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Apple TV - "Worst Gadgets of the Decade"

Whatever !!!

We have 2 ATV's for the house and EVERYONE LOVES THEM !!!

I cant imagine not having them .... they are awesome and work super well and allow playback of our movies, music, pictures and we watch youtube on the big screen as well. It does these things with ease and simplicity !

Forget having all those CD's and DVD's laying around...
 
EarthDawn said:
...have 2 ATV's for the house and EVERYONE LOVES THEM !!!... Forget having all those CD's and DVD's laying around...
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I'm on a DVD conversion quest myself -- its very nice not to have the clutter (as well as having all my movies ready to go).
 
Bye Bye Baby said:
I really like mine. Can't agree.
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I really like mine too. But I sure do hope that Apple doesn't completely abandon this product and updates it soon. I'm struggling to understand why this is so low on their priority list, given that it is a direct gateway to their iTunes store and as such it is bound to generate incremental revenue on top of the price for the h/w itself.
 
pjarvi said:
This is a problem that only shows the success of the device, that the one true failing of it is lack of space to store everything I want to buy. In other words, Apple could be making even more money from the device than they do already.
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I completely agree with you. The Apple TV is pretty much a perfect and least expensive iTunes gateway. Why would Apple not want to make this device as capable as possible to view and store the content that the user has to rent/buy from iTunes, thus resulting in revenue to Apple? I do not understand the logic. You're talking about an incremental revenue stream. Why not exploit it? Don't they care about money anymore?
 
Best device for iTunes gateway.

Jaro65 said:
I completely agree with you. The Apple TV is pretty much a perfect and least expensive iTunes gateway. Why would Apple not want to make this device as capable as possible to view and store the content that the user has to rent/buy from iTunes, thus resulting in revenue to Apple? I do not understand the logic. You're talking about an incremental revenue stream. Why not exploit it? Don't they care about money anymore?
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I think perhaps Apple are making some progress here, at least with some Networks. There are two issues that are causing problems. 1) Lack of agreement on iTunes subscriptions and 2) Delivery infrastructure problems, particularly with Broadband providers. IMO, neither of these problems are down to Apple.

As for increasing local storage, I believe that streaming over the internet is the way forward, once issue (2) goes away. In the meantime, store your own content on a central computer running iTunes. I have a 40GB appleTV and the disk still has lots of free space even though I’ve rented 2 HD movies, because I stream my own content over ethernet rather than store it on the appleTV.

For pities sake apple, don’t listen to the people on this thread that request the appleTV becomes an “all in one box” Yes, improve the hardware in terms of playback of 720p material (30fps would be nice; 1080p playback would also be welcome; IPTV... bring it), but the current balance between price vs features works just fine for me. Those of you that ask for BD / PVR functionality just don’t get it.
 
What a joke! 🙄

The :apple:TV is awesome! Everybody who has seen mine and my collection is simply amazed. 😎

Over 400 movies and hundreds of TV shows at my fingertips, yea, worst gadget of the decade. 🙄
 
OdduWon said:
:apple:TV is so expensive for what it does, it almost makes more sense to get a finally updated Mac Mini. Is there a difference between front row and :apple:TV software?
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The Mac mini is $599. The Apple TV is $229. That’s a big difference. Yes, there is also difference between the Apple TV’s software and the current version of Front Row.

The version of Front Row (2.x) that currently ships with 10.6 Snow Leopard is actually based on Apple TV Software Version 1.x. Whereas, we’ve moved on to 3.x on the Apple TV itself.

Front Row development on the Mac side appears to be dead. Apple no longer ships the compatible remotes with any of their Mac products and Front Row hasn’t been updated (other than bug fixes) since Oct. 2007.
 

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Funny! Just last night I was using my ATV and I said to my wife, "I love this device. It's amazing!! It just works". However, I did mod mine with ATV Flash and an external HD 😀 . If they came out with something even better, that would be really cool.
 
I used to enjoy my little Apple TV. still use it now and again for the occasional download/rental. Then I finally bought myself the ps3 slim with play tv, and basically that's taken over as my main media unit. plays avi natively, can see my NAS without any hacks, plays bluray, records and replays tv? i buy the daily show from itunes, cause there's no way in hell im paying for austar just for that show. otherwise the thing doesnt come on as much anymore at all. it's a shame. the apple tv had an interesting thing going. it's a shame apple's ignored it for so long.
 
tmofee said:
I used to enjoy my little Apple TV. still use it now and again for the occasional download/rental. Then I finally bought myself the ps3 slim with play tv, and basically that's taken over as my main media unit. plays avi natively, can see my NAS without any hacks, plays bluray, records and replays tv? i buy the daily show from itunes, cause there's no way in hell im paying for austar just for that show. otherwise the thing doesnt come on as much anymore at all. it's a shame. the apple tv had an interesting thing going. it's a shame apple's ignored it for so long.
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I used to get The Daily Show from iTunes. Now I just watch it on Hulu.
 
waaaaaaaaaa

i love my apple tv. sometimes i take it from one room to another.. i can listen to my music library thru my surrond soundand i like to view future purchases on my 50" plasma... it could use an upgrade but i am happy with mine😎:apple:
 
Just thought I would chip in my tuppence.

I consider myself an average Joe, I am not that techy but know a little (as most folks do now)

I bought an ATV on impulse a year ago cause it was on refurb and pretty cheap. I then spent the next several months trying to convince my wife it had a purpose.

I can safely say that a year on we both love the system for its ease of use and simplicity. I have it connected via HDMI to my TV and optically to surround sound. When I want to listen to music in my living room. ATV gets turned on.

When I want to show photos on a big screen to friends and family - ATV

When I want to watch a film - ATV (both rentals from itunes and handbrake rips - my wife does this as she is more techy than me!)

I used to have a PS3 but sold it and TBH I couldnt tell you the difference between what the ATV puts out versus the PS3 and probably a lot of other people couldnt either

We sometimes even put on the ATV just to have the photo screensaver playing when we have visitors and dont want music on, its nice to just have on showing random photos.

Wether I truly am an average Joe I'm not sure about but my guess is that as downloadable content becomes more commonplace (I know loads of people who still rent and buy DVDs) the ATV will make more sense for the average person who doesnt want it to be a TV tuner or a PC or be able to play any file format etc etc

it is very good at what it does. It just doesnt do a lot of other things. But then it never claimed to.
 
For me the Apple TV is perhaps the one Apple product that is most neglected but has the appeal to be one of the most purchased. At the moment a lot of people use hacks to get the best out of it but lets not forget the hardware hasn't changed for a good long while.
 
I hardly think your theories are proven because some tech site actually reports on it. I doubt you've ever used one so your opinion matters little.

The ATV serves a very nice purpose for those who enjoy the purchased content or rentals in iTunes. Personally I loved mine until I wanted something more and did not want to deal with hacking the ATV.
 
jaw04005 said:
The Mac mini is $599. The Apple TV is $229. That’s a big difference. Yes, there is also difference between the Apple TV’s software and the current version of Front Row.

The version of Front Row (2.x) that currently ships with 10.6 Snow Leopard is actually based on Apple TV Software Version 1.x. Whereas, we’ve moved on to 3.x on the Apple TV itself.

Front Row development on the Mac side appears to be dead. Apple no longer ships the compatible remotes with any of their Mac products and Front Row hasn’t been updated (other than bug fixes) since Oct. 2007.
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Thank you very much for that information!

I consider buying a Mac Mini to use it as a HTPC, but in fact, the current Front Row version is not very user friendly with thousands of videos.
I't takes hours to find the right movie, hence it would be nice to get the Apple TV Front Row version 3 on the Mini.
Has anybody done that yet?
 
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