I use both the latest generation 4 Apple TV and a gen 2. The earlier generations are great if you just want to stream music. It has a TOSLINK out, giving you more options than just HDMI. That will save you some $$ and is great if you are repurposing an older receiver without HDMI
. There is no need to have, or turn on your TV to just stream music to you Audio system. Monoprice.com sells some cheap, but good quality, AV converters. I needed to convert the optical TOSLINK to digital on one receiver, and RCA on another older one. Extracting just audio from HDMI is more expensive, but possible. Of coarse, if you have HDMI in, you are good to go, no TV required. Good luck.