Apple TV Review : Love
August 15, 2007
Two months ago we purchased the latest AppleTV offering : 160GB of storage and the new Youtube feature (activated at the end of June). When Apple initially mentioned AppleTV back in January I have to say we had our doubts that such a device had any real purpose, well happily I can say I was wrong.For anyone unfamiliar with the concept of AppleTV the device can sync and stream media from your iTunes library to your living room the model we purchased has 160GB of storage and a 40GB version is also available.
As a UK iTunes users we rely on Elgato’s EyeTv for TV recording and manually converting our DVD library as the main source of media for our AppleTV. This said AppleTV still has a lot to offer the UK customer ! Currently we have a range of movies, our photos, 3000 songs and music video purchased from iTunes and the quality if excellent.
If you are facing the conversion challenge for your growing DVD collection then the Elgato Turbo.264 is a useful tool to speed the process up. We aim for each movie to be around the 2gig mark in terms of space and adding the media to the AppleTV is reasonably quick process once converted. We recently upgraded our wifi to an N router and we can definitely see the benefit once we purchased the N upgrade for our iMac (£1.25). Having experienced both N and G I can say the upgrade is not essential and the G transfer was perfectly adequate.
One really nice feature is the ability to subscribe to video podcasts and have them update automatically on the AppleTV. I am hoping when the ability to purchase TV shows comes to the UK we will be able to subscribe in much the same way.
The YouTube feature is also excellent. This feature has a parental control feature where a 4 digit pin number can stop kids gaining access to Youtube. We have also had a fair few hours entertainment looking at some of the kid suitable content on there. The AppleTV system is intuitive and we have found a 4 year old can work their way around the system effortlessly.
On the topic of parental control it would be great if the user could mark media files as child safe. I recently recorded ‘Rambo’ on EyeTV and although I would like it on my AppleTV I don’t really want everyone in the house having access to the movie. A simple tickbox in the info would be enough to protect the file but perhaps this will come in time.
The AppleTV brings iTunes to the living room in a small yet slick way. The ability to view your Aperture or iPhoto library as you listen to your latest music is great. Yes there are other products on the market that offer similar but for ease of use I can not fault the Apple device. The device is not only simple to use but very easy to set up!
I have read on some blogs that the AppleTV is a flop and will fail but I can’t see that point of view. Personally I think a great product has simply been over shadowed by the subsequent release of the iPhone. I really can not recommend this product enough, if I could afford it I would purchase another AppleTV for another part the house.
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Filed Under Hardware, Technology |
[...] Finally Finally…. I never regreted purchasing the Apple TV but now I have one reason why it is a must ! TV shows have now arrived on iTunes [...]
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