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40 GB or 160GB?

benlee

benlee

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 4, 2007
1,246
1
I have $240 in gift cards and just got a widescreen TV. I am wondering whether I should get the 40GB or 160 GB Apple TV. I have 47 GB of music alone. No movies but plan to covert my collection (which isn't much) to digital in Handbrake. I also only have about 1GB of pictures. I currently have an Airport Express with Airtunes that I use to stream my music to my receiver speakers.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks
 
i'm in the exact same boat as you. ....Without the gift cards.... 40gb of music...slowly converting movies, a few gb of pictures.

Still dont know which to do. I hear the streaming works really well but then again it would be nice to have it up and you computer still sleeping.
Everyday i go back and forth.
 
getting my 40 gig 2moro....not really worried about capacity...I figure streaming will be fine over my 802.11N network and my Imac never sleeps anyways.
 
bbydon said:
i'm in the exact same boat as you. ....Without the gift cards.... 40gb of music...slowly converting movies, a few gb of pictures.

Still dont know which to do. I hear the streaming works really well but then again it would be nice to have it up and you computer still sleeping.
Everyday i go back and forth.
Click to expand...

I bought the 40GB and starting to regret it because when I convert my DVD's I have to be really careful of the size
 
I think I'm leaning towards the 160GB. I guess the extra $115 (including tax) will be well spent b/c I will not regret getting more GB while I probably will regret if I only get 40GB. However, is anyone thinking there may be a hardware update anytime in the near future?
 
I decided for 160gb.... bought it last night.

guess i'm trying to future proof.

I seriously doubt there will be any hardware revisions any time soon.
The ATV is very capable of doing more just with software updates.
If it were to get update i'd say fall.
The only thing that might ever need to be upgrade would be so it could play a 1920X1080 at 30 fps..... and i doubt they will do that until they can sell you a itunes 1080p movie. Which would take forever to download.
Thats just my 2 cents
 
I went the opposite way. I was all set to pick up the 160 gig when I realized the massive size of my music, photo and soon to be ripped movie collection, wouldn't fit on a terabyte ATV. Since I have to stream anyway, I decided to go the small disc route.
 
well, I've just this minute got back from the Apple store having bought the 160GB version. I'd like to have my concerts available all the time whether or not the computer is on. Gotta go back out now and buy a HDMI cable.
 
benlee said:
I think I'm leaning towards the 160GB. I guess the extra $115 (including tax) will be well spent b/c I will not regret getting more GB while I probably will regret if I only get 40GB. However, is anyone thinking there may be a hardware update anytime in the near future?
Click to expand...

No upgrades on the horizon.

I did the 160, for music & photos. No regrets.
 
I had the same dilemma (I was also using gift cards). But when you have over 80 GBs of music and 200 GBs of movies I'm pretty much stuck with streaming anyway. I don't notice any difference at all when I'm streaming vs. playing off the hard drive so the larger :apple:TV really didn't make any sense to me.

The only reason to pony up the extra dough is if you're not planning on having your computer on all the time for streaming but 40 GB should be plenty to get you through the time between firing up your itunes for syncing up new content.
 
I think I'm going to go with the 160 mainly because I have a MBP ad if I'm not he the misses will not have streamed content.

Any suggestions on HDMI cables? Is monoprice a decent place to buy?
 
Monoprice.com is good....i did two day shipping and still saved more money than if i bought them else where.
 
I think 40 vs 160 is a decision that will depend greatly on an individual's situation. For me, I went 160 because I wanted to have most of my music and photos, plus home videos (my wife's horse show videos) all available without the computer having to be on. To me it was a no-brainer. Even if you're forced to stream for video, there could still be value to having all your music and photos synced, so I would recommend that anybody looking at an AppleTV think good 'n' hard before opting for the smaller size.
 
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