Apple TV

[magmon]

My dad picked up one of apple's Apple TV things today, and I have to say I am extremely impressed. It syncs with your itunes account, so all of your movies, shows and music are freely available on your TV. You can also access the itunes store from your TV because it connects to wireless. And, they're suprizingly cheap. $230 for a 160 GB one, which is now the base model.

Anyone else have one of these? Anyone else seen them?

[Exodist]

Doesnt sound like a good investment. 230 bucks for something that you use to spend more money with. /sigh.. Not for me..

[KiwiNZ]

Doesnt sound like a good investment. 230 bucks for something that you use to spend more money with. /sigh.. Not for me..

So you wouldn,t buy a car , refrigerator , freezer , DVD player , house , suit case.... ?

Back to topic

The Apple TV gives very good seamless integration . And its foot print is small. Its also silent.

[Exodist]

So you wouldn,t buy a car , refrigerator , freezer , DVD player , house , suit case.... ?

Back to topic

The Apple TV gives very good seamless integration . And its foot print is small. Its also silent.

Cars, Refridgerator/Freezer. House.. Those are also bad investments, but unfortunately essential requirements.
A freezer can tho help you make money. A penny saved is a penny earned. So if you hunt, you can store you meat in a freezer for later use, thus spending less money on meat at the local market. Buying a NEW car is a really bad investment, I purchase pre owned so I let some other person absorb the initial cost.


Where I live here in the US we are on a tight budget and dont have money to spend on such luxury items. But if it brings them joy I am prod the OP is happy. Thats all that matters. :-)

[gletob]

The fact that is so tied in to Itunes and apple is a huge turn off to me.

I'm thinking of throwing something together with one of these in my living room when I get a new TV.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500027

[chucky chuckaluck]

do you need to have a computer in order to use an apple tv?

[Nburnes]

HTPC I helped my father build works just fine.

[Dekkon]

The fact that is so tied in to Itunes and apple is a huge turn off to me.

I'm thinking of throwing something together with one of these in my living room when I get a new TV.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500027

Yeah, thats the turn off for me too.

Thought, I'm equally ok with using my Xbox 360 for my Media Streaming device, and I don't have to add more ****, ontop of more then enough **** surrounding my TV. :P

Can't buy things I guess, but my computers not more then 2ft away.

[pwnst*r]

HTPC I helped my father build works just fine.

thanks for answering his questions.

[schauerlich]

do you need to have a computer in order to use an apple tv?

It's listed in the system requirements on Apple's site.

http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

[chucky chuckaluck]

It's listed in the system requirements on Apple's site.

http://www.apple.com/appletv/specs.html

thanks. somehow, i missed that part.

[Swarms]

They should really buff the system with some dvb capabilities, then it would be a very interesting system.

[misfitpierce]

Won't go into slander against the other proprietary software giant but no I do not have one and nor would I ever get anything apple again after macbook intel... :popcorn:

[HappinessNow]

My dad picked up one of apple's Apple TV things today, and I have to say I am extremely impressed. It syncs with your itunes account, so all of your movies, shows and music are freely available on your TV. You can also access the itunes store from your TV because it connects to wireless. And, they're suprizingly cheap. $230 for a 160 GB one, which is now the base model.

Anyone else have one of these? Anyone else seen them?

Don't have one, and I haven't seen one but I did find an insightful article on the Apple TV:

Why Apple TV Must Evolve to Avoid Extinction (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-tv-price-cut)




Without making an announcement, Apple slashed the price of its larger-capacity Apple TV set-top box on Monday and discontinued a lesser model. Even with the price cut, the product is unlikely to survive if it does not adapt to consumer demands in the entertainment market, analysts agree.
The price reduction brings the 160-GB Apple TV from $330 down to $230 — the price of the previous 40-GB model, which is no longer for sale.
“In its current form, the Apple TV is not a product that has very much life in it,” said James McQuivey, a Forrester analyst. “I think that’s reinforced now that they’ve cut one of the [models] and they’ve reduced the price.”
Apple executives, including Steve Jobs, have repeatedly referred to Apple TV — a digital media box that plays content from a user’s iTunes library on a television — as a “hobby.” In earnings calls, the company has carefully avoided revealing sales numbers of the product....
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/apple-tv-price-cut

[steev182]

Whilst I really like the AppleTV, I feel that now, with me trying to go away from iTunes (mainly because Video is still DRMed) getting an AppleTV would be counter intuitive. You can hack it to put Boxee on and be able to stream media that way, but I would prefer to get a Nettop and use that instead without the chance of voiding warranties...

[3rdalbum]

The AppleTV does so little. You can watch your DRM'ed, paid-for video downloads on your TV with it, in standard definition on your HDTV. Oh... and you can watch Youtube.

I've got a media box coming this week that has a smaller footprint to the Apple TV, was just $129 Australian, and can stream music, photos and videos from Samba shares; either wirelessly with an optional dongle, or over Ethernet (in my case, over Homeplug networking). You can connect a USB hard disk to it and play content from that, or you can turn the hard disk into an impromptu NAS using the media box.

You can connect the media box to an SD TV, or to an HD TV; and it supports many more media formats than the Apple TV. You can stream MKV file format to it, which means that you can have multiple audio tracks and multiple subtitle tracks with lots of supported codecs.

It's a semi-known brand down here; Astone.

Personally, I was turned off the AppleTV a long time ago. I sent a support request to Apple about whether I could burn a DVD of the legally-purchased video content I had bought from the iTunes store, and they told me to either buy an iPod and a video dock, or to buy an Apple TV.

[amitabhishek]

Installs Ubuntu?

[magmon]

Sorry I havn't been posting here, I've been out all day.

While yes, there are downsides to it, there are plenty of upsides aswell. I can apretiate the opinion of those of you who have definately ruled it out, but I really do love the concept and the product itself.

[joeinbend]

Adding my two cents -- I have had an Apple TV for about a year and 1/2 now, and my family has enjoyed it very much for its' simplicity as an appliance-based media player. I am NOT an Apple fan in general, I believe they make great products that work very well within the Apple "ecosystem", but definitely are not designed to work outside of that box.

We use our Apple TV connected to a virtual machine of Windows XP, running iTunes, which allows me to stream all of our digital content -- family pictures (FANTASTIC for this by the way), movies, and music. You can easily rip all of your DVD's, then use Handbrake to convert them to the compatible H.264 *.m4v format, averaging about 2.5 GB per full-length movie. It plays all of my NON-DRM mp3's as well. None of this is at all dependent on the Apple TV's internal storage, it all streams from my server, and that is seamless. The only thing stored on the @TV's internal HD is your pictures.

The other cool thing to do with the @TV is install Boxee on it. if you're not familiar, head over to www.boxee.tv and check it out. Free, and (I think..?) Open Source. This runs along side the @TV's OS, and really opens it up, and lets you do all the above functions, without having to tie it to iTunes, you can just sync it to ordinary Samba / Windows shares, and rock on.

It's a very capable device, however it would be nice to see Apple update it with a faster proc and more RAM, which would allow things like Boxee to run even better.

AppleTV 40GB version can be found on eBay for $175 or less. I took a look at the Australian media player by Astone, it's not pretty. Sorry. </two cents> :)

[BrokenKingpin]

I hate Apple products. They are very overpriced for what you get.

[Frak]

Bought it, love it.