apple TV

[cinema bob]

very cool new tool from apple the apple tv

http://www.apple.com/appletv/

[cinema bob]

$299

syncs wirelessly to you mac or pc
plays through HDMI or componant video
music movies tv shows etc... very cool

[Brandon B]

No, DD or DTS support it seems, and 720p output, no 1080. But still, I'll likely be getting one sooner than later.

BB

[Nick M]

I'll probably get one just for streaming 2ch audio to my stereo (with a little LCD on top for browsing menus).

While 90%+ of my music collection is on CD/SACD, I do have a couple hundred songs I have downloaded off iTunes as well... primarily one-hit-wonder singles, or individual tracks that I occasionally download to expand my musical horizons. It would also be excellent for large get togethers when you don't want to continuously swap CDs, or someone wants to throw another song on and you don't want them touching your pristine discs (or player for that matter) with their fingers covered in pistachio studded truffle butter... :lol:

I need to get a couple small LCDs eventually anyways. I'm planning to add a couple Digital Drive subs to my stereo.

[Brandon B]

You can do that for half as much with an Airport Express though.

[Nick M]

I have an airport express, but I would have to route cables all around the room, and it doesn't offer me the display capability and 40GB HDD to work off from.

[garysi]

Airport Express

Nicholas, I use the Express and it works like a charm. I have ripped all my CD's in lossless to a pair of 500G drives, linked to form one Terabyte. If you have an existing wireless network you can configure the Express to join it. Use the optical output to dive a DAC which then will run to your PreAmp. Sound is awesome. Why bother using AAC iTune downloads? They must sound awful through a decent system like yours. Go to the library and see if you can borrow CD's to rip. I can use my laptop as a controller. The DAC feeds a Saxon integrated amp that feeds a pair of Audes Blues.
As far as Apple TV, if the next iTunes update(7.1) is presented as rumoured, it will support Dolby 5.1 and DTS. At that point I will buy it in a heartbeat. I also have movies, cartoons and TV shows ripped or downloaded to anothe one Terabyte drive. If I can send this over Ethernet until I upgrade to Draft N wireless, I will. Think about it, no more DVD's needed. I'll just rip them and then store them away as backups.

[Brandon B]

I am doing something similar with an Airport Express. Although I actually am running an etherenet cable to it as I was getting a ground hum hooked directly to my mini (G4 model with no digital out). Buying a DAC and a newer mac later this year and can then put the airport on use elsewhere.

Lossles sure fills up your drive and iPod fast though.

BB

[masman71]

Any news on this

I was just wondering if anyone had purchased Apple TV? Can anybody give me a comment on performance?

[Kevin D]

I've installed one. If you use Itunes for everything, it's a pretty slick piece. Very simple setup and remote. I didn't play around with it for long, but it worked as advertised.

Kevin D.

[mjb]

I have one too, and IMO its totally superb! I use it mainly for music, served wirelessly from a Mac elsewhere in the house, although video is excellent too.

The @TV appears in iTunes as a device (like an iPod) and automatically syncs until the internal drive is full - and/or you can stream from iTunes using the "share my music" option.

The big difference to Airport Express is that content is pulled and not pushed. There is a (iPod like) user interface, and a remote control.

@TV supports upto 1080i (not p), and video quality is very good. Big bummer is there's no multi-channel audio support at the moment. Hopefully this can be added with a software update.

[sirbogey]

I am doing something similar with an Airport Express. Although I actually am running an etherenet cable to it as I was getting a ground hum hooked directly to my mini (G4 model with no digital out). Buying a DAC and a newer mac later this year and can then put the airport on use elsewhere.

Lossles sure fills up your drive and iPod fast though.

BB

Just ordered a MacBook myself, adding airport express soon.. what DAC would you recommend?

[JonMarsh]

I'm getting one after I get done with this next big blast of work and business travel, culminating with a two week trip to Villach Austria the first half of June. Will go on my Westinghouse LCD, I'm also planning on installing a new Airport Xtreme and giving the old one to my daughter. It's been very relaible and easy to work with, unlike some products from, say, Cisco, which several friends got in the last few months and for which you immediately had to download and install a firmware update to get them to work at all... a little bit of a catch 22 there, huh?

For cost cutting, we're required to take three weeks vacation in the next Quarter. Whoooo Hoooooh! I signed up for 5. will still have 8-1/2 weeks left when that's done. (hmmm, sounds familiar, a movie title?

Oh, and yeah, I"m planning on doing a major HD upgrade on it, I guess 160GB is as far as you can go with ATA, but that should be OK.

[mjb]

I stand corrected on the resolution issue....

Another limitation on the device is that it only supports a native resolution of 720p. While it can plug into a 1080i HDTV, it only upscales the display, creating a picture that is still really 1280x720.

Source: Some time spent with Apple TV -- an in-depth review

[Raptor550]

Man I remember in 1997, in the seventh grade, having my old computer hooked up as my entertainment system, useing it as a video library and jukebox. A friend of mine remembers going over to my house and shaking his head thinking: A computor in home theater? you are ridiculous. He now has an old computer of mine hooked up to his projector :-D hehe.

That apple does look cool. Especially the streamlined web hookup. I just hope it is better at keeping up with formats than the ipod and itunes -they are so good at marketing and interface but in flexibility and power there really are better products. They overprice things a wee bit too. But this product is $300, thats pretty good. if it syncs to your computer why cant it do DTS & DD?

The apple cinema monitors are superb btw.

Oh, and yeah, I"m planning on doing a major HD upgrade on it, I guess 160GB is as far as you can go with ATA, but that should be OK.

-You can always do 1 tarabyte fire wire externals! :B

[Chris D]

Well, they're almost here. There's going to be a rush on the supply at the start, for sure. After that... who knows? Could be huge, could peter out. I would say that it's going to be a huge phenomenon, but that's a pretty big price tag.

[Hdale85]

I don't think people are going to see a reason to spend money on this honestly. Especially not that kind of money If everyone doesn't have an HD-DVD player now when you can get them for 299 then.....you know.

[spyboy]

I just bought a Dell E1705. I have no intention of buying this. Probably never will. I do not think that this will catch on.

All the Best

[nosaj070]

I just picked one of these up a week or so ago and figured I'd shed a bit of light on my experiences with it.

Last year I built a full fledged HTPC running Media Center and I really liked it, it was really fast, had a ton of storage capacity and could do everything I needed it to do and more. The issues I had were the people using it. I'm a college student, and the thing constantly got screwed up due to intoxicated people trying to get it to do something, and doing it wrong. I ended up being fed up with not only the heat, and noise (Although it was pretty quiet), but just the general issues we'd have like when it would freeze up doing something and what not.

I saw the AppleTV as I'm a big Mac fan and I honestly wasn't very intruiged due to its limiations (I needed to watch downloaded Tv SHows and Movies, and I wasn't about to pay for all of them ). So then I found AwkwardTV and realized that this is exactly what I want.

I went down to good old Michigan Avenue and picked up one of these after work, and within a half hour I had successfully soft-modded it to do whatever I want it to do. I can now play nearly every movie file format, I can store whatever I want on it and I dont need to sync it through ITunes. It plays 5.1 (The reason it doesn't really play 5.1 out of the box is because no ITunes content is currently encoded with 5.1) the one file it does struggle with is x264 MKV 720p content. A lot of people are currently having trouble with it, but I'm sure it will get sorted out. It plays music in a very intuitive fashion and works out great for me at school because all five of my roomates can sync their iTunes with it as well so no one is complaining and the music selection. And above all I won't need to explain it to anyone trying to use it, because it really is very simple to operate.

I think thats all, I realize its relatively incoherent but I just wanted to give you my experience with the product. If anyone is interested in performing the mod I'd be happy to help you out with it. Basically all you do is load a file onto a flash drive, plug it into the apple tv and it copies a couple scripts and programs to the device. You can then access it from any computer on the network to copy files and add programs.