2 is to hold onto your money and either buy a different device altogether or wait for Take 3.