“I got [my Apple TV] last week and noted that the design of the object itself was somewhat enigmatic. If someone were to encounter the device cold, there’d be no idea what it was or could do. It’s a fairly flat tray, seven inches wide and long, slightly over an inch high. It weighs just less than two and a half pounds. There are no buttons, no switches, not even an on-off toggle. (In this it is almost an apotheosis of Apple’s belief that less equals more in these matters.) On the back are the sockets for cables and electronics connectors. If it didn’t have the familiar fruit logo and the letters ‘TV’ on top, you might conceivably use it to as a tray to hold an order of sushi at a chic fusion-cuisine joint,” Steven Levy writes for Newsweek.
Levy writes, “The crisp list of menus and the straightforward means of navigating them will be familiar to anyone who has used the Apple remote with the Front Row feature on recent Macintosh computers, or even stepped through the menu options on an iPod. What’s more, it’s a visually rich experience with clean text on black background enhanced by high-definition movie posters, album covers and your own photos.”
“A lot of people will use Apple TV as a way to listen to their iTunes music in the living room, and the system shines at this… Ideally, everything you watch on a high-definition set is high-def, but the movies and television shows on your iTunes collection run in “near-DVD” quality. Perfectly acceptable, but still… It’s easy to pick selected photo albums and watch gorgeous slide shows on your television. Unfortunately, at this point you can only show photos that are synced to the Apple TV—no streaming yet from other computers… Apple should build this in as quickly as possible,” Levy writes.
Levy writes, “Apple TV effectively liberates your digital songs, videos and photos from your computer, allowing them moments of glory on your widescreen television. If you have a big iTunes collection, a big television and even a medium-sized entertainment budget, you’ll probably get your money’s worth from Apple TV.”
Much more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple overriding Apple TV hacks? – March 29, 2007
Hacking Apple TV: Joost successfully run on Apple TV – March 28, 2007
Apple TV software hints at future DVR functions? – March 28, 2007
Ten Apple TV myths – March 28, 2007
Ars Technica in-depth review: Apple TV ‘impressed all those who touched it’ – March 27, 2007
The chips inside Apple TV – March 27, 2007
Analyst: Apple TV is a platform, not a single product – March 27, 2007
Digital Trends reviews Apple TV: 7 out of 10, ‘huge phenomenon will challenge conventional thinking’ – March 26, 2007
Automatically convert video files for Apple TV with Apple’s Automator – March 26, 2007
Apple TV, iTunes, iTunes Store: BusinessWeek’s Wildstrom blows it – March 26, 2007
iLounge gives Apple TV a ‘B’ in hands-on review: ‘recommended’ – March 24, 2007
CNET reviews Apple TV: ‘Very Good’ – 7.7 out of 10 – March 24, 2007
Video: Apple TV menu and interface walkthrough – March 23, 2007
Analyst: Apple TV will change the TV business – March 23, 2007
G4’s ‘Attack of the Show’ host Olivia Munn licks Apple TV – March 23, 2007
Xvid fully functional on Apple TV – March 23, 2007
Apple TV does not require Widescreen TV or HDTV, works with standard TVs – March 23, 2007
CBS looks at Apple TV on ‘The Early Show’ (with video) – March 23, 2007
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
Apple TV projected to surpass TiVo, Netflix – March 20, 2007
Former Microsoft ‘Enthusiast Evangelist’ Gartenberg looks at impact of Apple TV – March 20, 2007
Apple TV ships – March 20, 2007
Its going to be big. Really really big.
Finally Apple starts getting the credit which has been itss due for such a long time now…
Anyone see these AppleTVs being installing in miniVans with the flip down TV screens, automatically syncing your kids’ SpongeBob episodes? That’s innovation!
mine is being delivered today …
Will comment as I personally experience all of the bruhaha…
A comment about Apple Service – I ordered the Apple TV yesterday about 4PM from Sydney – I am in Brisbane – and recived a shipped email less than 1 1/2 hrs later. Was told I would get it by Monday or Tuesday – the shipping email said today. Where else do you get better than promised service?
I remember an old adage: “Promise less, Deliver more.” Seems to fit here.
Have you actually SEEN the picture quality on an AppleTV? It sucks! I was really, really disappointed when I saw it in person at the Apple Store last weekend. *sigh*
MW: Apple almost got it right
@Yeah, But….
What did you view on AppleTV?
I’ve seen other people praising the quality but it obviously depends on the content being viewed.
Picture quality on the AppleTV is what you put into it. I got mine yesterday (well, had the box a few days earlier but finally got the HDMI cable from Fed Ex) and streamed some ripped-for ipod mp4s download from ipodnova and they looked horrible. On the other hand, I used VisualHub to convert the latest Life on Mars episode from divx to H.264 on the “go nuts” setting and it looked fantastic–far better than I would expect from a cross-converted file taken from a source that itself was compressed.
minivan:
That is the first time that someone mentioned using it in a car. How cool to pull into your driveway or garage and the next morning it is updated with your new programing. Imagine how much entertainment you can store for a road trip. This will keep the little kiddies happy for days!
mw: ‘old’ as in ‘car DVD systems are old news’.
@OpJ
Well said and I love that Life on Mars series.
The problem of picture quality is not wholly Apple’s fault. There are several issues that keep the quality lower than it could: bandwidth requirement for movie download, studios trying to make you buy the same movies in different formats, etc. I suspect that people will end up doing what they’ve been doing with iPods. Instead of buying DRMed media online, they transfer the media they purchased to the computer themselves and they can adjust the quality as high as they want. The only thing preventing movie rips is DMCA, but that wouldn’t stop most people to rip their own DVDs and HD-DVDs/Blu-Rays.
so tired of hearing the “picture sucks” line…
1. download a 760p HD trailer from the Quicktime site and import into itunes
2. watch it via ATV and you’ll see that its the best wireless stream device on the market
and don’t discount the value of the photo delivery function….quality is stunning (although i agree multiple pc source stream is needed)
Anybody who buys one of these things expecting good video quality today (at least from iTunes) will be sorely disappointed. I bought mine to view photos today, and then on the assumption that Apple would start offering HD content in the next 6-12 months. I further have a desperate wish that APple will offer a subscription-based HD movie service, but I think that wish won’t be fulfilled anytime soon.
I want the AppleTV to be able to run the iTunes visualizer on your TV – in full screen!
That would be freakin’ sweet!
@hairbo
It’s just speculation but I’m guessing that the next update to the video specification on the iTS will be 720P with 5.1 AAC. That would seem to be the ideal starting point for HD content with decent surround sound. I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually produce their own 5.1 speaker system for AppleTV just like they did for iPod. Including 5.1 AAC support will also encourage manufacturers to include it in their receivers and we can move on from the old audio formats designed for DVD.
Yeah, but…,
You posted the same damn thing yesterday! Give us details you freakin’ troll!
interesting what has naturally happened in our house…
step 1 > ripped all our music and loaded into itunes
step 2 > loaded (and scanned)all our photos into iphoto
step 3 > now starting to convert all our home movies and load into itunes
We are now actually enjoying all this content that has been just sitting and gathering dust on bookshelves for years….first via the ipod, and now via Atv
Buying content from Itunes store is secondary, it is more about enjoying stuff we already have at this point.
Sushi for lunch. Hmmmm….
ok, maybe i’m just being really obtuse, but i can’t find a definite yes or no on this anywhere
does the apple tv act as a wireless access point like the airport express does?
try using handbrake with the h264 codec and set it for 3500kbs total bitrate to rip YOUR (i don’t support stealing but you should be able to view movies you’ve purchased any way you want) movies and you will be very happy with the quality of Apple TV … it’s as good as the original DVD. By the way, I’ve had mine for about a week and it’s amazing! WAY TO GO APPLE!
Nittany – the answer is no – it does not broadcast wireless signals.
Saying that – it probably could if it contains the standard airport card and antennas.
On another topic I’ve been trying out MediaFork and it does a pretty good job ripping DVDs into MP4 format. The neat thing is that iTunes will readily add this content into its library. I could stream on video from my aging g4 tower to my Powerbook with nary a jump via iTunes.
Of course for ATV to use this content it has to match the video requirements, but overall this demonstrates that Apple have provided but not advertised the ability to use external content within iTunes and ATV.
I’m waiting for Apple to offer a movie rental service before I buy one.
I am sure they will improve the quality of the movie and TV show offerings over time, but either way, I have no desire to have to purchase “everything” I want to watch on there.
They need to compete with Netflix and Blockbuster head on before they are going to really break through with this product.
This review used too much ‘gushy’ language for my taste, but there were parts that were more informative:
“… I ran into trouble when I tried … moving the songs, movies, podcasts and photos from my computer to the Apple TV. It just wouldn’t synch. After much consultation with Apple technicians and wizards, we finally figured out that my firewall was preventing a synch, and we tweaked the settings. (Of course as a reviewer I got special treatment; in any case, this experience indicates that the product is still somewhat in shakedown mode.)”
“When I watched the pilot episode of “Battlestar Galactica” from my son’s computer, there were … [a] few annoying buffer moments toward the beginning (pauses in the video transfer …), but once it got going, the quality was quite acceptable. Music videos, by the way, seem to be of noticeably lower quality than movies and television shows.”
“… if you synch too many videos onto your Apple TV, you won’t have much room for anything else. It has only a 40-gigabyte hard drive—half of the storage of the top-shelf iPods—with only about 33 gigs of that usable for storage. (Movies typically take up almost 2 gigs, and lots of people have music collections that can’t fit on an Apple TV.)”
“… it’s easy to pick selected photo albums and watch … slide shows on your television. Unfortunately, at this point you can only show photos that are synced to the Apple TV – no streaming … from other computers. I think that the ability to have visitors share their photos is central to what this devices attempts to deliver …, and Apple should build this in as quickly as possible.”
“Another future direction staring Apple in the face: letting you use your iTunes account to actually buy songs and videos. It also would be great to use the Apple TV to download podcasts, something you can’t do now. In the future I … hope that Apple will come up with lots of new developments here, maybe even channels where you can view YouTube and Google Video clips…”
You can use it as a tray to fry your sushi – that sucker is hot baby!
doggone,
thanks
that’s a shame, because i currently have an express in my living room for streaming music from a G5 upstairs, controlling it with a powerbook and it works flawlessly.
I’d consider replacing that express with an appletv, for streaming EVEYRTHING to the main system, but to lose the access point on the first floor really doesn’t make sense
that being said, I am taking the train up to manhattan from philadelphia this weekend and plan on test driving the apple tv at the fifth avenue apple store.
we’ll see if i can resist temptaion…