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Apple TV Bad!

J

julesjt

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 30, 2007
9
0
Well I was very excited when the apple tv hit Best Buy last tuesday. I went out and bought one to work with my iMac over wireless-n network.

Well today I returned my Apple TV for a refund because of the following.

The thing gets so hot while in use that it locked up twice on me.

You can't turn it off, you can only put it in standby mode which twice after sitting for hours it would not turn back on without unplugging it.

The wireless-n transfer was very slow in fact slower then 100mb network.

I downloaded a 720p .mov trailer and try to stream it and it couldn't even buffer and run a trailer without hesitation.

No support for xvid and divx without hacking it.

No support in watching youtube and other contect directly.

All apple tv is for is to give apple money for the iTunes store.

Very disappointed!

I will wait for the slingcatcher
 
It's unfortunate that you bought something that was what it was advertised as, and wasn't what it was never claiming to be and that your expectations of being able to do other things other that what it is designed to do didn't work for you right out of the box.

As far as heat, freezing and standby issues, it is possible you got a bad unit. I use mine over my g network and it streams 2GB 2500bitrate movie files (not sync'd) flawlessly and has yet to stutter or hiccup or get too hot or freeze up and I sync'd the full 40GB the day I hooked it up.
 
Wow

You have a bad experience and return the device. Did you ever think it might be defective? As for the rest perhapts you should evaluate a product before you buy. If you eve did.

So many newbie posts all taking shots at Apple TV
 
Mine has been on non stop since I got it... no serious issues like you've had.. maybe just bad gear...

julesjt said:
No support in watching youtube and other contect directly.

All apple tv is for is to give apple money for the iTunes store.
Click to expand...

I use mine pretty much exclusively for watching FREE content from podcasts, youtube and google video... http://castcluster.blogspot.com/
 
roland.g said:
It's unfortunate that you bought something that was what it was advertised as, and wasn't what it was never claiming to be and that your expectations of being able to do other things other that what it is designed to do didn't work for you right out of the box.

As far as heat, freezing and standby issues, it is possible you got a bad unit. I use mine over my g network and it streams 2GB 2500bitrate movie files (not sync'd) flawlessly and has yet to stutter or hiccup or get too hot or freeze up and I sync'd the full 40GB the day I hooked it up.
Click to expand...

I know it didnt support everything, but my experience was horrible. It is possible my unit was bad. You will see more and more forums of over heating just like any other new device. Mac Minis don't get too hot why try and make this thing so thin and allow the possible heat issues.

You claim you can play a 720 mov streaming over wireless G? I doubt that.
 
julesjt said:
No support in watching youtube and other contect directly.

All apple tv is for is to give apple money for the iTunes store.
Click to expand...

First of all, why would you want to watch low res youtube crap on a widescreen TV? It looks TERRIBLE.

Second, you DON'T HAVE TO PLAY ONLY ITUNES-BOUGHT VIDEOS, just any video that works in iTunes. Just like the iPod, you don't have to get material directly from Apple for it to work on their player.
 
appleretailguy said:
First of all, why would you want to watch low res youtube crap on a widescreen TV? It looks TERRIBLE.

Second, you DON'T HAVE TO PLAY ONLY ITUNES-BOUGHT VIDEOS, just any video that works in iTunes. Just like the iPod, you don't have to get material directly from Apple for it to work on their player.
Click to expand...

I understand that. I did movie conversion. That was not really my concern. The concern was it locking up and the fact it couldn't do a 720p video streamed.

Why would you make a product you can't turn completely off and why would you make a product that sits there in standby mode staying hot and then not turning back on.

How about netflix streaming, it would be nice to have that support. I am all about the digital way and if someone does it right then we won't need to care about HD-DVD and Blu-ray we can have HD digital content with full surround sound.

AppleTV is not the right product. It is lacking and it is in my opinion still beta and you are all beta testers. I was a beta tester and got my money back before it is too late. We shall see how you guys feel in 6 months when they revise it with a model that is not a flakey as this piece of crap device.
 
julesjt said:
You claim you can play a 720 mov streaming over wireless G? I doubt that.
Click to expand...

SCP between hosts on a wifi-g network right now and I can easily get 3-4MB/s ( 24-32mbps ). Streaming a 2.5mbps 720p h264 should be no problem.

You should really investigate your own network if you can't even get 1MB/s over WiFi.
 
snowmoon said:
SCP between hosts on a wifi-g network right now and I can easily get 3-4MB/s ( 24-32mbps ). Streaming a 2.5mbps 720p h264 should be no problem.

You should really investigate your own network if you can't even get 1MB/s over WiFi.
Click to expand...

Hey maybe my ATV was defective I personally did not see a reason why I should of had problems like i did.

I got the smack down put on me with this thread so I will say it is possible my device was bad.
 
julesjt said:
I know it didnt support everything, but my experience was horrible. It is possible my unit was bad. You will see more and more forums of over heating just like any other new device. Mac Minis don't get too hot why try and make this thing so thin and allow the possible heat issues.

You claim you can play a 720 mov streaming over wireless G? I doubt that.
Click to expand...

I can play a 720 movie over wireless G :) I stream to my 360 over 802.11g with no issues, and have played full length HD movies with no issues. Must just be the walls in your house or something, or possibly your router/Apple TV.
 
julesjt said:
Hey maybe my ATV was defective I personally did not see a reason why I should of had problems like i did.

I got the smack down put on me with this thread so I will say it is possible my device was bad.
Click to expand...

NP, it's like the other thread I saw recently where a brand new MBP was kernel panicking all the time and the user didn't just exchange the laptop... we all sometime overlook the obvious.

802.11g is 54Mbps with 25Mbps typical throughput ( or 3-4MB/s ) and 802.11b is 11Mbps ( 5.5 typical ) or ~650KB/s. So assuming typical throughput even 802.11b should be able to stream a 2500 bitrate 720p movie.

Maybe you have an older 802.11b device that is causing trouble, you are overlapping WiFi AP's with a neighbor, or someone is leaching your internet.
 
I stand corrected...

chowdah said:
That's not entirely true... I love the apple TV.. but there's plenty of video that iTunes will play that apple TV won't play.
Click to expand...

Yes, you're right, I suppose my point was that the iTunes store is FAR from the only source to get video from.
 
julesjt said:
Well I did not the lack of support but did not expect it to suck so bad.
Click to expand...

julesjt said:
I know it didnt support everything, but my experience was horrible.
Click to expand...

julesjt said:
The concern was it locking up and the fact it couldn't do a 720p video streamed.
Click to expand...

So if you knew all that going in, and you acknowledge that you're upset with it locking up and streaming slowly, then why did you even bother to list the complaints about lack of format support or YouTube integration in the first place?? I mean, you have legitimate complaints, kind of, they all appear to be from a defective unit, not because of it being a beta piece of hardware as you put it, so did you just list off those other things so your list would look longer?
 
JonHimself said:
So if you knew all that going in, and you acknowledge that you're upset with it locking up and streaming slowly, then why did you even bother to list the complaints about lack of format support or YouTube integration in the first place?? I mean, you have legitimate complaints, kind of, they all appear to be from a defective unit, not because of it being a beta piece of hardware as you put it, so did you just list off those other things so your list would look longer?
Click to expand...

No that is not why I listed those. It would be nice for the fun factor to view those. And your netflix is starting to stream full length movies, and it would be nice to have a device that supports all.
 
I agree that you probably had a bad unit and that you should easily have been able to stream 720p movies (I do). The unit does get hot, so it's not good to place it on something else that's also hot and/or provide inadequate ventilation, but your unit might have been improperly assembled.

I do agree, though, that more streaming movie choices would be nice. I suspect they're on the way, though.
 
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