ATV Pre-buy Inquiries

[AppleNewton]

Im going to look into purchasing an AppleTV just not sure which size to get i can get a special deal through my company 40gb ($175) or 160gb ($245) (not sure if their refurbs or new or not)

but i was curious since i run a few set ups:
MacPro ~ OS X 10.4.10 & 10.5.1 & XP (on 3 seperate drives)
MacBookPro ~ OX 10.4.10
Windows XP machine.

do i need to specially format the appletv to work with any one specific system or does it automatically format itself? and what format is the appletv?
(i ask because i know if i formatted my iPod to Mac formatting i cant play or add songs on my XP system, but if i format it to XP formatting i can do it on both OS X and XP)

which leads me to my next question, if i had my ipod plugged into my MacPro and was using that to sync to appletv, could i potentially sync ipod videos to the appletv?




thanks in advanced

 

[aristobrat]

You don't have to "format" the AppleTV like you do an iPod.

You can set one of your three computers up to "sync" with the AppleTV. On the computer that it syncs with, the AppleTV will appear in iTunes (under Devices) and look/operate pretty much like how an iPod does. You'll have pretty much the same options for syncing music, video, photos, podcasts, etc as you do with an iPod.

The other two computers will only be able to stream to the AppleTV.

It's sort of funky to explain, but once you play around with it for a bit it'll make more sense.

 

[wPod]

size depends on how much music/movies you have, and how you want to store them. if you have less than 40GB of content then there is no reason to go larger than 40 (unless you plan on completely expanding your library once you get the TV) the main question if you have more than 40GB of content is do you want the data ON the TV? if the content is on the TV then you can view the content without turning on your computer, you only have to have your computer turned on to sync or add new content. but if you dont care about where the content is, then you can just keep it all on your computer then stream to the TV. if you go this route then you might as well have an TV with no hard drive, because all of the data is stored on your computer. This is the route I go, I saved some $ by getting the 40GB and since i have ~60GB of music and ~225GB of movies, there is no way I could fit much of it on the 160GB TV so I chose just to stream everything. This works great for me, I have an 802.11g wireless network and have never had a problem streaming movies, it takes a second or two to start the movie, but after that you wouldnt know it was being streamed.

 

[bacaramac]

+1 on post from wPod.

 

[harcosparky]

When I am purchasing any item where power/size is a variable I think of something a wise old man told me 30 years ago.....

" It's better to have it and not need it, than to need it and not have it. "

My libraries are bigger than 40, and less than 160 without videos. If I add movies it will go over 160.

My plan is to keep all movies on an external hard drive, move a group of movies over to iTunes and sync them. Load the Apple TV up, and from time to time change out what's on the Apple TV.

It would be nice if the ATV drive was big enough to store my 300+ DVD's.


Of course I could buy a 40, crack it open and hack in a larger drive, which is what I suspect many are doing!

 

[dalvin200]

__________________
400 & 1 Ghz Powermac
24" Intel iMac <---LOVE THIS ONE
12" Intel Macbook
5G 80G iPod Video
8G iPhone

OUt of interest, where did you get a 12" Macbook from

 

[harcosparky]

OUt of interest, where did you get a 12" Macbook from

hmmm ... I gots ta fix that.

I guess it's 13" lol

My son has it, I just thought it was 12 because the iBook we have is 12.

 

[FreeState]

size depends on how much music/movies you have, and how you want to store them. if you have less than 40GB of content then there is no reason to go larger than 40 (unless you plan on completely expanding your library once you get the TV) the main question if you have more than 40GB of content is do you want the data ON the TV? if the content is on the TV then you can view the content without turning on your computer, you only have to have your computer turned on to sync or add new content. but if you dont care about where the content is, then you can just keep it all on your computer then stream to the TV. if you go this route then you might as well have an TV with no hard drive, because all of the data is stored on your computer. This is the route I go, I saved some $ by getting the 40GB and since i have ~60GB of music and ~225GB of movies, there is no way I could fit much of it on the 160GB TV so I chose just to stream everything. This works great for me, I have an 802.11g wireless network and have never had a problem streaming movies, it takes a second or two to start the movie, but after that you wouldnt know it was being streamed.

I would add to this list of considerations - what you plan to do with rental options? If you plan to rent HD movies you may want to keep about 5 gigs free for each movie you plan to rent at a time. If you only rent one at a time you only need about 5 gigs free (6 to be safe). If you plan on renting more than one at a time and downloading them to have on hand to watch with in a month then you might want more rental space - figure about 5 gigs each.

 

[MikieMikie]

160 GB Rules!

I clearly cannot tell you what you should do, but can explain why I picked the 160 over the 40.

I have a lot of music. And I don't want to have my computer awake, running iTunes, all the time. So I wanted to move my audio library over to iTunes. Since my audio library is far from complete, I wanted to have some growth room.

I have some digital photos and, with the purchase of my iPhone almost 7 months ago, as well as a Christmas gift of a digital camera for my wife, our photographic library is growing. We have (too) many photo albums that we intend to digitize and, thanks to the easy-to-use software on our Epson printer/scanner/copier, we are well on our way.

So, I guess this is my long-winded way of saying, "Buy more than what you need and you won't run out of room."