Apple TV's pros and big CONS.

Sparky9292 said:

CONS:

1. No Hulu (Steve Jobs will roll-over in his grave before he supports Hulu)

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Why? iPhone OS has a Hulu+ app and Apple TV already has Netflix.

The biggest con for me is that Home Sharing doesn't support playcounts. How can something so integral to iTunes be left out? Utterly ridiculous and disappointing.

GermanSuplex said:

The biggest con for me is that Home Sharing doesn't support playcounts. How can something so integral to iTunes be left out? Utterly ridiculous and disappointing.

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Really? Integral? Like for what? Not being disparaging but ive never seen the use of it.

I was hoping for VLC for Apple TV but after seeing the news that the iPhone version might get pulled from the App Store its highly unlikely. That alone would've made it perfect for myself and many other users. For now, WD TV will be a much better option.

Just my 2 cents...

If you use iTunes for all of your media the product is great. If you have other formats that you need to support or different connectivity than look elsewhere.

The integration with iTunes is great and the new AirPlay functionality makes this a no-brainer for me.

Why in the world did you buy an AppleTV?

slipper said:

I was hoping for VLC for Apple TV but after seeing the news that the iPhone version might get pulled from the App Store its highly unlikely. That alone would've made it perfect for myself and many other users. For now, WD TV will be a much better option.

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VLC is pretty crappy on iOS because there is no hardware acceleration. Trying to play those other formats without transcoding does not work well at all without hardware acceleration. The streaming and transcoding on the fly solution implemented by Air Video works much better than VLC in my and most other's opinion.

The biggest con is no hard drive! I dont want to wire my laptop up to an external and have 4 devices running just to see my entire library.

1. ATV 2. Laptop 3. HD 4.TV

Whats the point in having an energy efficient ATV if you have to run all the other stuff along with it?

Omne666 said:

Really? Integral? Like for what? Not being disparaging but ive never seen the use of it.

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Yes, playcounts are an integral part of the iTunes/i-Devices ecosystem, if you use smart playlists.

I have an iPhone, and since it's not the 160GB iPod I was used to, I use smart playlists to sync a good portion of stuff. For instance, I have a smart playlist with Rating is in the range 3 stars to 5 stars that haven't been played in six months or longer. On the old Apple TV, I could listen to a song, then it would drop off the playlist, and when I was to sync my iPod, the playlist would be updated.

Because the new ATV doesn't sync, this is not currently possible. I don't care about syncing content back and forth, but I do want the new ATV to sync metadata, i.e. ratings/playcounts/etc.

There are a lot of other uses for playcounts in smart playlists.

Plus, even if you don't use smart playlists, its nice to know when/how many times you listened to a track.

NightStorm said:

Why in the world did you buy an AppleTV?

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I wanted an inexpensive way to
• Watch the hundreds of DVD’S and TV shows that I own at the push of a button
• Stream Netflix.
• Show family picture slide shows and home movies of our kids at family events.

So for $200 i can now do this, (going to buy a 2nd one).

From A Buick 8 said:

I wanted an inexpensive way to
• Watch the hundreds of DVD’S and TV shows that I own at the push of a button
• Stream Netflix.
• Show family picture slide shows and home movies of our kids at family events.

So for $200 i can now do this, (going to buy a 2nd one).

Click to expand...

My question was for the OP; from his list of cons, the AppleTV was nowhere near the device he should have purchased.

As the owner of 2 AppleTV v2 boxes, I've been pretty happy. There are a few bugs that I'm sure will be worked out in subsequent software updates, but I also bought into using iTunes (and not downloading movies from bittorrent) a long time ago.

I agree that the lack of play count support over Home Sharing is a problem for many people. I rely on smart playlists, many of which are based on play count and play date. Losing that function over Home Sharing makes me much less likely to use it. Instead I tend to take a couple more steps and use the older AirTunes system, which is a bothersome work-around.

for what it is, it does an awesome job at it. I was n ever a big itunes fan until I got my MacBook Pro, then switched over to it, and now all of the cool things that it can do make it all very nice working together.

I certainly would like to stream other formats, but its not a show stopper.

GermanSuplex said:

Yes, playcounts are an integral part of the iTunes/i-Devices ecosystem, if you use smart playlists..

..There are a lot of other uses for playcounts in smart playlists.

Plus, even if you don't use smart playlists, its nice to know when/how many times you listened to a track.

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Agreed to the fullest extent. Since my iPod Touch's headphone jack stopped working, I've been relying on my 32 GB iPhone for my portable music. I have several smart playlists synced that depend on play count, most obvious one being my "Most Spun" (play count of 10 or higher). Kinda disappointed that my Apple TV I'm waiting to arrive won't support that.

I am curious though, as someone mentioned that iTunes is your portal for more or less all content from your computer, do I need to import all of my movies into iTunes? And if I do, am I able to not let it consolidate and save it to a new iTunes Movies folder and rather keep them on an external hard drive?

Yes you will need to add the movies to your iTunes Library and you can set up iTunes to not consolidate the files to one location. If you want to keep the files on an external hard drive you can certainly do that and they can be in multiple different hard drives and/or folders. iTunes will reference the files no matter where they are stored as long as it knows about them and they will still be able to stream to the Apple TV.

Go to iTunes Preferences > Advanced and make sure "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to Library" is unchecked and that should take care of it.

Sparky9292 said:

CONS:

1. No Hulu (Steve Jobs will roll-over in his grave before he supports Hulu)
2. No AVI support. -- Only supports .MOV and .MP4 formats.
3. Have to transcode everything with VisualHub or VideoMonkey. Ugh.
4. Not enough filters for shared movies. Genre, Viewed, Nonviewed are the ONLY filters. (see Plex or XBox Media Center to compare)
5. Can't directly attach my Drobo to AppleTV
6. Can't run bittorrent on AppleTV

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No offence, but literally none of those is a con.

The glaring con is that ATV2 will not output anything other than 60Hz. We use 50Hz: all my Handbrake encodes will not play without skipping, neither will home movies edited with iMovie. Until they update the firmware to allow 50Hz output, as the ATV1 could, it's really not much use.

newagemac said:

Yes you will need to add the movies to your iTunes Library and you can set up iTunes to not consolidate the files to one location. If you want to keep the files on an external hard drive you can certainly do that and they can be in multiple different hard drives and/or folders. iTunes will reference the files no matter where they are stored as long as it knows about them and they will still be able to stream to the Apple TV.

Go to iTunes Preferences > Advanced and make sure "Copy files to iTunes Media Folder when adding to Library" is unchecked and that should take care of it.

Click to expand...

So in other words, when I'm adding my movies to iTunes, uncheck it, but since I consolidate all of my music when I add it, I'll have to remember to check it again? Bleh. But I'll deal I suppose.

I think the missing play counts is just a bug in the current version. It's probably related to the same issue as videos not being marked watched after viewing them (or partially watched) and rented content in iTunes being allowed unlimited access from the Apple TV. I suspect the next update to the Apple TV will restore play count functionality.

Sparky9292 said:

I've owned the new AppleTV for a few weeks. I'm only keeping it because I know the jailbreak community will come through with apps that allow it to do what it is supposed to.

PROS:

1. $99 is cheap
2. Looks good next to my black Sony Bravia
3. Easy to configure
4. Sees all of my iTunes shares
5. Love the new metal remote compared to the crappy white flimsy one.
6. Sees photos, music, movies* (not AVI though) from other iTunes collections.

CONS:

1. No Hulu (Steve Jobs will roll-over in his grave before he supports Hulu)
2. No AVI support. -- Only supports .MOV and .MP4 formats.
3. Have to transcode everything with VisualHub or VideoMonkey. Ugh.
4. Not enough filters for shared movies. Genre, Viewed, Nonviewed are the ONLY filters. (see Plex or XBox Media Center to compare)
5. Can't directly attach my Drobo to AppleTV
6. Can't run bittorrent on AppleTV

Click to expand...

Don't care about Hulu, AVI, transcoding, Drobo or bittorrent aka 1,2,3,5, and 6.

So ATV is a massive winner for me.

bigger con for me is Netflix reloads everytime you back out of a movie or tv show description screen as if it isn't cached. Also ATV puts you back to the beginning of your instant queue or other filter. Not in the spot you left off in.


The My Computer media interface should be better as well. Should be like the renting movies/tv shows and Netflix interfaces.

Also be nice to be able to customize the interface. Put your most used functions front and center.

tallyho said:

The glaring con is that ATV2 will not output anything other than 60Hz.

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You sure?

Apple said:

Compatible with high-definition TVs with HDMI and capable of 720p 60/50Hz

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Also, not heard anyone else complaining about that: lots of people complaining about stuttering, yes, but nothing linking it to a 50Hz/60Hz incompatibility.

Sparky9292 said:

...
CONS:

1. No Hulu (Steve Jobs will roll-over in his grave before he supports Hulu)
2. No AVI support. -- Only supports .MOV and .MP4 formats.
3. Have to transcode everything with VisualHub or VideoMonkey. Ugh.
4. Not enough filters for shared movies. Genre, Viewed, Nonviewed are the ONLY filters. (see Plex or XBox Media Center to compare)
5. Can't directly attach my Drobo to AppleTV
6. Can't run bittorrent on AppleTV

Click to expand...

I know is generally the ****** response from people, but from the perspective of a company trying to appeal to studios in order to get them to provide content (ie those 99c rentals, movie rentals/terms, Netflix, etc) a bunch of those restrictions are generally things that affect people that download content.
If you are watching your OWN DVDs/TV sets that you want to digitize, you have to convert them anyways, so instead of making them AVIs, you would just make the MP4s. Similarly, if you own the content and are ripping it yourself, the need to transcode would mostly apply if you were downloading xvids or mkvs (or, I suppose, if you have previously ripped your content as AVIs).
I don't say that from my high horse as I may/may not download the 720p mkvs and deal with having to transcode them to get them into iTunes so that they'll be organized/play on all my iOS devices but that's because, at least to me, the benefit of iTunes organization, seemless syncing across multiple devices and the UI of it all is worth the hassle of transcoding.
If you just want to play any type of file, there are definitely options out there.

NightStorm said:

My question was for the OP; from his list of cons, the AppleTV was nowhere near the device he should have purchased.

As the owner of 2 AppleTV v2 boxes, I've been pretty happy. There are a few bugs that I'm sure will be worked out in subsequent software updates, but I also bought into using iTunes (and not downloading movies from bittorrent) a long time ago.

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Sorry, I should have caught that.

alFR said:

You sure?

Also, not heard anyone else complaining about that: lots of people complaining about stuttering, yes, but nothing linking it to a 50Hz/60Hz incompatibility.

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Um, lots of people have pointed out the lack of 50Hz output. Here's what Google threw up in a quick search:

http://themacscreencastguy.com/blog/2010/10/7/apple-tv-fail.html

The solution on the original Apple TV was to go into the Settings menu and the select the correct TV Resolution, namely 720p 50Hz. The "ghosting" was due to the fact that the device was outputting at 720p 60Hz, which my TV didn't like.
Switch it to 50Hz and the picture was fine.
So, with the new Apple TV displaying the same symptoms, I dove into the Settings menu to switch it to 720p 50Hz
And I looked....
and I looked...
and I looked...
Nope, nowhere to be seen?
Even under the Audio & Video options, there is no option to change the TV resolution.
Strange?
So I looked again..... Nope!
WTF!
Straining my eyes to read the serial number on the bottom of the device, I called AppleCare.
After a 15 minute conversation, they said they'd get back to me.
They just did - with the rather startling news that you can't change the TV resolution on the current version of the Apple TV.
WTF!
So my shiny new Apple TV won't work on a HDTV that happily supports the Mac Mini and the old Apple TV? Really?

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http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2612106&tstart=45

I've tried converting some PAL material using Handbrake and importing it into iTunes (variety of settings used). It plays perfectly on the Mac using Quicktime, but has AWFUL motion judder (worst on horizontal pans) when played over the aTV, which is still providing the TV with a 60Hz signal. Now, PAL is 50Hz

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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2602952&tstart=120

I see from your signature you have 2 ATV's - are these 1st generation? I believe you have option to choose NTSC or PAL (60Hz Vs 50Hz) in settings with 1st gen device. This choice not available in the ATV2 as far as I'm aware. When I connect the ATV2 my 1080p LCD settings auto change to "1278x720 @ 60Hz" which suggest NTSC is default

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http://discussions.info.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2606089&tstart=30

Given that the aTV also refuses to output 50hz when fed PAL material it is looking more to me as though the aTV's HDMI is not talking to the TV properly. The more I use the aTV the more I feel I am beta testing a pre release version. I have lots of Apple kit. The aTV is letting the side down!

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That enough for you?

So, rather than complain about the fact that the AppleTV won't run bit-torrent or that it won't play AVIs (and why would you convert your own video to AVI...oh wait, you wouldn't...we're back to bit-torrent again ) why not complain about the fact that it doesn't work properly in the many parts of the world where video runs at 50Hz? I am hoping they can fix this with a firmware upgrade.