Give Us One Minute

In a previous post we mentioned that our shiny new Apple TV arrived via FedEx on the 23rd of March 2007. Soon after it arrived, we posted some pictures of the unwrapping process to whet your appetites. Well, we’ve finally had a chance to completely unwrap, setup, load content and make it a part of our daily media viewing habits. We’re now ready to share our observations of Apple’s newest entry into the consumer market. Before reading the entire article, be sure to check out Steven’s appearance on Fox 7’s AM Evansville Morning Show (video below) where he presents the Apple TV to host Sean McHose.

Setup
After unboxing our Apple TV we placed it in a nook under our Vizio 46″ LCD HDTV. As a matter of fact, it fit perfectly in the space next to our inexpensive RCA sound system (this unit seriously needs an upgrade and we’ll save that for another post). We chose to pair the Apple TV to our Vizio using an HDMI cable purchased at the Apple store. When we ordered the HDMI cable we were surprised to find that Apple was only charging $19.99. While HDMI cables can be found for less online, you won’t find one locally in one of the chain stores for less than $40.00. We were very pleased to see that Apple was bucking the trend and providing the cable at a very affordable price.

We choose the HDMI connection route because it handles both the video and the audio. It’s a pretty slick setup. One plug here, one plug there and presto, we’re done. We also liked the fact that the power supply was built into the Apple TV and we didn’t have another brick hanging off the side. However, this does cause a bit of a concern as we’ll discuss later. Overall though, with the limited number of connectors, the back of the device didn’t look like a plate of spaghetti and we liked that. We have enough cables scattered all over the house as it is.

Startup
We turned on our Vizio display, set it to the HDMI input and then plugged in the Apple TV. We stared at the blank screen for about a minute before the Apple logo appeared. About two minutes later we were greeted with a spectacular display of audio and visual imagery true to Apple form. We were almost giddy. You can view the startup movie below, but trust us, YouTube video really doesn’t do this justice.

Our connection and startup process was flawless. We could only hope that getting our content from a computer to this device would be as easy as the setup.

Network Infrastructure Prep
The first step in getting content to our new Apple TV was to have content on a computer organized in iTunes. Next we needed a wired or wifi connection to transfer the content between these two devices. We chose wireless and to facilitate that process we purchased a new Apple Airport Extreme base station at the same time as our Apple TV. We did this to ensure that we had the bandwidth we needed to push these large files around our home. We went from a Linksys 802.11g to an Airport 802.11n and file transfers on our network are much faster.

Did we mentioned that we hated our Linksys router? It was difficult to configure and kept dropping our connections. While we won’t get into a review of the new Airport Extreme, we will say that the configuration of this device was a breeze and it has worked flawlessly. We also connected a Western Digital 250Gb MyBook USB hard drive to the Airport Extremes USB port. We snagged this for a mere $79.00 at Circuit City. This gave us a network attached storage device that’s the perfect size to backup our electronic media as well as our computer data.

Syncing the Apple TV to iTunes
Now that we had the infrastructure in place, we were ready to sync to a computer with iTunes. Lucky for us, we have an old eMac. This aging computer only has 512Mb of RAM and a 700Mhz processor. Most folks would discount this immediately as media server as it has difficulty playing video itself; however, don’t discount that older computer you have lying around.

We found that our older eMac is perfect media server. We subscribed to various video podcasts and downloaded the first one or two episodes. This machine was already loaded with some music and audio podcasts to sync with an iPod nano so we didn’t need to find any audio content. We then established our connection to the Apple TV. The Apple TV uses Bonjour (zero conf) just as any other Apple networked product and it appeared on our network immediately. iTunes and the Apple TV “saw” each other and the Apple TV provided us with a code to type into iTunes to pair the two devices. This is important. The Apple TV will only sync with one computer. However, you can still connect to other computers running iTunes. We’ll cover that later.

Once the connection was made, we saw something very familiar happen. Like an iPOD, the Apple TV began to sync with iTunes. It even had the same revolving logo. That made us feel good as we had a visual cue that the sync process was in motion. Moving back to the Apple TV we could see the content appear as it was upload to the 40Gb hard drive. Speaking of the 40Gb hard drive, there has been lots of chatter about this being too small. We didn’t consider this a limitation because as soon as an item is watched, we have it removed from the Apple TV. This is a preferences setting. If we ever want to watch it again, we’ll just connect directly to the source and stream the video or set the play count back to zero within iTunes which will cause the video to once again be sent to the Apple TV. We’ve added some iTunes settings images to our Apple TV flickr set so you see what settings are available within iTunes once you have an Apple TV connected.

The Apple Remote and Navigation
We picked up the remote and began scrolling through the content. We forgot that a MacBook was in the same room and noticed that we were controlling both the MacBook and the Apple TV with every click of the Apple Remote. Oops. If you have a situation where you might be using another Mac with Front Row in the same room, be sure to pair your remotes or you could irritate the person trying to use the Mac when you are trying to watch the Apple TV. To pair the Apple Remote to the Apple TV use the following procedure from the Apple TV instruction manual.

1. Choose Settings from the Apple TV main menu.
2. Choose Pair Remote Control.

You can also press and hold the menu and fast-forward for 6 seconds to pair the Apple TV and the remote

When you’ve successfully paired your Apple Remote, Apple TV displays a chain-link symbol above a picture of a remote. Apple TV now works only with the paired remote.

Alright, now that we had the remote paired and some content on our Apple TV, we were ready to give it a shot. Navigation is simple and if you’ve used Front Row, you will feel right at home. If you’ve never experienced Front Row, the Apple TV navigation is extremely simple. The only confusion we had was in trying to stream content from another Mac. We thought the other Macs available would just appear in the menu and it took us a second or two to realize that you have use the Sources menu item to change the source of the content.

Streaming Content
If you want to stream content from another Mac or PC and not view content on the Apple TV, you navigate to Sources and select the source Mac or PC. It will take just a few seconds for a content listing. Simply make a selection and wait for the computer to stream enough content to begin. On our high speed network it took no time at all to begin the video and we never saw a lag or stutter while streaming content. You might notice some lag on an 802.11g though as some are reporting online.

In order to stream from other computers you still have to connect the Apple TV to that source using the same procedure of typing in an Apple TV provided access number into iTunes. You can connect up to five different Mac or Windows machines running iTunes. That provides for some serious storage and sharing opportunities. We couldn’t foresee a situation in our household where we would ever need that many computers connected. We could imagine a pretty interesting situation where someone might come to visit and want to share their movies, music or photos. They could simply fire up iTunes, we establish a connection and we all get to view the content on a nice large screen rather than a tiny computer screen.

Playing Video
Now that we have everything set up it’s time to really sit down and watch some video. That’s where the rubber meets the road. We started by viewing a video podcasts we had downloaded. The quality was in standard 640×480 resolution that had been prepared for playback on an iPod. The video began immediately and the quality was surprisingly good, but let’s face it, once you’ve seen an actual high definition signal you will be disappointed if you think the Apple TV is going to provide this level of quality from downloaded material. We think high definition content will become available in the near future, but we didn’t find any available in the iTunes store either from Apple or from Podcasters.

We thought the MacBreak video from Leo Laporte’s Twit.tv was in high definition; however when I tried to sync this content, I received a warning from iTunes saying the content was not compatible and would not be sent to the Apple TV. Evidently folks need to be very specific in how they encode their video. We thought it was a nice touch that iTunes was able to distinguish good video from bad video. We would hate for our Apple TV to fill up with content we couldn’t view. That would be a very frustrating situation since there are so many audio and video formats found online. Which brings us to our next topic of discussion.

Converting Video
Just what do you do when you locate a file that is not in the proper video format for the Apple TV? Let’s face it, the Apple TV is pretty finicky. It needs video formatted a specific way. The Apple way. If you have any files in the popular DivX or XviD formats, you are going to need to convert this content. There are a couple of ways you can handle this. If you have the latest version of Quicktime Pro ($29.00), released right before the Apple TVs shipped, there is now an option to convert video to an Apple TV format. Simply open the video file and select File|Export|Movie to Apple TV. Without getting into a very lengthy discussion, in order for this to work with DivX and XviD, you will need the proper codecs installed. Our recommendation is that you use the Perian plugin (free) which should take care of many of your video format needs.

Ok, that’s one solution, but here’s another solution that is easer, faster and and costs less - Visual Hub from Techspansion. The latest version includes new settings to prepare video for Apple TV. We have yet to find a file format it couldn’t convert and the process is faster than Quicktime. It also allows you to submit a batch of files at once. If you have access to Xgrid capabilities, it will even use other Macs on your network to crunch the video. If you own an Apple TV, we highly recommend you purchase this software. Heck, if you do anything with video you need to own this application. There are so many features we don’t have time to cover them all here. Check it out. Unfortunately, this option will only work for our Mac readers. If our Windows and Linux readers have some solutions, please post comments and let us know.

Other Obtuse Observations (OOOs)
OOO1: Syncing with an iPOD and an Apple TV is a slick solution that works well. I can listen to a podcast on my Apple TV and when the Apple TV syncs back to iTunes it registers a playcount so when I sync my iPod nano, I no longer am presented with podcasts I have already listened to on my Apple TV. This works because Apple saw fit to have a single copy of iTunes manage the content database. In our eyes, that was good thinking Apple because we’re pretty sure this wouldn’t work unless there were some way to dock our iPod to our Apple TV (maybe that USB port on the back could be used). In the meantime, we actually like the solution as is although other folks online would appear to disagree with us.

OOO2: If you are considering purchasing an Apple TV and have a flair for hacking devices, we recommend that you make your purchase soon! This early version of the Apple TV is becoming one of the most hacked Apple products in history and new hacks are appearing daily. We won’t cover them all here, but be sure to check out Apple TV Hacks
for more information and daily reports. We’re not sure how long Apple is going to put up with this, but for now there has been no backlash from Apple as folks continue to hack away. Apple’s only statement so far (and we are paraphrasing here), “it’s your product, but be mindful of your warranty.” Of course in future revisions of the product, Apple could also make it harder to hack (remember the Series One TiVo?) so that’s why we recommend hackers buy now.

Final Thoughts
We love it! The Apple TV is a fine addition to our home theatre setup. As with our TiVo, the Apple TV is poised to not only change how we watch TV, but also what we watch. We are already exploring video podcasts we would have never viewed sitting around a computer. Some video podcasts are good and some are bad. Some are merely commercials to entice you to watch the show on cable or satellite. Still most unfortunate is that most video podcasts at the moment tend to be of the talk show variety and there are few original dramas or comedies available. But things are looking up. As Sci Fi fans we are looking forward to fan produced films such as Star Trek: Of Gods and Men. If they provide their video in 720p or better this could be the first major online fan project to really provide a quality film that will push the Apple TV and prove that content provided through online video distribution can provide a compelling story line and pristine video. When the first episode is available, we’ll be online with Xtorrent downloading the high quality version. We’ll be sure to let you know our thoughts on not only the viewing experience using Apple TV, but also our thoughts on the story-line.

We’re not ready to cancel our cable yet, but who knows. If the hackers figure out a way to get Joost on our Apple TV without breaking open the box or if Apple can form a partnership with Joost or similar service, we just might be able to become less dependent on our local cable provider. Time and further updates will tell. In the meantime, if you have a wireless network in your home and a high definition television, we highly recommend you drop the cash and get started into the world of IPTV.

Why it’s worth a minute:

• Stream all your iTunes music, movies, podcasts and photos to your HDTV. What’s not to like about that?
• While you watch your Apple TV, your computer is free for other tasks.
• The $299 price tag seems very reasonable to us.
• No monthly fees like our TiVo!
• It’s very quiet.
• It just plain looks good!

Why it may not be worth a minute:

• Doesn’t yet play all formats of video. Hackers are giving us hope though.
• It’s hot. You could cook popcorn on this thing…maybe that does make it worth a minute. Watch your movies and cook your popcorn on the same device. Apple truly employs marketing geniuses.
• There’s no power button. Our TiVo doesn’t have one either but we just can’t shake the fact that occasionally we want to turn these devices off without having to unplug them from the wall.
• You are going to need a high speed network. Wireless minimum is 802.11g for streaming and 802.11b for syncing.
• It only has a 40Gb hard drive. Doesn’t bother us, but some folks like to brag about all the electronic movies they’ve acquired and will want to bring these up at a moments notice on their Apple TV.

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