Apple TV (160GB) User Reviews March 25th, 2007 | by Jason & Marshal
Video Review
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Average user rating from 8 users |
APPLE TV FANBOY
by Charles Davis on Mar 18th, 2009 at 11:31 AM:
Good informative article. Every point made was on the mark.( runs too hot, easy setup, perfect syncing, etc. ) I bought mine on 3/12/09, and I love it. My only gripe is the intense heat of the unit. I have a glass and wood media center ( wood top and sides, 2 glass shelves ), and have a SAMSUNG HDTV on top, and the DVD ( PHILIPS ), VCR,(SONY ) and AMPLIFIER ( ONKYO ) on the bottom shelves. The APPLE TV sits next to the SAMSUNG. Even with adequate ventilation it runs hot. So I unplug it if I'm not using it. All in all a good product. Yes I am an APPLE fanboy.
Execellent addition to our system
by Stacey on May 5th, 2008 at 2:30 PM:
We loved Apple TV so much, we now have two... one for each floor of the house. The larger size is a must, especially with the movie download capability, from the couch. That said, here's what I would suggest to make users like us even happier:
- allow creation of playlists choosing artists, not songs. I'd love to be able to select (for example) Jackson Browne, Lyle, Lovett, Bonnie Raitt and not have to select each song by that artist. Sure, you can shuffle the entire library, but I hate when ACDC starts cranking when my elderly father-in-law is in the house.
- it still isn't that easy to get each computer in household in sync, so to speak. I couldn't get all of my music transferred from my PC to my MAC, but my MAC can see the full library when I have it in the house. Should be easier to get everyone (of course up to max # of machines) working from the same libary, so you can add music and movies from more than one computer. That whole thing is still a little messy
Streaming
by Denise on Apr 20th, 2008 at 10:03 PM:
I find it difficult to stream content on my Apple TV, it goes off.
Quick Pros and Cons
by 999reasons.com on Apr 15th, 2007 at 5:28 PM:
Had the Apple TV for about a week now... a lot of cool stuff and a few glaring holes:
Pros:
* Easy to set up.
* Works well with iTunes.
* I now have access to Music, Photos and Movies form our lounge room without having to go over the wireless network in real-time. We were using Airport Express and would experience dropouts occasionally when playing music... Apple TV catches everything locally.
Cons:
* 40GB drive is not big enough, I am probably going to have to follow one of the hacks and replace the hard drive with a bigger one. Not sure why Apple made it so small or difficult to replace/extend? you should be able to plug an external USB drive into the USB port.
* Syncing took some time over the wireless network
* Requires Component video or HDMI... if you have a TV that only takes Composite or S-video you'll lose colors. This has left me looking at purchasing a LCD TV... way more than the cost of the Apple TV. Perhaps it should be called AppleHDTV Tongue out
* It would not synch my movies created with iMove/iDvd - not sure but it said that Apple TV could not play these movies... mmm a bit frustrating.. Actually I found a solution you need to convert in to MP4
* Arrgggggh - I disconnected my Powerbook from my USB drive which had all my Photos on it... and synched - guess what happened? Doh? It removed all 10 GB of Photos from the Apple TV....it makes sense.. but just no warning. I guess it makes sense to keep Synch on Manual. Not sure if Apple could think of something to help make it more idiot-proof.
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No warmer than a cat's armpit, here!
by Paul R on Apr 28th, 2009 at 9:25 AM:
Unlike the rest of the world it seems, our unit doesn't run hot. I don't know if this is because they've changed the hardware (this written at the end of April 09). It spent good while syncing about 11,500 songs (76Gb) of music and ran at a temperature approximately equivalent to a cat's armpit. When playing music, the same. When on standby, barely discernible.
Our main TV doesn't have HDMI or component in, but having researched this point ahead of purchase I can confirm with relief that by connecting the green connector to a composite input, a perfectly sharp black-and-white picture is possible. I was happy to live with this until we get a new TV (planned for within the next year) as we initially only wanted this for music.
Unlike an earlier comment I read, the ability to add items to playlists is there for me (hold play for a second or two on a track) and I assume this must have been added in a more recent software release. The only thing that is missing that irritates me is a search facility, but then this omission is likely because of the difficulty in designing an interface to work with the simple remote control: on this Windows Media Centre works better, where you can use the remote to enter the text to search as you would a mobile phone (on the other hand, seeing the 'delete' option in WMC next to my precious songs scared me).
On a final note, this is the first Apple product I have ever bought in 25 years of PC computing. The reason: its the right tool for the job.