Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Well It Almost Happened....

H

harcosparky

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jan 14, 2008
2,055
2
I went to the Apple Store and grabbed an employee, I told him ...

"Sell me an Apple TV, tell me why I need one ! "

So he started in on all the benefits. I had some questions about " Parental Controls ", he did not have answers.

In any case, we got to the point where I pulled out my CASH and I said ...

" Go get me a 160 Gig Apple TV, you did such a good job selling me on the 160. "

He came back and said .... " We're out of stock on the 160's but we have the 40's "

So I am not an Apple TV owner yet.

But I do have one questions. ( Parental Controls )

If I sync the Apple TV to "my" iTunes, is there a way to keep anyone from getting to certain material?

Can I ADD ratings to movies, videos, and music and use Parental Controls to lock those items from others?
 
well not necessarily "parental controls" but you can have locked settings for what movies you can view G, pG, pg-13 etc etc or what ones cant be played.
access to certain libraries limited, it should all be on the apple tv site itself aswell. i dont think its lined out as parental controls but more functionality/security controls
 
I still think the 40 GB is possibly the way to go. I love streaming from iTunes, and you won't need a monstrous hard drive, for rentals, cause after all ,they disappear once viewed.
 
Dont Need It

My wife bought me an Apple TV for Christmas, the 160 version, just opened it and hooked it up last night, wanted to wait till after MW. Anyways, I doubt I will ever use any of the hard drive space because it does an incredible job of streaming. In my mind, I would save the money unless you can't get good network access where the ATV will be. Also, it is AWESOME, you will love it!!
 
Get the 40Gb unless you have connectivity concerns with your network. i.e. streaming cuts out (haven't heard of this in normal situations), etc. I have an AEBS and it runs on G most of the time since I have other G wireless devices connected.
 
I bought the 160GB some time back. I love it, then again I hacked it to play DivX since that's what most of my library was encoded as. (These are all DVD's I own, I might add).
 
Another perspective...

Regardless of how well streaming works, some of us prefer to not leave a computer turned on all the time just to run iTunes in order to be able to stream content to the :apple:TV. Obviously, YMMV.
 
Reasons for 160 GB model

I opted for the 160 simply because I didn't want to stream music, nor did I want to stream photos/artwork (especially for the screensaver feature.)

I have an extensive music collection, and the wife and I are slowly but surely digitizing some older photos.

I would rather use 1/3 of the 160, then need another 2 GB on the 40...

It's like the line, "You can never be too good looking, too thin, too rich...."

:D
 
There is a program called MetaX that allows you more control over file tags such as ratings than iTunes does. I use it to rate my movies files. It may be possible to give all the files you want hidden a specific rating then set the parental controls for that rating.

See this thread for more info: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/384485/
 
I got the 160 just for the sole purpose of not having to turn any of my computers on to watch movies or TV shows. I have my main library on my MacBook which sits to my left with an external monitor setup to the left of that, and my gaming PC hooked up to my HD Monitor in front of me. To watch movies I used to have to turn both systems on and connect to the MacBook library over the network. With the :apple:TV I have it connected to a component switch connected to my monitor. Makes life a lot easier, and keeps my room cooler not having the computers turned on.
 
This discussion illustrates well why Apple offer both a 40GB and 160GB :apple:TV, however I have a question for y'all, as a new 40GB owner...

I'm currently streaming all my content, but I have an Airport Express network, so "g" speed. The computer I stream from is "n" and I wondered if anyone who's actually upgraded from "g" to "n" with an :apple:TV can comment on how much better the experience is, and whether I should make the jump to the Extreme/Capsule models.

Thanks!
 
gotohamish said:
This discussion illustrates well why Apple offer both a 40GB and 160GB :apple:TV, however I have a question for y'all, as a new 40GB owner...

I'm currently streaming all my content, but I have an Airport Express network, so "g" speed. The computer I stream from is "n" and I wondered if anyone who's actually upgraded from "g" to "n" with an :apple:TV can comment on how much better the experience is, and whether I should make the jump to the Extreme/Capsule models.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

I had an Airport Express, and upgraded to "Extreme N" for business reasons.

It streamed fine with "g" and streams fine with "n" -- in truth, i cannot tell the difference when watching streamed content. The ONLY difference is the speed at which my computer's content (menu) is displayed on the :apple:TV screen. It takes about 1/2 as long.
 
MikieMikie said:
I had an Airport Express, and upgraded to "Extreme N" for business reasons.

It streamed fine with "g" and streams fine with "n" -- in truth, i cannot tell the difference when watching streamed content. The ONLY difference is the speed at which my computer's content (menu) is displayed on the :apple:TV screen. It takes about 1/2 as long.
Click to expand...

Interesting, thanks for the info. The :apple:TV does take about 2 minutes to pick up my 160GB of music and moves from my iMac over "g" which seems to take forever when staring at it, but I suppose it's really not that bad!
 
Thanks for the responses.

IF we get one it will be the 160, because as others have stated it's nice to not need the computer running all the time.

I figure with the 160 I could put in a fairly good selection of movies from my library and perhaps only have to change it once every month of so.

Maybe I will put the " anyone can watch " movies on the AppleTV and keep the 'other' content on the computer and stream it when it is appropriate! :D
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back