Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
AppleTV: Just arrived!
- Thread starter Modano
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Arrived today, NYC, regular shipping
Took 15 mins to set up, 10 of which were spent moving a piece of furniture.
It is exactly as advertised. Only negative is what everybody already knows, which is that movies and TV Shows currently are standard definition and look about the same as they do on standard def. digital cable channels. That's fine for TV, but for movies I'm gonna stick with my Blu Ray player for now.
Interface is incredibly slick, music sounds better than streaming via airport express, photos ARE in HD. And the device itself is TINY and UNOBTRUSIVE. It's a definite spouse pleaser for those who have spouses irritated by the rat's nest of wires and devices that invade many homes.
Perhaps most impressively, streaming content from a computer on the network is highly efficient without any noticable buffering or stalling. It is quite surprising, actually. And my network is only 802.11g - not n.
Took 15 mins to set up, 10 of which were spent moving a piece of furniture.
It is exactly as advertised. Only negative is what everybody already knows, which is that movies and TV Shows currently are standard definition and look about the same as they do on standard def. digital cable channels. That's fine for TV, but for movies I'm gonna stick with my Blu Ray player for now.
Interface is incredibly slick, music sounds better than streaming via airport express, photos ARE in HD. And the device itself is TINY and UNOBTRUSIVE. It's a definite spouse pleaser for those who have spouses irritated by the rat's nest of wires and devices that invade many homes.
Perhaps most impressively, streaming content from a computer on the network is highly efficient without any noticable buffering or stalling. It is quite surprising, actually. And my network is only 802.11g - not n.
Gah, why you are you guys getting them today ?! I had 2nd day shipping on mine and FedEx says it won't be till tomorrow for mine to show up at the office.
Was googling around looking for some more feedback on the Apple TV. Less media "ware" and more end user. Over on the Handbrake forum - this poster has put together a nice little review....answering some of the questions I haven't seen answered yet. Re Video Quality etc.
http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=692
Therese
http://handbrake.m0k.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=692
Therese
Picked mine up today at the Apple Store...
I was in an Apple Store today to pick up my Mac which was in for a power supply replacement...
So... since they had an AppleTV in stock, I bought one so I wouldn't have to wait for the FedEx dood. I was the first one to buy one from this store! Kewl...
Anyway, I couldn't resist taking a slightly longer lunch break to take it home and hook it up. Setup is brain-dead simple. It instantly (after entering the code into iTunes) allowed me to see content from my machine. Now, I just have to organize my videos and set synch options a bit better. I had it up and running in less than 15 minutes...
Most of the video looks pretty good. The stuff that I'd originally encoded for the iPod at 320x240 doesn't look great, but I didn't expect it to. The rest of the stuff encoded at 640x480 looks good.
Next on my list of things to do is to organize my videos into playlists to allow me to synch and find them more easily... then setup EyeTV to automatically export to iTunes so that stuff will synch with it too.
I was in an Apple Store today to pick up my Mac which was in for a power supply replacement...
So... since they had an AppleTV in stock, I bought one so I wouldn't have to wait for the FedEx dood. I was the first one to buy one from this store! Kewl...
Anyway, I couldn't resist taking a slightly longer lunch break to take it home and hook it up. Setup is brain-dead simple. It instantly (after entering the code into iTunes) allowed me to see content from my machine. Now, I just have to organize my videos and set synch options a bit better. I had it up and running in less than 15 minutes...
Most of the video looks pretty good. The stuff that I'd originally encoded for the iPod at 320x240 doesn't look great, but I didn't expect it to. The rest of the stuff encoded at 640x480 looks good.
Next on my list of things to do is to organize my videos into playlists to allow me to synch and find them more easily... then setup EyeTV to automatically export to iTunes so that stuff will synch with it too.
The 300 trailer is very clear and the audio superb. I'm running component video with the optical audio connection on a 50" Panasonic LCD television and I've been very happy with AppleTV so far.
Videos that I encoded with Handbrake look and sound excellent. If anything, I'm able to take all of my kid's DVDs that tend to get destroyed, encode them, put them away, and then select them at will from AppleTV's menu.
Syncing is rather slow on my G connection, but streaming really has worked well for me so far.
I'm already happy with it and I can only imagine it will get better as more features are added and 3rd party software is tailored for it. Then again, I was already quite comfortable with using iTunes as my media hub.
If anyone has any specific questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them.
Videos that I encoded with Handbrake look and sound excellent. If anything, I'm able to take all of my kid's DVDs that tend to get destroyed, encode them, put them away, and then select them at will from AppleTV's menu.
Syncing is rather slow on my G connection, but streaming really has worked well for me so far.
I'm already happy with it and I can only imagine it will get better as more features are added and 3rd party software is tailored for it. Then again, I was already quite comfortable with using iTunes as my media hub.
If anyone has any specific questions, I'd be happy to try to answer them.
is it easy to change the HD? I so could use one of these, but i'm boycotting cos of the price, and small hd. Or i'll be on the lookout in the Marketplace forum.
Southern California received.
One thing that has caught my eye (and finger tips): it's f-in hot. I picked it up and it was extremely hot. I don't know what that means long term, but I figured I'd let you experts disect that piece of information. Of it could just be mine.
One thing that has caught my eye (and finger tips): it's f-in hot. I picked it up and it was extremely hot. I don't know what that means long term, but I figured I'd let you experts disect that piece of information. Of it could just be mine.
What's X264?
H.264 I don't know about x264. What's x264? I have a sample encode I want someone to test. Would you mind?
You know, this is the first thing I thought I'd do too but the streaming is so seamless that I can't tell if something is on the HD or not. It really, truly doesn't seem to matter. YMMV, of course, but this was the #1 concern of mine and now, having used it, I can honestly say that the HD size is not the limitation it appears to be. I haven't messed around with movies/TV shows yet but for music it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.
Mine got pretty hot when syncing for the first time too but my sense is that the wireless card and the HD are frying while copying 30 gigs of info but after the 1st sync will remain at a reasonable temp. We'll have to see.
