“Apple TV was one of those products that I always wanted to like but just couldn’t when it was released. Oh sure, it was neat to see my photos on my TV and play music or watch a TV show or two. The interface wasn’t anything to rave about, and I couldn’t get any kind of HD programming,” Jim Lynch writes for ExtremeTech.
“The latest Apple TV 2.0 release fixes a lot by adding HD movie rentals, a slick new interface, and the ability to buy/rent without having to use your computer. The Apple TV is now officially a stand-alone (though you can still synch to it and from it if you want) entertainment center,” Lynch writes.
MacDailyNews Note: Remember that Lynch wrote, “you can still synch to it and from it if you want.” We’ll need that later.
Lynch continues, “One of the things I’ve been looking forward to most is the ability to rent movies on my Apple TV. I got rid of cable TV a while back because it’s horrible and far too expensive. As with iTunes movie rentals, Apple has made it very easy and quite comfortable to rent movies right from your living room.”
“You have 30 days to start watching it and 24 hours to watch it as many times as you want after you start playing the movie (though as I understand it, you can always pause the movie and finish watching it past the 24 hour timer…a little known feature that Apple seems to have neglected to mention),” Lynch writes.
MacDailyNews Take: That’s a fact in both ways: it exists and Apple has really failed to explain it properly to potential buyers.
Lynch continues, “I like a lot of what I see on Apple TV right now, but it’s not without its problems. At this point you can’t buy HD movies, you can only rent them. I’m sure that Apple will probably tweak this and allow purchasing, but right now it’s not possible, and I find that somewhat irritating.”
MacDailyNews Take: Don’t hold you breath waiting for Apple to sell HD content; we’re pretty sure Hollywood won’t allow it anytime soon.
Lynch continues, “In the two current versions of Apple TV (40GB and 160GB), the storage offered is simply too small to last long over time. It is amazingly easy to fill up such a tiny amount of storage that I can see the need for at least a terabyte of storage if somebody wants to really build a collection of movies. No doubt Apple will bulk up the storage offering later, but right now I’m just not satisfied with it… I was going to give Apple TV an 8 but I’m going to knock that back to a 7 because of the storage issue. It’s something that Apple really needs to address very quickly as I think that the power users of Apple TV are going to fill their disk space up extremely quickly if they buy a lot of movies, TV shows, music and so on from iTunes via Apple TV.”
Full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: Even though Lynch himself writes that “you can still synch to it and from it if you want,” he seems to totally miss the point that Apple TV is not meant to be your central media storage unit (Lynch even comes up with a wish list for Apple TV units up to 1TB along with fantasy prices). Your storage is located elsewhere (accessible by your Apple TV(s), your Mac(s) and/or, Jobs forbid, your PC). Apple TV wirelessly streams your iTunes content; that drive inside is really best reserved for your temporary movies rentals. That’s what Apple TV’s drive has been waiting for since the device’s release.
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