How does apple TV work and is it what i want?

grawk said:

Streaming from the TC to the laptop to your airport will be problematic for high def content, but will probably work with low def, if you've got an 802.11n network that's set up for N only. Otherwise, you'll be unhappy with anything that isn't synced. You might be happier with the western digital box plugged directly to the TC.

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netdog said:

It works fine with HD.

My question would be regarding format. If you have ATV compatible media, it will play fine. If you have DVD rips with VOB files, you'll want to add Boxee (free). In any case, I love my AppleTV. Highly recommended.

NB: I have never regretted getting the 40GB model.

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JONTY.UK/FR said:

Ok.......

Im on the verge of buying 40 GB ATV but want to understand how it will work and fit in with what I have and how I use things'.

I have a MacBook and my wife has windows XP. We have 1TB TC which we only connect to wirelessly

We have about 70GB of music files and 150GB of Movie Files.

We travel with work lots and need to have our Itunes folders on our laptops.

I dont plan to save any media onto ATV just want it to stream movies to the TV at home.

Would I be right in saying I have to stream from TC to Laptop to ATV? is this the only way to do things?

Will I be happy with ATV is what I need to know?

Cheers.

Jonty.

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dickovski said:

I just bought an ATV to replace my original Xbox. Needless to say the Xbox is staying put and I'm selling the ATV. The ATV is great at playing stuff via iTunes but you can pretty much forget about anything else even after unlocking it.

If you can hook up your MacBook then that's the way to go.

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dmm219 said:

Examples? Boxee plays just about every kind of media perfectly on my ATV...

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JONTY.UK/FR said:

I dont really understand why you would buy ATV, if you have to stream via your mac from TC and on to ATV (unless you store media on the ATV, which will also be on youre TC and in my case on my macbook), when it would be much more reliable, to use Frontrow directly from your Mac directly to the TV???

Sounds like a waist of money to me.

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dickovski said:

Yep I have boxee and xbmc on my ATV and they both work great streaming all kinds of files from my imac... but... I don't want to stream from my iMac as I actually turn it off to save power when not using it. Copying stuff over to the ATV is painfully slow over SFTP and again I don't want to leave it on all the time.

My original Xbox running XBMC still wins hands down for me even after all these years. It starts up in about 10secs holds 250GB of stuff and I can copy a whole film over to it in about 4mins, streams BBC iPlayer, YouTube & Flickr and costs about £25 these days. I know it has no HD capability but I don't need that really.

As they say in the boxing world 'Pound for pound the best media centre in the world' IMHO.

I think the ATV is still a good bit of kit, just not good enough (yet) to replace my cheap old Xbox.

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dmm219 said:

To each their own I guess. I know XMBC is hugely popular...but I have just never liked it. I far prefer using boxee and atv to it. For the money however, yea you can't beat picking up an old xbox.

Also, ATV is not a good choice for anyone who doesn't want to stream their content. I never understand why people don't get this, but it IS a big deal of a lot of people (me included). I would far prefer an ATV that isn't tethered, in any way, to another computer running itunes. ATV will not become successful with the broader market, until it can seperate from an itunes server with no penalties. Take 2 was a good first step, but they need to do far more (opening up the stupid USB port for an external drives is beyond obvious).

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