MacRumors Review: Apple TV

[Stowaway]

A Joke?

As much as I am a long-time Apple supporter, I have to say this is probably one of the most half-assed products I've seen Apple introduce in a long time.

No surround-sound support, no built-in support for older sets, a 32 GIG HARD DRIVE?!!! For movies? And TV Shows? Seriously you must be joking. Apple can do better than this. You can BUY 300GB hard drive for under $100 at a consumer rate, surely Apple get something larger than 32GB! With the exception of whatever processor they're using, I could assemble a much more marketable machine for less at a consumer price tag.

As much as I love Apple, they're going to have to come out with a new model pretty quickly to redeem me on this thing.

 

[Avatar74]

As much as I am a long-time Apple supporter, I have to say this is probably one of the most half-assed products I've seen Apple introduce in a long time.

No surround-sound support, no built-in support for older sets, a 32 GIG HARD DRIVE?!!! For movies? And TV Shows? Seriously you must be joking. Apple can do better than this. You can BUY 300GB hard drive for under $100 at a consumer rate, surely Apple get something larger than 32GB! With the exception of whatever processor they're using, I could assemble a much more marketable machine for less at a consumer price tag.

As much as I love Apple, they're going to have to come out with a new model pretty quickly to redeem me on this thing.

Why do you need an onboard hard drive larger than that when it'll stream 720p over 802.11g... G! ... from any computer on your network? Hell, I did it from a G4/933MHz to AppleTV over 802.11g and it worked flawlessly with absolutely stellar quality.

Oh, as for surround sound... just switch your receiver to ProLogic II mode. It'll demux the Dolby Surround analog phase shifted channels out of the L-R AAC mix. I'm sure Dolby Digital support is coming because the hardware can support it. It's just a matter of software upgrades if they did in fact use the Intel HD Audio chipset that, with Dolby Digital Live, can transcode multichannel AAC to AC-3 on the fly.

 

[ces1965]

too negative - not a B-, more like an A-

I've been playing with mine for a couple of days. Works fantastic.

B-? Let's see, this is the first well done media extender product, by far. It actually works. Even streaming over a G network. The syncing feature has never been done in a product of this type - not even on the xBox 360.

Fantastic way to listen to and browse your music collection. Photos too - awesome if you are any kind of a photographer. Podcasts - again, what else has this capability? MS still doesn't support podcasts on their platform.

And it's reasonably priced. What's not to like?

There's not HD content at the iTunes store, but it's coming I'm sure. The biggest problem I think is that the files would be too big for an iPod, so they need to figure out a way around that.

Surround - there is Dolby Pro Logic which actually sounds pretty good, if not quite as good as Dolby digital.

It's an A+ product in terms of doing what it's advertised to do. Take off a few points for current limitations (likely to be removed) and you have a solid A-.

 

[surferfromuk]

Absolutely not.

etc etc...

Well Don, I hope your right - I really do...

...because the real question is can they keep this product alive long enough to get it to market dominating position like the iPod where they are selling 100million units and own 75% of the market ?

Now I don't think my list has too many problems on it but bottom line is price wise it's brushing up against the backside of the Xbox 360 , and I don't mean that in a sexy way either...now knock off $100.00 and 2 million people will buy one right now and that will lead to Gen 2 when 10 million will buy one, and gen 3 when maybe 100million people will buy one and then we'll really have something amazing...I'd hate Apple TV to 'create a perceived need' only to have people in the final 'pre-purchase' analysis deceide to 'go get an Xbox or Netgear' piece of kit instead...at $200 people will 'just get one for the heck of it'...

So, I'm not saying your wrong.I really aren't..and if there are 2 million folks exactly like you out there right now I don't think Apple has a problem with the 'tech spec dissatisfaction' that were reading about....

If not, as curmi, indicated, is the 'new Apple' willing to listen? Only Time will tell.

Myself I think SJ's New Apple is a spectacular company and will make the changes to ensure this product is successful and that in time it will becomes market leader...

 

[CoreWeb]

I just downloaded it and it's playing on my Apple TV.

arn

Are you willing to try the 720p Eragon trailer? It's bit rate is over 6Mbps... and it's audio rate must be high as it is 5.1... (though I doubt that 5.1 will come out of the AppleTV as 5.1)

 

[spicyapple]

AppleTV: No cables. Less resolution than an EV8000. Lame.

MacRumours AppleTV review: Awesome.

 

[Darkroom]

great review!

 

[KingYaba]

You're better of buying a Mac Mini than an Apple TV

 

[NaMo4184]

Expectations

I think given the target for what this product was meant to be, Apple did a good job. A lot of complaints can be over looked when placed in the context of what Apple TV is intended for.

1. 40 gb harddrive for sycing. You can stream flawlessly over a g or n network, so synching is more for photo slide shows and music, than it is for movies.

2. no 1080p support and no SD cables. Currently the vast majoirty of HD tvs out there are 720p. The vast majority. So Tv manufactures already made 720p the standard by pushing it more than 1080p. Also, in 2009 the FCC will mandate that all signals sent over airwaves will be digital. So if u don't have an HDMI or Component connector, u will soon.

3. price of 300. Last I checked companies aren't charities, they sell products to make money. xbox and PS3 don't sell their hardware to make money, they make money off of accessories like controllers and games. This is also the cheapest device for its feature set.

4. no surround sound. It has 5.1 AAC doubly pro logic. looks like surround sound to me.

5. no dvd/HD disc player. Apple never gave the impresssion that Apple TV would have this. Also, most people have a dvd player already. This device isn't meant to be the one stop media center. Thats what microsoft is trying to do for the past 10 years (and has failed until, they sold hardware at a lose and software with the functionality pre-included).

My main complaints with the Apple Tv is lack of any HD content, and no easy way to import dvds (its illegal any way).

I think the review was very fair. There are tech pundits out there who want to paint Apple Tv as dead on arrival because apple tv isn't there dream media center, but its not fair to berate apple for lack of features that aren't necesssary for the market that apple is going after.

 

[padrino121]

Output but not process

Very nice review.


So the Apple TV does indeed support 1080i? That is a big deal, and if it's supported, Apple should advertise it.

...And what "tweaking" does 480i require? It seems to be one of the regular options.

I can see there will be a lot of confusion over this one. I think Apple is right in not advertising it heavily because although it can output in 1080i it is upscaled since it can only natively process movies with a maximum vertical resolution of 720.

 

[EricNau]

...There are tech pundits out there who want to paint Apple Tv as dead on arrival because apple tv isn't there dream media center, but its not fair to berate apple for lack of features that aren't necesssary for the market that apple is going after.

Unfortunately, Apple is going after a very small market with the Apple TV. The only people the Apple TV is truly useful for are those who choose to purchase their movies (or TV shows) in a propriety format from the iTunes Store (locking their entire video library with iTunes).

It would be great if I could turn my Mac into the Media Hub for my entire home, but until I'm willing to purchase everything from the iTunes Store, the Apple TV doesn't make any sense.

 

[Westside guy]

AppleTV: No cables. Less resolution than an EV8000. Lame.

Uh... you are aware that the original commentary that you're modeling your phrasing after (Slashdot's CmdrTaco on the original iPod: "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.") is so often quoted because it's seen, in hindsight, as having been so laughably missing the mark, right? Because it doesn't seem like that's how you're using it...

 

[NtroP]

Expectations -v- Reality

I received my Apple TV last Friday and have to say that I am extremely pleased with it.

First of all, I think too many people had their own expectations and hopes that are unrealistic in the context of what this product was intended to do. This product's purpose in life is to take your iTunes (read iTMS) content and make it easily available on your TV.

Let me say, first of all, that I don't have access to Cable or TV at my house. I have a 1Mb/sec DSL line and that's it. Therefore, I have a "Wall-O-DVD's" for entertainment (which, even with Delicious Library, is impossible to keep organized). I purchased a 60Gb video iPod when it first came out and have been using that to watch downloaded (from iTMS, mostly) TV shows, podcasts and movies on my TV. I've also started ripping my DVD collection to my home server in multi-pass H.264, 640x480 for easy management.

Watching TV from the iPod worked, but was a pain in the ass because I have to go across the room to select the next show and always having to sync it to get new content on it (i.e. podcasts) was bothersome.

All this is to say that, for me, Apple's intended audience, the Apple TV is everything I was hoping for, and more.

- I was concerned about the hard drive size until I discovered just how well I could stream HD movies over my 802.11g network.

- I was concerned about its ability to work with my old (circa 2001) wide-screen, "HD-capable" TV until I found out that it could "cycle through" an amazing number of resolutions and formats and found one my TV liked.

- I was concerned about giving up video quality over playing native DVDs on my TV until I streamed a movie from iTunes that I'd ripped and it looked *better* than watching the same DVD from my DVD player connected through the non-component interface (yes, I have older equipment).

When I do Bittorrent content (hey, if it's available on iTMS I buy it. If not, why not. Your loss. Make your content available on iTunes - and every other legit store - I choose iTunes. /rant) I convert it to H.264 for storage so the "DivX/codenc" issues everyone complains about aren't much of an issue for me. Besides, a vast majority of my content I either have on DVD already or I buy from iTMS.

I'm not one of the few people who buy Blue-Ray DVD's (how many titles are even available for it?) and I can't imagine the drive space needed to store it anyway. As it is, I've had to upgrade my media server to a TB of drive space (which just brought home the point that I now have no way to adequately back it up )

I'm not a prolific pirate who has a huge collection of videos in non-mp4, non-h.264 format. I understand that there are many out there who are, but frankly, you aren't Apple's target audience. For good or bad, Apple wants you to buy content from them or rip your own from legally purchased sources. This seems reasonable to me. Besides, I have a feeling more BT content will start becoming available in H.264 format soon - especially if Apple includes hardware-encoding in their future products

I also recognize the fact that I'm an early adopter and that this is a first-revision product. I'm excited by the fact that many of the short-comings I see posted can be taken care of with a software update. I suspect, but cannot prove (and am bound by NDA to not speculate too freely) that there might be an update coming along when Leopard ships.

I am also encouraged by the fact that Apple seems to have gone out of their way to make this device eminently "hackable". I don't think the fact that the username/password for it being "frontrow/frontrow" is a coincidence and I am happy to see the "useless" USB port included as well as optical audio out.

I also think that Apple's pricing the product at such a point where they are actually making a profit off it is significant. They have no compelling reason to stop people from hacking/modding/adding-to it. Like the iPod, they'd prefer if you got all your content from iTMS, but make money off you either way. I think their attitude will be much the same with this. When some enterprising person gets Linux running on it and the geek community starts buying tons of these "cheep, small, quiet" PCs, Apple will laugh all the way to the bank.

Meanwhile, people like me and my parents (Apple's target audience) will have a small, quiet, elegant, dependable way to accomplish what we want: conveniently watching our iTunes content from the comfort of our living-rooms.

I'd rate it a solid "A-" at least, if not an "A". A software upgrade is all it would need to get an unreserved "A" from me.

 

[Yvan256]

[...] I was concerned about giving up video quality over playing native DVDs on my TV until I streamed a movie from iTunes that I'd ripped and it looked *better* than watching the same DVD from my DVD player connected through the non-component interface [...]

Same here. I have both my old Sony DVP-C600D player and my TV connected via component, but for some reason the colors are much more vibrant through the TV. And that's going from MPEG-2 (DVD) to H.264 (rip, about 1500kbps), so less quality in the picture itself. But overall the movie looks better anyway!

Now, all I need is a hack or a firmware upgrade so I'll be able to letterbox the output of the TV. My old TV doesn't have a setting for anamorphic content. Anyway shouldn't it be the job of the output box to scale the content?

 

[artpease]

Reference movie...doesn't work.

It looks like it can use reference movies too. Which means that you don't even need to be running iTunes to play streamed content from a network drive. I can fill the 40Gb with reference movies. Plenty of room!

Yes you can put the .mov reference movie into iTunes, but Apple TV doesn't see them so it doesn't stream them from iTunes or sync them to its HD.

 

[Yvan256]

Yes you can put the .mov reference movie into iTunes, but Apple TV doesn't see them so it doesn't stream them from iTunes or sync them to its HD.

I disabled the "let iTunes organize files" setting so that I could add movies to iTunes while keeping them on external drives, so I guess iTunes is already doing some reference file, but now I have to manage files manually.

Would making reference movies by myself allow me to let iTunes manage my files but yet have my real movie files on two external drives? How do I make a reference movie? Will iTunes accept file aliases? Will it organize the aliases and not the actual files?

 

[NtroP]

Suggestion for improvements

If I had one suggestion for improvements to the Apple TV it would be the ability to create categories and subcategories for my movies and TV shows (without having to create and maintain playlists). I have several hundred (soon to be close to a thousand) movies that I've bought online or ripped from my DVD collection. I would love to be able to break them down into subcategories like "Sci-Fi", "Documentaries", "Action/Adventure", "Horror", "Home Movies", "Educational", "Adult", etc. (and be able to *block* certain movies/categories from even being visible to the Apple TV when browsing my library). Perhaps some sort of tagging system so that movies can show up in multiple locations and have Apple TV ignore "unchecked" items when browsing/streaming.

 

[NtroP]

Unfortunately, Apple is going after a very small market with the Apple TV. The only people the Apple TV is truly useful for are those who choose to purchase their movies (or TV shows) in a propriety format from the iTunes Store (locking their entire video library with iTunes).

It would be great if I could turn my Mac into the Media Hub for my entire home, but until I'm willing to purchase everything from the iTunes Store, the Apple TV doesn't make any sense.

Small market? What about all the iPod owners. Most of whom have 99% of their content ripped or downloaded as mp3's. What about all those people who have DVD collections and have ripped them to .mp4 or H.264 like I have. I'm closing in on half a TB of video in my iTunes library. A vast majority of them are ripped from my DVD collection and are not "encumbered" or proprietary in any way?

OK, so you've pirated all your movies and have them in your precious DivX or WMV format: A) you aren't Apple's target market and B) if you're "L337" enough to steal content you should be with-it enough to figure out how to transcode it to a compatible format.

My Mac *IS* the media hub for my entire home and although I have been purchasing more of my content from iTMS recently a *vast* majority of it is from other sources. My Apple TV makes it very easy and convenient to access it all from my TV.

Don't buy an Apple TV. It's not for you. Big deal, you seem to be taking it as a personal insult. Go buy one of the many products out there that can do everything you want for much, much cheaper.

 

[shigzeo]

toslink out

since it has toslink out, does it forgo a conclusion that it could be plugged into a surround receiver and use 5.1 or so? is it sure that it does not do surround? has anyone with a real surround setup used it? cheers

 

[MauiMac]

"Pros: ... Price"? Give me a break!

For $300, I expect more (at least 5.1 audio, ability to buy media through the unit itself...) from the Apple TV. But of course the Apple logo on the unit iteslf costs $100.00...

 

[chronart]

Audible.com not supported for Audiobooks

I think anything that plays on my iPods should play on TV. I have purchased dozens of books for my iPod that I listen to in my car, on walks, etc. I am disappointed that Apple has chosen to only support the audiobooks purchased through them on TV. I never have used by iPods over the years for music, just 10% podcasts and 90% books.

I could certainly rip the Audible.com book files to MP3, but it is less work to just connect my iPod to the living room entertainment system cables. You purchase TV so your life is easier. Doing these things defeat the purpose of TV.

Other than that I am content.

 

[Yvan256]

[...] a 32 GIG HARD DRIVE?!!! For movies? And TV Shows? Seriously you must be joking. Apple can do better than this. You can BUY 300GB hard drive for under $100 at a consumer rate, surely Apple get something larger than 32GB! [...]

The TV uses 2.5" drives. Those are much more expensive than 3.5" drives, not to mention the fact that 300GB drives don't even exist in 2.5" size.

Also, keep in mind that hard drive is only a buffer, to allow you to sync content and let you turn your computer off.

 

[GregA]

I just downloaded it and streamed it to my tv from my iMac. One word...awesome! I don't have any HD material and this is the first time my old Samsung 42" Plasma has experienced anything this sweet on its screen! It can handle 1080i. Thanks Multi!

What resolution does your old samsung plasma actually present at.

For most old plasmas (and current standard def plasmas), the actual resolution is 480. All plasmas are progressive. They might accept a 1080i signal which they downscale to 480p for their display.

If you're watching a 480p iTunes movie and a 480p TV, but you're using your 1080i input - then you may be losing some quality.
ie: AppleTV scales the 480p to 1080 lines, and then interlaces the signal. The TV receives the interlaced 1080 line signal and downscales it to 480 lines, and deinterlaces it.

Any chance of comparing the quality when you set your AppleTV to your plasma's native resolution? Can you pick a difference?
Thanks
Greg
ps. Same goes for 720p. If your TV is actually 720p maximum (as most plasmas are), then converting up to 1080i which your TV then has to undo may not give the best result!

 

[Avatar74]

What resolution does your old samsung plasma actually present at.

For most old plasmas (and current standard def plasmas), the actual resolution is 480. All plasmas are progressive. They might accept a 1080i signal which they downscale to 480p for their display.

If you're watching a 480p iTunes movie and a 480p TV, but you're using your 1080i input - then you may be losing some quality.
ie: AppleTV scales the 480p to 1080 lines, and then interlaces the signal. The TV receives the interlaced 1080 line signal and downscales it to 480 lines, and deinterlaces it.

Any chance of comparing the quality when you set your AppleTV to your plasma's native resolution? Can you pick a difference?
Thanks
Greg
ps. Same goes for 720p. If your TV is actually 720p maximum (as most plasmas are), then converting up to 1080i which your TV then has to undo may not give the best result!

I just tested 720p content, streamed from a G4/933MHz over an 802.11g network, skip-free and the color, clarity and contrast are stellar on my Sony WEGA XBR HDTV CRT (1080i)... CRT's are the best test as flats are generally inferior in terms of contrast, clarity and color.

The 720p output from AppleTV looks as good as any 720p/1080i channels I pick up from my cable provider.

Oh, and I'm just using component video at the moment...

 

[Ladybug]

I have a Sony WEGA XBR HDTV (34" CRT) and I have to say, I'm more than impressed with the 720p playback. I had some initial concerns about proper representation of the HD color gamut, but the Spidey trailer looks identical to every other instance of it... broadcast, HD, I'll even say pretty close in perceptible clarity to theatrical projection (taking into account the difference in display size). The color, clarity and contrast are stellar.

I own the same tv as yourself, great to hear how well TV works on this unit. I have an TV on order. Thanks for the review.