The Apple TV (2010) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 4, 2010 12:07 AM ESTFinal Words
At $99 the Apple TV is at least priced competitively. You can get cheaper streaming boxes, but not by a huge margin. Other than 802.11n support, the Roku HD appears to give you Netflix and Amazon Video on Demand for $60. The $40 you’d save could pay for a few months of Netflix or several video rentals.
What the Apple TV does well is integrate into the iTunes world. The segregation between the Apple TV and iTunes rental stores is borderline unacceptable but the rest works well. Music you’ve got on in iTunes can easily stream to your TV. You can show slideshows of your photos while you play the music (again working best with iPhoto, and a little more painful if you’ve got photos scattered around your drives). Flipping through photos is just awesome if you use an iOS device like the iPhone. Just flick on the iPhone and you move through photos on the Apple TV. Both movie and TV rentals work well, the interface is clean and the iTunes account integration makes things easy. If you already purchase a lot of your content through iTunes, the Apple TV feels like home.
The problem I have with the Apple TV is it feels like a product with a lot of wasted potential. You can make arguments for OS X, the iPhone and even the iPad, but with the Apple TV despite its lower pricing it’s just not complete enough. You can watch some TV shows but not others, so you have to keep cable. And those that you can watch don’t stream live, you get them 24 hours later - so you might as well use Hulu or wait for the Boxee Box. I get that this aspect isn’t Apple’s fault, but the others are.
There’s no way to stream your OS X desktop to the Apple TV. That alone would be a killer feature, the Apple version of Intel’s WiDi. There is no present day support for apps on the Apple TV. Although I believe enabling 3rd party development for the Apple TV would require Apple taking the platform a lot more seriously than it has.
With Google TV and the Boxee Box shipping later this year you’re better off waiting if you want a good way to bridge Internet content with your TV. Even then I’m not expecting either one of those options to be perfect (although they should be a lot closer than anything we’ve seen). Personally I’m sold on Netflix, but I need a companion service for newer content. Cable TV is the old answer, but it’s horribly inefficient from a cost and convenience standpoint. There’s simply no way to do away with cable TV and use a simple, IP based, autonomous box for all of your content without resorting to piracy of some sort. The day that changes is the day the Apple TV will stop being a hobby.
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Hrel - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I think it's funny you listed "not being able to channel surf" as a fault. If anything it's good. That's a huge waste of time. Hopefully if we remove that ability from everyone everywhere people will get up and do something productive. Hell, even a bath is more relaxing than channel surfing. Or conquering the world in Civ. Or writing up little applets for the web. Hell, looking through youtube or wikipedia is better use of time.vol7ron - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I disagree.1. if you have two channels either right next to eachother, or within a small distance, who wants to use the guide?
2. you may not know the name of a show but are vaguely familiar when it came on
3. you can find many new, interesting shows by channel surfing
KineticHummus - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
"There’s simply no way to do away with cable TV and use a simple, IP based, autonomous box for all of your content without resorting to piracy of some sort."SO true...
Mathieu Bourgie - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I couldn't agree more. Let's hope that Apple gets serious about this and that competitors will follow. More competition is good for customers!therealnickdanger - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I dunno... is it "piracy" to torrent TV shows that aired the night before? They're already broadcast for free without DRM...vol7ron - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
what if you don't pay for cable?Tros - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I think he means for stuff that comes off the air. Say, House MD broadcast over the air from Fox.And technically, somebody is losing because you're not watching advertisements. But that's a whole other level of morals.
It'd be nice if this thing was x86, because then the jailbreak would likely have the HDTV-tuner (already exists in OS X) through USB 2.0. I want to believe that Apple's making a piece of hardware for the hackers/pirates to write software for, but GoogleTV/Amazon doesn't seem to have a problem with going with a rent-free model.
archcommus - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Thought the same thing myself. Read these words and was glad someone finally wrote down what I had been thinking.Docchris - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
"Most bitrates played fine although at 70Mbps or above the video player would often either crash or the entire Apple TV would reboot."where did you get a 70mbps file from? that exceeds even blu-ray's maximum spec!
Revdarian - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
On "The Apple TV as a Cable TV Replacement" scroll down to the 3rd paragraph, at the end of it here is the phrase "You have 30 days to being watching and 48 hours to watch the show (unlimited times) once you press play." the small mistake is that it should read "to begin watching..."Great article tho, had great fun reading it, and agree with it all.