- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 29 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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6 out of 6 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Good Ludite-friendly last-six-feet device"
Pros: Extremely simple and elegant setup and use, Does what it's supposed to do extremely well
Cons: Lower resolution and lack of surround sound contradict its high-def-only connectivity
Summary: This is definitely a niche product. It's an Apple product, and thus it's got its own cult following. But, unlike the iPod or iPhone, Apple TV has been largely panned by the tech critics, some even branding it "one of the worst products of 2007." This is extremely undeserved, because for all its faults, Apple TV does an excellent job at doing what it's supposed to do--which basically is to serve up to your TV anything that iTunes can play on your computer. Most of the complaints are about what it can't do. But, what it does do, it does do well. To that end, its a good device, and it deserves better to be put anywhere near to a Coby mp3 player or Windows Millennium Edition. (I think of how Starship's "We Built This City" has been similarly misclassified as the "worst song ever" by people who have never listened to garage bands, or for that matter obviously haven't been listening to the radio lately. Two words: "Ashlee Simpson.")
It can render putting an iPod on your home theater system obsolete. It's an excellent mp3 music jukebox, and at 160 Gigabites in this model, chances are, you can put your entire music library on it.
I grant that its video playback is a bit limited in quality. I'll be the first to admit that it's particularly odd that its video output is limited to component or HDMI, implying that it's meant to plug into a big screen HDTV; whereas its content from iTunes generally displays at 480p, with compression artifacts at that, in two channel sound. Still, $2 for a TV show episode is not bad, considering that you own it instead of renting. And, Apple TV can import a few select formats of external video. It does show still-frame JPEGs, and for those, having 1080i does make an actual difference. (Note that Apple TV lacks 1080p, but interlacing is not really an issue with still frames.) It also does a pretty decent job of upscaling and cleaning up YouTube downloads. (Though you can only scrub a wet dog so much before realizing the funny smell is not coming out completely, no matter what.)
There are other media servers available. (My Apple TV is sitting directly underneath a Playstation 3. A simple forthcoming hard drive swap should make it an even bigger media server.) But, the elegant point-and-shoot simplicity makes Apple TV a great device to add to a home theater unobtrusively while giving the less technically inclined in your household a way to enjoy the stuff you watch on your computer and a way for both of you together to watch iTunes content on a screen bigger than an iPod.
Also note that the box includes a tiny remote, a power cord, a brief instruction manual, and that's about it. You will have to provide your own component and audio cables, or your own HDMI cable. The remote is a welcome change from yet another fifty buttons or so; it's got six buttons, five of which are arranged around a quasi-iPod menu-driven play/stop/REW/FF. It did take me a little while to figure out how to turn it off without unplugging it. (press and hold the middle "play" button for several seconds)Updated
Though I'm not officially able to change a rating, if the update goes without a hitch, I could find myself recommending this product much more heavily, as the forthcoming software upgrade is likely to make this a considerably more useful device. Of course, I'll have to reserve judgement until the update actually comes out. But, Apple's track record for stability and reliability has been above average, so I'm pretty excited. I'll post additional comments once I actually have the update.Updated
The firmware upgrade is a huge improvement in functionality, as now, in case you haven't already heard, Apple TV can be used to rent movies online, in high def no less. Suddenly, the HDMI connector actually makes sense. This also implies that one might soon be able to buy HD movies for keepers as well, providing the first real-world substance to the often-speculated premise that "Blu-Ray is already obsolete, as movies are about to attain enlightenment and transcend need for a physical medium, being instead purchased and downloaded as pure energy." Since HD rentals are already real, Apple TV already beats the local video store in terms of convenience, and it knocks the socks off my local cable company--which isn't really saying much, since they, lacking any on-demand offerings what-so-ever, suck.
Without repeating what you've already read elsewhere, I'll discuss some findings of my own.
The update itself took about ten minutes and involved two reboots. Afterwards, the menu system is slightly different, but it's still intuitive and Apple-easy. The gripes I've read elsewhere about actions once being one click now requiring two are from my end pretty trivial, as the new menu system keeps things pretty straight-forward and easy even with the added new functionality. I was also pleased to see support for 1080p resolution added, which I promptly took.
To try it out I rented a movie I had been wanting to see, "Alien Vs. Predator." I didn't watch it right away, instead putting it on the drive to be seen later, so I didn't have a chance to test the reported "start watching within so many minutes." Playback was smooth, and the sound was good, though I was limited by my own home theater system to the TV speakers, so a true test of audio channels is unavailable to me. In terms of picture quality, it was noticably better than DVDs upscaled through my PS3 console on the same TV, and it blew out of the water standard-def TV shows I had downloaded and watched on Apple TV prior to the update. (Standard definition picture quality remains the same after the update, by the way, with negligible improvement with the switch from 1080i to 1080p.) It was still less than watching uncompressed Blu-Ray content from my PS3. Compression artifacts were visible in a few places--usually nearly solid-colored areas such as large expanses of snow (the movie is set in Antarctica), where color gradient lines are visible. It was generally not distracting, though, and the sharp detail compared to DVD more than made up for this effect.
All in all, it's a great device, and the 40 Gig model is a worthwhile consideration to someone who wants to rent movies and doesn't need a media server. It was a nice niche product before the update, but afterwards, it's a serious contender for the living room, especially if your cable or satellite's on demand service is lacking or absent altogether, or if you for one reason or another have no TV service but somehow none-the-less have broadband Internet.
Where to buy
Apple TV (160GB):
$214.00 - $229.99
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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$214.00 | Yes |
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$229.00 | Yes |
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$229.00 | Yes |
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