Average Guy’s Review - AppleTV

My Apple TVUnless you haven’t been paying attention, I’ve been stung by the Apple bug in a serious way, lol. It all started with my little ole iPhone then it moved to the MacBook, then to the Airport Extreme, and now to the AppleTV! I can’t completely fault the iPhone, although stepping into the Apple universe does tend to arouse curiosity about all things Apple once you get a small taste.

Anyway, Xi is arriving in 8 weeks and my current self-imposed assignment is to get the house ready for her arrival. Part of that is updating household stuff like some of the lighting, paint, and fixtures while the other part has more to do with shedding the years of bachelor life and replacing furniture and bringing more “home” into the house. Late last year, I picked up a 42” 1080i flat panel TV for the living room to replace the 10+ year old 32” TV I’d been using. At the same time, I ditched Suddenlink and picked up Directv since the HD channel selection is far greater...can’t waste a nice TV on crappy cable, lol. The next step was to get a new home theater system to replace the stereo I’d had since my USMC days back in the early ’90’s, but then the AppleTV caught my eye.

I’d known about the AppleTV for quite some time, but never really considered it because the early reviews were lackluster and iTunes, at the time, really hadn’t been able to swing a lot of movies into the store. That all changed when Apple rolled out “Take 2” for the AppleTV earlier this year. The “Take 2” stuff was essentially a downloadable patch for AppleTV that greatly enhanced it’s interface and added a good number of features...good reviews started to come in and after a lot of hand wringing, I went out and bought one.

At the moment, they have a 40 and 160GB model; I opted for the 40GB model since it was cheaper. I know there’s ways to store content off the AppleTV, so the space limitation didn’t really concern me too much. I brought it home and hooked it up using the 2nd HDMI port on my TV; it’s got built-in 802.11n Wi-Fi, so there was no need to string a network cable to it (you can if you want to though). I fired it up, adjusted the resolution to run at 1080i and started to set it up on it’s own interface and through the iTunes on my MacBook. Oh, I should mention...there is no power button; the AppleTV just runs although you can put it to sleep by holding the play/pause button down for a few seconds on the included remote (same remote that comes with a Mac).

The setup was super easy! I already knew the “Take 2” patch was available, so let the AppleTV go fetch and install the patch, which took awhile, but when it was done, I was staring at a new interface. Now you can access iTunes, YouTube and other stuff straight from the AppleTV, but I first went to the iTunes on my Mac and selected a bunch of photos, music, podcasts, and a couple movies to sync over to the AppleTV. The sync took awhile since I have a huge load of music and stuff, lol. I should point out that you can “stream” stuff to the AppleTV without actually using up the space on the AppleTV, but I didn’t bother at this point because I really don’t have enough to scratch the 40GB space on the AppleTV that much.

With the initial syncing done, I started to play around! If you’re familiar with iTunes and the Coverflow style Apple uses, then you’ll be completely at home with the AppleTV; the interface can’t be more simple. You’re greeted with a menu that lets you select Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, Photos, YouTube, and Settings. Those categories are on the left-hand side of the menu while the right side has various options for whatever you select on the left side (which is all done with the easy-to-use remote). There’s really no flummoxing around with the menu, it’s super intuitive and very easy to find what you’re looking for.

Let me tell you about the sections I’ve played with so far...

Movies

iTunes now offers over 1000 movies to choose from, from new releases to the classics; all are available in AppleTV. At first, you couldn’t buy movies, you could only rent them, but that’s all changed this week as Apple now allows you to both purchase or rent movies. In addition, iTunes now offers movies online on the same day as they release on DVD...that’s totally cool and probably a growing worry for brick and mortar stores....oh well. You can buy iTunes movies on your computer (SD) or from the AppleTV(SD and HD versions) (you login to your iTunes account when setting up the AppleTV) and sync them back and forth between Mac’s/PC, and iPhones (I suppose iPods also, but I don’t have one). The only real difference is that you can only get the HD versions of shows from within iTunes using AppleTV. Not all the movies/shows are in HD yet, but I suppose that some genius at Apple’s working on that. SD stuff looks great, so no biggie.

I’ve only rented one movie so far, Transformers in HD. I simply haven’t had a lot of time to sit down and watch a movie, lol. When you order a movie in AppleTV, you do have to allow a bit of time for the movie to be downloaded before you can really start watching it. AppleTV will say you can start watching it within minutes of starting the download, but you’ll eventually run out of movie before it finishes downloading...so give it a bit of time (you don’t need too much). The rental gets billed to whatever card you have linked to iTunes, so it’s pretty painless. I am not going to get into the technical mumbo jumbo about resolutions and start nit picking everything because frankly, I don’t care, heh heh. Let’s just say that the HD version looked AWESOME on my 42” TV. I didn’t see any flaws at all. It was a completely enjoyable experience. I would say buying a movie will result in pretty much the same experience, although I didn’t see any HD versions for buying at this point, only rentals.

One other cool aspect to the Movie section is the trailers; they have a heap of trailers. I spent a good hour flipping through both the SD and HD versions of the movie trailers and had a great time...there’s a lot of trailers in there for movies I didn’t know were even coming out soon, lol. I should also add that if you make any movies, you can sync them and view them on AppleTV too...pretty much all your content is available.

Music

Now, I didn’t check out the TV Shows section because I have no real interest in that area, so I’m skipping it, lol. It does work the same as the movies though...so onto music! What can I say? You have music in your iTunes, you can have it on AppleTV...from multiple computers too. Music on Apple TVMusic on AppleTVNaturally, you can also buy music from iTunes through the AppleTV, which can be synced back to your computer also. I have to admit that I haven’t bought a single song from iTunes yet because I burned my entire CD collection in and enjoy that instead of buying tunes. I suppose that’ll change one day, but between my burned collection and iTunes radio, it’s not a biggie for me. Speaking of iTunes radio; that does not appear to be present in AppleTV. You access your music on the AppleTV much as you do in iTunes on your computer, it’s all very easy. If you have photos stored on your AppleTV, then it’ll use those photos in a scrolling background while the music’s playing...again a very nice touch. All my playlists are present as well as shuffling functions.

Podcasts

I subscribe to a lot of podcasts in iTunes and you can do the same with AppleTV; again, it’s super easy and similar to the process found on your computer’s iTunes. Video podcasts look fine, even on a huge TV; we’re not going to get super hi-def out of most video podcasts obviously, but they look surprisingly good. Audio podcasts do much the same thing that music does, after awhile, your photos will start scrolling by while the podcasts is playing.

Photos

I’ve got thousands of photographs and all I can say is thank goodness I started using high resolution settings a few years back. Syncing albums and photos is as painless as iTunes, just pick what you want to sync and voila! Photos on AppleTV take on a whole new look when viewed on the big screen...it’s fantastic! If you run a slideshow, you’ll get very nice presentation with background music; it’s pretty cool. I believe slideshows you setup with specific background music in iPhoto (for Mac folks) will carry over to the AppleTV, but I haven’t stopped to check yet. I’ve gained a whole new appreciation for photos after seeing them on the AppleTV!

YouTube

I knew where this would lead based on how I enjoyed YouTube on my iPhone. Despite YouTube being built for web browsers, most of the videos look remarkably good on AppleTV. Just tonight, I spent a good hour watching various clips and had a ball doing it!

So there you have it, my experience with my AppleTV so far. I must say that I’m pleasantly surprised by it, it really is a great little device. Smooth running, super easy to use, it could easily replace cable if you really wanted it too although I suppose you’d want to have some cash on hand if you plan on renting/buying shows rather than taking advantage of YouTube and the endless free Podcasts out there. I’ve read in the Apple forums of folks having network issues and other problems with their AppleTV...I can’t share their experience, it all went very smoothly for me. Oh, I should mention that apparently you do NOT need a PC/Mac to use AppleTV; it can all be done from the AppleTV itself. I have not tried that, but if that’s true, then it really opens up things to those who hate futzing with computers. All you really need is a wireless router and the AppleTV to have a pretty complete entertainment experience.

In my estimation, the AppleTV makes a great addition to the entertainment factor in the house. Xi and I will really enjoy being able to rent/buy movies without having to bother with Blockbuster or other services...it’s just way too easy! Guess that now leads me to the final task on my checklist...that home theater sound system, lol.

FOLLOW UP: Just to follow up to this article I wrote for another of my sites. I have since rented a number of movies and bought a ton of songs. It’s painless...the music syncs back to my Mac so I have it everywhere. I really have zero complaints about the AppleTV; it’s great when there’s nothing on normal TV.