As I’m a little partial to anything that has an apple on it (save for the fruit itself, which I find doesn’t agree with me), I went out and purchased myself an Apple TV. Well, I didn’t literally go out; this is the 21st century after all. I obviously ordered it from the Apple Store online and had it delivered, as any modern chap in his right mind would. (Incidentally, I visited the Apple Store via Quidco, giving me a few quid cash-back discount on it).
In the box you’ll find the very basics; your new toy, a power cable, an Apple Remote, some instructions and the usual Apple stickers. What you won’t find is anything to connect it to your TV, but then there’s nothing new about that. When it comes to buying your cables, you’ll need HDMI or a set of component cables. I’ve opted for the latter as my TV, for some reason, only came with one HDMI socket (currently in use by the blu-ray player).
First impressions? It looks very nice, as you’d expect. It’s actually slightly bigger than I thought it would be, for a box which effectively houses just a hard-drive and few other bits and pieces. For your £223 (now that VAT has gone back up) you get a 160GB drive which connects wirelessly or via LAN to your existing network. Although not a huge amount of space (especially for the money), the box will stream your video wirelessly via iTunes on your Mac or PC.
Before I get on to why you should buy one, I think a run-down of the cons I’ve discovered so far is in order (and there are some). Firstly, we have the Apple Remote. It’s not good for a couple of reasons, namely that it’s too small to go nicely with the other remotes on the coffee table (and therefore much easier to misplace), and that out-of-the-box it’s going to want to control every single Apple device in the room. So if you fancy surfing the net on your laptop whilst watching the latest blockbuster, pressing the MENU button is going to bring up Front Row on your computer as well as moving around the screen on your TV. This can be resolved by pairing the remote to Apple TV and turning off the infrared on your computer (or by pairing a second remote to the computer), but it’s an issue which should never exist and the remote should be paired at the factory.
The second issue is with the wireless connection speed, though perhaps the Apple TV isn’t really to blame. Only having tested it on one network I can’t say with any certainty, but it seems terribly slow at transferring movies from my computer to its own internal storage. On the plus side, I’ve found no issues with the streaming of movies from iTunes, save for one slight niggle. I have my iTunes folders stored on an external hard-drive connected to an Airport Extreme so that they can be accessed from anywhere and don’t take up so much room on my MacBook. The trouble is, when streaming movies I have to have the laptop on and open so that the Apple TV can access iTunes. What I would love to see in a future software update would be a version of iTunes built-in to the Apple TV capable of connecting to this hard drive, independent of my computer running.
Thirdly, we’ve got the formats. It’s only going to play things that iTunes can play (see here for the list). So your Windows formatted movies or music simply won’t work. So you’ve either got to go through the laborious process of converting everything into iTunes format, or simply forget the whole thing and take the Apple TV back to the shop. It’s your choice.
I think the obvious – and final – issue I’ve found with the device is simply that of storage space. You really don’t get a lot, and if you’ve got a large collection of movies, TV shows, music or photos (even my modest collection of 600GB is obviously going too be too much), you’re going to find that you’re entering iTunes quite a lot and being very selective about just what you’re putting on there. To my mind, a 1TB drive (which would be very cheap in this day and age) should be a minimum, with perhaps the option of a 2TB or more. There is a USB connection in the back of the box which would be very useful if it allowed you to connect an external hard-drive to increase storage capacity. But it doesn’t. In fact, it’s of no use to regular Joes at all, so you might as well forget it’s there. It is also apparently possible to upgrade the hard-drive and I’m sure that your average friend-of-a-friend’s 14-year-old could sort it out for you in a couple of minutes, but remember; it’ll not only invalidate your warranty, but this kid isn’t really trained in this sort of thing, and is probably guessing what to do every step of the way!
Ok, ok, it’s time to put the negativity behind us and end this article on a high note. Let’s start discussing just why this is a superb piece of kit and why, I think at least, you should order yourself one. But before I get comments telling me there are much cheaper alternatives out there which play more formats, remember that I am a complete Apple geek and simply won’t care. So whoever you are; remember that fact when making up your own mind about buying it.
Let’s consider the interface (once you’ve stopped your remote from controlling your laptop). It’s so very simple that even your gran could have a go on it (well, maybe not your gran, but your mum might have a whirl). Upon turning on the device, you get a list displaying Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, Photos, Internet and Settings. I think most of these are pretty self-explanatory. So far as the Internet option goes, you’re able to view YouTube videos (including being able to log-in to see your favourites) and access Internet radio stations.
If we take Movies as an example, selecting My Movies will bring up a list of both stored films and those available for streaming from your computer. These appear as one list to save confusion, though your streamable titles are obviously going to vanish if you turn off your computer whilst it’s running. But fear not; they will return next time your computer is switched on and you’ve got iTunes running. You simply scroll down the list and select the movie you want. It’ll even remember the position if you stopped it halfway through your last viewing. You can further sort this list alphabetically, by genre or have it show only those movies you’ve yet to watch. This display format is the same for TV shows and music, though with the latter you’re also able to shuffle songs and select your tunes via artist/album etc. It’ll also connect to Flickr and MobileMe to access your accounts and display your pictures. I wouldn’t be surprised at a future Facebook link for the same purpose.
Simplicity is the key with the whole device. It’s black and smooth interface make looking for what you want almost as much fun as watching your movies. The thing that I think sets this apart from other devices out there though is the alternative remote control. Ditch the terrible plastic nonsense you get in the box and download yourself the Remote app for your iPhone or iPod Touch. What a difference it makes! You can scroll through your collections on your portable device, or use the touch-screen to flick around the highlighted items on your flat-screen. You can also easily use it to scroll to any part of the film you wish by simply dragging the bar left or right. The only issue I’ve found so far is that if you’ve got the LAN cable plugged in rather than wirelessly connecting to your computer, Apple TV turns the wi-fi off completely and you would be able to connect your phone to it.
But what if you’ve got no movies? What happens then? You rent or buy them, of course! You’ve got several ways of doing this; either via iTunes on your computer, or via the menus on your TV. These are roughly the same set-up as the rest of the device and easy to flick through. There’s also a search option, made much easier if you have the Remote app as you can use the iPhone’s keyboard to type in your search terms. If you are going to rent a movie, I’d recommend doing this via the Apple TV itself. This way, you get the option to download an HD version of the film (though at a greater cost). And who wants DVD quality when you can get HD? In fact, I was shocked at how good the HD image was, especially given that a 2-hour movie only comes in at around 1.5GB.
And that’s about all there is to it. Apple have done a great job at an easy-to-use interface which not only looks good, but also does the most important job of all; makes it quick and easy to get to your content. At the end of the day, how easy it is to interact with is a major consideration for those less computer-literate who simply want to see a good film with the minimum fuss.
Although it may appear there are a fair few negative things to say about the Apple TV, these really do pale in comparison to its usefulness, simplicity and quality of image. I would definitely recommend the Remote app if you happen to have a compatible portable device, though it is workable with the supplied bit of plastic. As with a lot of Apple products, the device is much more than the sum of its parts. Yes, it’s really just a very expensive hard-drive that connects to your TV. But it makes buying, renting or simply watching movies so easy that it doesn’t matter. If you’ve got a spare £223 you should get one; I did.
I’ve bought a couple of Blu-ray movies in the past few weeks and I’ve been pleased to notice the inclusion of a downloadable version of each for playing on portable devices. What a great idea. Not only do I get to watch the film in high definition on my TV, but I also get to carry it around with me on my iPhone and watch it whenever I please.
Or not.
Yes Man on Blu-ray
The first of these two films I bought was Yes Man, starring Jim Carrey. Whilst I’m in no way his biggest fan, I had some credit left on an HMV card and fancied a light-hearted comedy. To my delight, a sticker on the front informed me that I could download the movie for use on my computer and portable device. Disappointment set in when I noticed the phrases ‘not Mac compatible’ and ‘does not work with iTunes’.
According to stats from September of this year, iPods hold 73.8% of the mp3 player market, thus making Warner Bros’ refusal to allow a compatible version an issue for a huge number of people. Perhaps in reality it was a monetary decision; by denying such a huge number of users they’re saving themselves money in distribution costs whilst simultaneously giving themselves a positive, 21st century image by having the label on the front of the box. Being on a Mac, the website even refused to let me see the download page. I’ve bought this movie, just like a Windows user – is my money not good enough?
Star Trek on Blu-ray
On the other hand we have Star Trek. Paramount have done us all proud by not only producing a great movie which can be enjoyed by geeks like me and everyone else alike, they’ve also done the right thing and given us all the chance to view this movie on whatever device we may own. A third disc in the blu-ray box (a DVD for complete compatibility) not only gives us a Windows Media version of the film, but also a link and code to download it for free from iTunes, whether we’re on a Mac or a PC. So your money gets you a high definition version of the film for your big fancy telly; an electronic one for use with Windows and compatible portable devices; and an electronic one for use with Mac, iPod, iPhone and Apple TV.
So hats off to Paramount; Warner Bros could learn a lesson or two from you guys.
I’ve been putting it off for a while because I didn’t want the hassle of having to set it all up, but last night I decided I’d install Windows on my Mac using Boot Camp. So I started the process rolling, loaded the program and had it partition the hard drive. The next step is to restart the machine with the Windows disc in the drive so that it can install it to the new partition.
Well, it got to that stage. I had it copy the files to the new area I’d marked out for it just like a normal Windows installation would. Then it restarted, but instead of loading the regular Windows install screens it decided to load the initial loading program again. To cut a long story short, something catastrophic had happened and it wiped the whole drive. Bugger.
Fortunately for me, whenever I use the MacBook at my desk I have it plugged in to an external hard drive to take advantage of Time Machine- the program which makes hourly backups of your hard drive so that you can flick back and recover lost files. In extreme circumstances such as this it can also restore the entire hard drive. And the theory is that so long as it’s always plugged in to the external hard drive your backup will never be more than an hour old. Phew!
After an initial scary moment (I hadn’t created a new partition and my backups disappeared, requiring a reboot before they returned) the process was a doddle. You choose the backup you want to use and where you want to install it, then you sit back and let it work it’s magic. A couple of hours later I had a fully-restored machine and, although Mail had to rebuild itself once I’d reopened it, there were few side effects. Brilliant tool.
I’ve just got to take another look at Boot Camp before considering trying it again.
Well, my new toy arrived yesterday and I spent the evening playing with all the applications I downloaded ages ago! And I really must be honest and say that I’m completely blown away by what my 16Gb iPhone 3G (in white) can do.
Obviously, if you mess around with it all night the shoddy battery will run down very quickly. But once the novelty has worn off and I reduce the amount of time spent playing games it’ll last much longer.
Not too pleased about not being able to send picture messages, which is very strange. But I can send them via email so it’s not that bad. Plus I can always upload them to Twitpic or one of the various other photo sites available by using the completely free downloadable applications.
And the apps are where this thing really stands out (I even wrote most of this post from a Wordpress app). The range of downloads is absolutely immense, allowing me to stop playing Monopoly and head over to check whether my train is delayed before looking to see what I might fancy cooking this evening. Superb (and you can download more directly to the phone). And with the unlimited browsing available as standard from O2, it works out as one incredible package. I expected the phone to be good before I got it, but I wasn’t prepared for just how good it is.
Get one if you can!
I’ve placed the order for my new iPhone. The contract on my Nokia N95 doesn’t run out until the end of March 2009, but I guess it’s because I’ve been with O2 so long that they’re letting me upgrade from the 1st of January. So my phone should be with me next weekend. I can’t wait! I’m such a geek! 
I’ve also got rid of my N95 for a very reasonable price. I’ve sold it to a website called Fonebank who then do God-knows what with the things. Unfortunately I had to give a minimum of 10% of the price to Oxfam, but I guess it is Christmas, so that’s ok. Basically, once my iPhone arrives, I pop my old phone in a padded envelope and send it to them. They check it still works then send me a cheque for the value, minus the 10% I’ve given to charity. So that’s £85.50 I’ll be getting for a phone I’d otherwise be throwing away. Fantastic!
