
We did it. Last weekend, I walked into the Apple Store empty handed, and walked out with a 40 GB AppleTV. This was the result of quite a bit of research, and so far, it’s working great. I started writing a long, geeky post about how I have it all set up, which I’ll post soon, but I wanted to first give some initial impressions.
It’s great!
So as you’ll recall from my recent post, my goal is to cancel our digital cable, but still be able to watch some of the cable-only shows we like. The basic plan was to drop to basic (very basic, as in network-only) cable, and get the Tivo working again for network shows. Then join Netflix for movies and TV series, and use BitTorrent and iTunes to fill in the gaps. Net savings of about $40-50 per month before any iTunes purchases. We have a DVD player, but the only way to get iTunes or BitTorrent content to the TV was to hook up a computer through the TV’s VGA port. Workable as a short-term solution, but not a long-term one.
AppleTV solves this last-10-feet problem. It’s a small box that’s not at all obtrusive, makes no noise at all (much quieter than Tivo), has a slick interface, and was designed to be used with a widescreen TV. The interface looks really good. In combination with my home computer (the one serving this page, an 867 MHz Powerbook G4), we can either sync or stream our entire music library, look at our photos, and download video using either iTunes or BitTorrent. For filetypes not natively supported by the AppleTV, we can transcode them on the computer, throw them into iTunes, and they get synced automatically. Much of this process is automated, with off the shelf software. iTunes is easier and much faster than converting filetypes, and it costs around $2 per TV episode — but with the money we’re saving from cable, that’s not a bad price. For example, Top Chef can be had for $29 for a season — 14 episodes, I think, which are broadcast over a 3-month period. $10 per month is better than the $70 per month we pay now to see Top Chef and a bunch of bad programs. Or, it’s free on BitTorrent, and only slightly less convenient.
I’ll have to talk down the road about video podcasts and YouTube, both of which are kind of fun.
In addition, the AppleTV fits really well into our New Media World Order. I can watch trailers of about 30 new movies, streamed directly from Apple’s QuickTime movie trailer site (and they look MUCH better on the AppleTV than on my computer). If I see one I like, into the Netflix queue it goes! One of these days it’ll float to the top, hopefully. Also, in combination with BitTorrent, I can watch TV shows I haven’t been able to see before, even on cable, like Match Of The Day.
The only downside so far: the Apple Remote. It’s OK, perfectly functional, but I diverge from Apple a little on the whole economy of buttons issue. I think the remote would work better with more buttons. I also wish that it could be programmed to, say, change the TV volume. As it stands now, I still need 2 remotes to control the home entertainment beast. Not the worst thing in the world.
All in all, a couple days in, I couldn’t be happier.
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