Apple TV Review (New Models with YouTube)
Writing by stickman on Thursday, 28 of June , 2007 at 6:13 pm
The other week I borrowed (long term) a friends Apple TV and after updating it to the new 1.1 Firmware (with YouTube support) have been playing with it every since.
Initial Thoughts
The Apple TV certainly has the usual Apple design flair, looking like an Apple MacBook that someone sat on (its flatter and wider). On the back of the Apple TV are the connections for digital & analogue audio, HDMI, network. Full specifications may be found here.
Apple TV Setup
As usual with Apple products the setup was incredibly logical and therefor simple. Plug in the HDMI cable (Warning: cable not included), the power cable and audio cable (to your HiFi (optional, cable not included). It so simple there is not even a power on switch!
Once switched on, your HD TV should auto detect the Apple TV and you need to select the resolution (1080i in my instance), finally you need to configure the network connection, either via WiFi or Ethernet, both if your using DHCP automatically configuring the IP address.
Finally you need to pair the Apple TV with your iTunes player (Mac or PC). You can sync with only one iTunes machine, however you can stream (where the movie/music etc. is played real time from the remote iTunes) from multiple iTunes. To pair you simply select pair in the Apple TV menu under settings, the Apple TV then generates a 5 digit pin which you enter in iTunes and bingo its paired.
What Can it Do?
The Apple TV lets you watch movies (including trailers directly from apple.com) & TV shows, listen to music and have your photos displayed as a screensaver. In addition it now lets you watch YouTube clips directly from the Internet. Soon Apple will support purchasing music and movies directly from the Apple TV.
Models (40GB/160GB)
There are now two models of Apple TV, the only difference been the hard drive size, 40GB or 160GB. The model I have been playing with is the 40GB version, which fills up very quickly. If you have a machine with iTunes running constantly then using streaming you should not have much of a problem with the 40GB version, however if not I would recommend getting the 160GB version.
Apple Remote
The Apple TV comes with the same remote as new iMacs, MacBooks and MacMini’s. I am split 50/50 on the Apple remote, in some ways amazed that with only 6 buttons its seems to manage everything but at the same time thinking just 4 more buttons would everything so much quicker. I guess in this world of TV /Satellite remote controls with hundreds of buttons, I prefer less rather than more.
Video Playback Quality
This is obviously a key part and its pretty good, maybe not supporting the highest quality video, it is more than sufficient for watching a film on a 32″/40″ HDTV. By supporting 780i and 1080i the Apple TV is meeting the current standard of the average HDTV, however 1080p is meant to be where we are heading (BTW I am going to research this whole HDTV area for another article as its all just plan confusing).
For those of you interested, the Apple TV supports the following video formats H.264, (which maxes out at 1280 x 720) or MPEG-4 (even worse at a maximum of 3Mbps and 720 x 432). It does not support Divx, XviD, and WMV so you will in all likelihood find yourself reformatting video you currently may have. The bottom line is its not really true HDTV but then so are not a lot of the TV’s been sold at the moment. If you really want perfect HDTV DON’T buy the Apple TV. If you don’t care (as I don’t) then the quality is perfect.
On a separate note, I personally don’t buy into this HDTV marketing, been perfectly happy until a couple of months ago with an old 30″ screen or even using my 15″ Laptop display. In my view a bad film is a bad film no mater how many million pixels it is and a great film is still a great film even in low resolution.
Summary
The Apple TV is a great first attempt at the mixing the Internet, personal computers, iTunes and HDTV together. It is far from perfect but if you like how Apple products work and you use iTunes a lot and you have a HDTV but no Xbox 360 / Playstation 3 then you will probably want to get one.
If however you are not 100% sure, I would wait 4-6 months because I think the version 2 of the Apple TV will be the one to buy (just like when Apple first released the iPod), supporting higher resolutions, more hard drive space (hopefully external USB hard drives) and different video formats.
Category: AppleTV, review, Apple
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