Michael Fransen’s Blog

A couple of weeks ago I picked up an Apple TV along with a HDTV. Lucky for me, Best Buy has created an apple section at Best Buy. I am very happy with Apple TV but not very happy with iTunes. Apple TV was pretty easy to hook up. I just had to hook up the power cord, an HDMI cable and type in my network password. It then asked me to type in a password on my computer and my iTunes library was linked. It started syncing all my content. I have it set to automatic so it picks up the latest shows and music. If you have more on your computer than what will fit on the Apple TV, it will stream from your computer. I was also very happy with other internet capabilities. They have a pretty slick interface to spend hours browsing You Tube. You also can hook up a flickr account and other flicker contacts so you can view photos. Those photos can also be your screensaver if you are listening to music on it. I was also very happy with the interface. It was extremely easy to browse movies and watch trailers. I have rented a couple of HD movies so far. This is a big step from Amazon Unbox on Tivo. Another thing that is better than Unbox is that you can start watching your movie within 60 seconds of selecting it. With Amazon Unbox you had to wait until it was done downloading and it was slow as hell, even on a 10 Mbps internet connection. Now, just so not everyone thinks I am an apple fanboy, I will point out a couple of negative points regarding Apple TV. First and foremost, I think they need more content. I think that this will get better, but right now it’s not the best especially if you are only willing to pay for HD content such as myself. The biggest complaint I have is the content being wrong on iTunes. I downloaded two seasons of Nip/Tuck and the first season has two episodes that are exactly the same. I watched an episode that was supposed to be at the end of the season towards the beginning which left me very confused watching things out of sequence. The second season had a show that was only 8 minutes long. The rest was chopped off and it appears that way on iTunes so I know it wasn’t problems downloading it. Regarding the first issue, I was refunded plus some. The second one is flagged to get fixed once my account has been charged. I pointed both issues out to iTunes and they are still offering the wrong content as of tonight. Their customer service wasn’t the best either. Despite these problems, the experience has been great and I recommend the product. I am filling up hard drive space fast though. I only have a 200 gb drive right now that is almost full with my media and backups of my computers. I think this all part of Apples evil plan to get me to buy a Time Capsule.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 7:54 pm and is filed under Apple, Mac, Video. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.