Is it worth owning both Apple TVs?

I don't know about owning both but I am having so much trouble with the original model that I have ordered the new one. The old one keeps overheating and crapping out!

My old model works pretty well aside from movies sometimes taking ages to load.. this is connected over ethernet to a fairly speedy PC. Sometimes HD movies load up and play almost immediately, letting me fast-forward and all, and sometimes 640x360 video takes a whole minute to load. There's no rhyme or reason that I can see. I'm hoping the new model will be speedy. I'll hold onto both until I find out which I like best and ditch the other.

Owning both models is working out well for me. Previously I had my original (160gb) AppleTV in my bedroom and used my PS3 in my living room, along with Medialink to stream.

Medialink has gotten worse and worse over time, which made me resort to copying files via thumb drive from my computer to my PS3 for viewing...I hate having to copying files.

With the new AppleTV in my living room, I no longer have to copy anything. Plus, I finally get to see all the artwork that goes along with my tv shows and movies (which is absent on the PS3) and also search by genre and watched/unwatched.

The older AppleTV remains in my bedroom and I really don't do any streaming to it. Anytime I'm in my bedroom its usually to go to sleep. So I keep a handful of movies and TV shows on the hard drive (I shut my computer down at night) and this works perfectly for me.

So, is it worth owning both? Absolutely, but only if it makes sense for your set up of course. I would not have bought the new ATV if my set up was already efficient.

Now that I have the new AppleTV in my living room and my old one in my bedroom...all is right in my apartment.

adding new ATV to old

absolutely. I have two of the original ATVs - love them both - had some ?? about limited storage on the new one - but at $99 - it is well worth it.
Now I have the TV room, living room and bedroom covered. Well worth it

I guess you could connect each one to a different TV. I don't see why not.

The old one started to drive me nuts! My biggest issue was that I had far too much content to sync, but my sync settings made it so that shows got automatically deleted.

I had things set up so minimal content was actually synced (like, the latest 1 or 2 shows), so if I bought a TV show season and started watching the first episode before it downloaded/synced, the Apple TV would delete all but the "latest show" and I'd be out $30 until I contacted Apple support.

Anyhow, I bought the new one and thought about keeping the old one because I do like the ability to impulse buy bargain bin content, but now I'm thinking it's bound for EBay.

i'm considering the new one. there's nothing wrong with my old one, but i'd like to throw one in the master bedroom and the addition of netflix is appealing.

Yeah my old one is gonna get hooked up to my Projector in the basement.

I have both to, The 160gb one, and the new apple tv, Took my 160gb one and put it in my bedroom could not be happier, They both work Great!

I have both, and its working well. I have 2 160GB ATV's, I got a 2nd one when they went on sale for 149.00 at best buy with the hopes of keeping video on one and audio on the other in 2 different rooms and have them see each other, but I havent figured that one out yet so far. I was using my itouch to load with kids shows for my son to watch on a little tv so I was not forced to watch dora, diego, and blues clues any longer. I decided that 99 bucks was a good price for me to get my itouch back, and got the new atv for his tv. its kind of a pain to keep the computer on to steam his shows from it, but not terrible. my plan at some point is to get a mac mini and move all audio and video content to it, so I can stream/sync from it and not have to tie up my imac logged into my account all of the time.

if anyone has got 2 160gb apple tv's to share content without being connected to itunes on a computer in a shared library, I would love to hear how you set it up.

I have 2 of the newer ones as well as a 160gb one and a 40gb one. You guys should check craigslist. I got my 40gb for 90 bucks and my 160gb for 50 bucks. I put the new apple tvs in my bedroom and living room. The 40gb is in my sons room and the 160gb is in the game room. I don't need netflix in my sons room or game room plus my projector does not have a hdmi input so I could not use the new apple tv in there without an adapter. They all work great together and the good thing is that I could sync all my son's shows to the 40gb and not have to worry about the pc being on when he needs to watch a movie.

sewerhead said:

I don't know about owning both but I am having so much trouble with the original model that I have ordered the new one. The old one keeps overheating and crapping out!

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I'm not surprised at this. After the new ATV was announced, MacFixit did a tear down of the original, and the ventilation design was found to be very sub-par. There is a metal plate inside that is perforated to allow movement of air...but the only problem is that the bottom assembly is made up of a rubber mat that is then glued on top of this perforated metal, so basically most of those air holes are blocked by the rubber and/or glue. Not a very good design. I can't imagine how there were not more hardware failures on this device.

DJinTX said:

I'm not surprised at this. After the new ATV was announced, MacFixit did a tear down of the original, and the ventilation design was found to be very sub-par. There is a metal plate inside that is perforated to allow movement of air...but the only problem is that the bottom assembly is made up of a rubber mat that is then glued on top of this perforated metal, so basically most of those air holes are blocked by the rubber and/or glue. Not a very good design. I can't imagine how there were not more hardware failures on this device.

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My experience the original Apple tv never had an issue, the new one is giving many too many issues im am considering returning it.

BlackMangoTree said:

My experience the original Apple tv never had an issue, the new one is giving many too many issues im am considering returning it.

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I am definitely thinking of getting one, but I am very curious to know what issues you have been having?