New Apple TV

 

 

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I read the reviews and online discussions before springing for the Apple TV. Most of them are from December or earlier. Without disputing the experiences of earlier reviewers, it's clear now that many of the glitches have been ironed out, and the Apple TV which I'm now watching works well, and intuitively. That said, Apple TV is not a magic trick and will perform no better than your internet connection will allow.

What it's like when it's working right
When it's operating as intended, Apple TV allows you to rent and watch HD TV for (typically) £4.99 for 48 hours access. The picture is pristine, and, once loaded, plays without any of the glitches or artefacts you get with BBC iPlayer or 4OD. You can also watch YouTube videos, and listen to radio. For some reason, you can further watch American baseball, if this appeals. As well as downloading directly from the internet, you can stream from an iPhone, iPad, or computer with iTunes installed and WiFi.

Connections
There is just one HDMI output, and no HDMI input. This means that you have to have a free HDMI port on your TV, or swap plugs, or use an HDMI splitter. Some splitters will work, others won't. Generally speaking, splitters that are actually physical switches should work, whereas splitters that look for an active signal may be more problematic. There's also an optical out, but no analogue out. You can either get this from your TV, or some other device that accepts optical audio. Getting the signal in is by ethernet or wifi. Doing it by wifi is asking for trouble, because it will slow the whole connection down, especially if there's a of competing wifi in your area.

Limitations
The Apple TV can't download video faster than your network connection allows. We're on a supposedly 8 MB connection which in reality delivers 6 MB consistently. This is more or less the minimum specification -- though, since we're on ADSL at the edge of rural Warwickshire, a lot of users will get better performance. To watch a 90 minute film, we need to start downloading about 45 minutes before, if it's late at night and we're not surfing the net for anything else. Any other internet activity will increase the download time. A faster connection will download more quickly and let you start watching sooner, as it doesn't need to download everything before it starts playing.

Why it's good
Compared to the Humax Foxsat HDR 500GB Freesat HD Satellite Receiver and Digital TV Recorder we have, and the Virgin box we had when we lived in a Cable area, the look, feel and control responsiveness of Apple TV are years ahead. You can preview films you might want to watch, quickly scan through hundreds of covers to pick something (it used to take me 30 minutes working through the text-only Virgin film-on-demand menus just checking the titles), and even watch previews of films now in the cinema. The choice of films is a _lot_ better than Virgin's ever was. The streaming from iTunes, iPhones and iPads is flawless, and the whole thing is just a much better quality device than anything I've ever previously plugged into the TV set.
It's the viewing quality which really impresses, though. On our 720p TV, the HD quality is as good as BBC HD, and approaches the quality of Blu-Ray, without the slow unresponsiveness of many Blu-Ray players. Crucially, it is streets ahead of iPlayer, 4OD and Demand5 in the smoothness of its playing. There are not glitches, sudden stops, degraded pictures of the kind that we get on other services (using the same internet connection). This is by design, and is the reason why you have to wait a long time for the film to be ready: once the viewing experience starts it's perfect.
Something else which is nice about this is that it doesn't impose itself on your other web activities. While waiting for a film to download, I watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother on 4OD. The predicted download time for Apple TV went up dramatically, but it allowed me to watch 4OD without any more than the usual connection problems. Likewise (also for a hike in predicted download time) I was able to surf the web, pick up my email. and generally not be bothered. This is important if you intend to watch a film in the mid-evening, but want to carry on surfing beforehand.

Verdict
I was quite nervous of buying this because of all the negative reviews, and especially because our broadband is quite slow. In the event, the pre-download time is somewhat annoying -- I would prefer not to have to decide 45 minutes in advance what I'm going to watch. On the other hand, it's a lot quicker than nipping down the shops for a DVD, and not really less time consuming than the endless trawl through Virgin's list of available films. Available content is very strong, though by no means universal, even as regards 'classics', and you can get French, German, Italian and other world cinema.

I doubt we would have bought this if we were still on Virgin Cable -- the quality and reliability is better, but the download time is slower, and Virgin FilmFlex came with our package. For our situation -- provided that you don't expect performance that your internet connection can't deliver -- this is really very good.

I connected this up to my widescreen and desktop via wireless and straight away it recognized all my files in itunes. 6 days after purchase I decided to jailbreak and bam it played all my itunes as well as all avi, mkv etc. This thing plays everything and plays it flawlessly. Picture quality is superb. How and why people don't like it I is beyond me. Warranty void? Rubbish, all you do it restore and take it back to the store. Never had any problmes with Apple. We have an iphone, ipod touch and and Apple tv in the house and its all good. Used the remote app on iphone and can control my Apple tv if required. If you are looking for media streamer this is the best thing to get. I mean who watches youtube etc on tv. Just download everything and watch on Apple tv. Buy it, you won't be dissapointed.

This is a gorgeous looking device, absolutely tiny, and a joy to set up (plug in, connect to the TV, enter your network details & you are ready to go). But for a UK user for now, it is the content that is severely lacking, and since it is a device that lives or dies by what it can deliver, that is quite a problem.

The film download service seems reasonably priced, but compared to my Virgin Media VOD, it's a slow process. Browsing YouTube & Flickr are initially both fun, but neither has a great deal of long-term appeal to me.

The worst part is that if you have spent some time collecting all of your various iTunes libraries onto a single, central NAS that can then be shared by all of the Apple devices in our house (several laptops, a desktop & an iMac) using the iTunes sharing function on the LaCie NAS, this is simply not compatible with the Apple TV, that needs to connect to a computer running iTunes to share the media. It's a counter-intuitive step, really, requiring you to have an iTunes computer *and* the Apple TV to be running at the same time to stream - how is that good for economical power use?

To sum up, the pros are that it's tiny, looks lovely and produces good quality images and sound. However, for me the cons are pretty serious: no access to UK-based streaming media (iPlayer, 4OD etc.), no UK-equivalent to NetFlix, no NAS sharing of media, whether video, music or images. I have seen criticism that it's HD-output is only 720p, but on my television, it still looks very good, so that is not really a con for me

I said before: 'All of this, I am sure, could be, and may well be, fixed in a software update in the future. But for now, for a UK user, the Apple TV is a nice toy, but not really a useful media device'. UPDATE: I have downloaded the new OS (4.2 2060). It does nothing for UK content at all, and adds a new menu item - Major league baseball highlights! Still no UK film rentals, no BBC radio, nor any iPlayer, 4OD or similar content support. My comments still stand that this device could be more useful to UK audiences, but Apple seem unwilling to do anything about this, or acknowledge a non-US market.

UPDATE (2) - To be fair to Apple, I have now discovered BBC radio streams available - Radio 1 is under 'Top 40/Pop', Radio 2 under 'Adult Contemporary', Radio 3 under 'Classical' & Radios 4 & 5Live under 'News/Talk'. I discovered these by accident - no news (I could find) from Apple to announce this. Still no search function on the radio to look for other BBC channels...

UPDATE (3) - I have now found a 'favourites' function - hold down select on the chosen radio station, and it is added to a 'favourites' list at the top of the radio station genre list. I discovered this by accident.

UPDATE (4) - BBC content unavailable again. It seems the BBC don't like Apple, or vice-versa. All of the BBC channels available in the last update have now been removed in OS update 4.2.2. Any attempt to connect to a BBC channels results in an error, either 'An error occurred loading this content' or 'Cannot connect to Internet Radio Stations'. The commercial, US-bases stations seem unaffected. It would be nice if I can find a list anywhere to explain what content we can get, and why the BBC is unavailable again.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Love my AppleTv, Roku not so much
Got my AppleTv for Christmas and it has been one of my favorite devices. As more and more devices integrate with the internet and TV's, this is one of the better ones. Read more

Published 20 hours ago by Mike Jones

5.0 out of 5 stars It just keep on getting better
I've owned the ATV2 for a number of months now but never found the time to write a review. Over the past month with the release of the updated BBC iplayer and the addition of an... Read more

Published 4 days ago by minty7815

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow, for the size it packs a punch!!!!
I have been looking around for a "media extender" and with so many to choose from I was a little stumped. Read more

Published 8 days ago by David Bryce

4.0 out of 5 stars Apple TV
Delivery excellent as usual. Apple TV easy to use but have experienced a couple of glitches connecting with my PC on Homeshare. Read more

Published 9 days ago by P. Wyatt

4.0 out of 5 stars Own it. Love it. Wish I cancelled Sky months ago.
This thing had completely changed our TV watching patterns. No more advertisements, no more re-runs of TV shows from 1980s that no one was watching back in the 80s either... Read more

Published 10 days ago by Alexander Popov

5.0 out of 5 stars love it - why didn't I get one before?
Nice big TV / sound system meets big iTunes library of music, films, TV etc from my computer, plus computer photo library and internet content from flickr, You Tube etc. Read more

Published 12 days ago by Gosh

5.0 out of 5 stars an apple a day
Every other purchase I seem to make is an apple product. My latest the New Apple TV arrived in double quick time and in perfect condition. Read more

Published 16 days ago by Mr. Maurice Bird

5.0 out of 5 stars Apple tv review
Product was delivered as expected, very pleased with apple tv purchase.

I could mirror iphone4s, ipad2 to HDTV wireless. Read more

Published 18 days ago by hari

5.0 out of 5 stars Apple TV
After seeing my son displaying his photos on a TV screen at a family party I purchased two of these devices and, with a little help from my son, had them installed on two separate... Read more

Published 18 days ago by Mr. Robert Loane

5.0 out of 5 stars Delighted with Apple TV
This is a great product. Set-up was easy and we were watching an HD movie within ten minutes. I would highly recommend this product to anyone.

Published 19 days ago by R. Bamber

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