This morning, on CBS’s “The Early Show,” CBS News technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg showed Harry Smith new pieces of wireless hardware that connect your computer to your television, featuring Apple’s new Apple TV.
Sieberg explained that Apple TV brings computers (Macs and Windows PCs) and TVs together. That means you can take all the music, video, photos and other content stored on your computer and play it on your TV, Sieberg said.
Sieberg also briefly (very briefly) covered Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Netgear’s Digital Entertainer HD in the segment.
Direct link to the video on CBS here.
CBS also has an article on Apple TV here.
A nice Apple TV ad for the masses that relegates the would-be competition to afterthoughts.
Related articles:
Scoble: ‘Apple TV rocks’ – March 23, 2007
Apple TV hard drive upgrade works – March 23, 2007
Apple TV dissection photos – March 22, 2007
Apple posts Apple TV User’s Guide online – March 22, 2007
Enderle: ‘Apple’s attractive and well packaged Apple TV likely to set the pace’ – March 22, 2007
David Pogue demos Apple TV in humorous NY Times’ video – March 22, 2007
PC Magazine review gives Apple TV 4 out of 5 stars – March 22, 2007
NY Times’ Pogue: ‘Apple TV offers a gracious, elegant, effortless, delightful experience’ – March 21, 2007
Mossberg hands-on with Apple TV: ‘beautiful design, easy-to-use, classic Apple: simple and elegant’ – March 21, 2007
One positive review after another, unlike zune and virusta
I wonder how many people heard “anything from iTunes” and assumed it meant, “only things from the iTunes store”?
Awesome. Apple does it again. Did you see the SIZE of those other boxes?
Why even try to compete with Apple…designwise anyway.
The best part was “5000 pounds of cables”
I continue to tell people the broadcast world as we know it became terminally ill and faces a certain death as of March 22, 2007. Music was neat, but this is total dissemination of content without the need for any big company. Anybody with a video camera and a Podcast now controls the content from creation to distribution. It is going to be fun.
PS
When was the last time you saw a brand new computer product demoed on live TV without a glitch?
A nice “ad” for Apple products (Apple TV, iMac and MacBook)! However, I’m fairly certain that Harry Smith is a certified moron and I wish that someone a little more savvy could have posed the leading questions.
MW: “question” – Seriously, how does it know?
Harry Smith was perfect. He was the non tech-savvy “everyman” with whom the average consumer can identify.
“If Harry can feel comfortable using this thing, maybe I could too…”.
Jake,
exactly!
This is the very best sort of advertising for Apple.
very good point fellow Jake and from another article MDN posted I now will buy an Apple TV even though I do not have a widescreen TV.
Great review and I loved the “also ran” mentions of XBox & Net Gear.
But they made one gaf. They said that you had to call the movie up in iTunes before streaming it to the TV. Not so. You just have to have iTunes up. You don’t have to call up the actual movie.
With 2 cable boxes connected to 3 wireless senders received by 4 tvs and 3 divx/xvid region-free dvd players, I will pass. It would sure be nice to have a dedicated media server à la Mac mini with a biiig drive, but it should hook up with a standard wireless sender to play in any of the tvs.
Two things stood out for me from this review:
1. The emphasis on how easy it is to get the Apple TV working. The host kept saying “wow”.
2. The massive size of the M$ box and the Netgear one. This is not where you want to have the largest size.
The Steve does it again!
Very nice.
@wings2Sky
I agree and noted the same thing when I watched the clip. It’s anythng IN iTunes, not anything DOWNLOADED from iTunes. I wish people talking about TV would make this clear. Anyone that has used iMovie or Final Cut to produce home movies of vacations or family get together, or any other creative video of there own will get great use out this device.
I’ve noticed a common misconception: “It only works with a widescreen TV”. This is going to make a lot of people think it won’t work because they have and older square screen. Not true. It does however require a TV with widescreen capable features such as component inputs, and many sqaure TVs over the last decade have this feature.
I mentioned in another post that I just saw the AppleTV in action today at the Apple Store. iTunes movies look really bad on the HDTV. Like grains and pixels all over the place. I have to say I’m out until picture quality matches the TVs required* for it.
*Yes, I understand it works with regular TVs with component jacks, but it’s obviously made with HD in mind. I suppose that’s what gives me hope.
The plug is all fine and dandy, and I have always liked Harry, but it annoys me to no end how they do these ‘demos’ on morning and cable ‘news’ shows.
Why in the hell can’t one person just explain it in detail instead of that BS ‘lesson situation’ where there is always too much useless talking in the time alloted?
They always have to hurry up and get to the part where everyone sits around and pretends to be happy….boring concept, morning shows are.