Apple TV hands-on review (with UHQ pics)
This morning, at about 10am, I was surprised by a sudden ring of the doorbell. Much to my delight, the FedEx man had come one day (and a half hour) earlier than I’d expected, and had my brand new AppleTV box in his hand. We chatted for a bit as I signed for the box, as he was curious as to what it was — “This is the 12th one of these from Apple I’ve already delivered this morning” he said … which by my unscientific logic already tells me that AppleTV is going to be a hit.
(NOTE: A few of these photos are clickable through to their 8MP originals)
Unboxing & Setup
With no time to waste, I tore into the box and found the typical classy packaging that I’ve come to expect from Apple:
Inside the box was the Apple TV itself, an Apple remote, power cord, and a manual. No video cables for the initial hookup, so if you’re ordering one make sure you get an extra component or HDMI cable before it arrives so that you don’t have to make a sudden trip to the electronics store. For some reason, in a lot of the early reviews, I’m seeing people really get wrapped around the axle by the fact that the Apple TV doesn’t include any video cables in the box. Personally, I don’t find it to be a big deal, but that’s just me I suppose.
Once the unit has powered up, you’ll be greeted by the familiar Apple logo on your screen, and then a brief setup. You will need to select your the video resolution of your television (1080, 720, 480) and then connect to either your wired or wireless network. For me, everything in my house works on an 802.11g network that is operating in “mixed” b/g mode (so speeds can be slower) so I was a bit concerned about the performance of the Apple TV over my wireless network. But, given that I don’t have a CAT5 jack anywhere near my TV it was pretty much the only available option. By default, the Apple TV will boot up and scan for wireless networks for you to join. Mine was not in the initial list presented - I am assuming that the other wireless networks likely belonged to neighbors and weren’t secured with WEP as mine is. So, I entered the SSID (name) of my network manually with the remote, and then entered the WEP key.
(Gizmodo ran a review of Apple TV gripes earlier, and one of the items mentioned was keying in a WEP key with an Apple remote. Sure, ok - it takes a minute. But that’s it - one minute. About the same amount of time it took me to key in my WEP key on my TiVo, too. So I guess I’m a bit puzzled why this seemed like such a hassle. Anyway…)
Once the WEP key was in, the Apple TV came up with a 5-digit code on the screen, and instructed me to go enter that code into iTunes. Not wanting to upset my new overlord the Apple TV, I did exactly what it commanded and dutifully entered my code number into iTunes. Once I did that, iTunes immediately recognized the Apple TV as an authorized appliance on my account, so that I can access any DRM-restricted content I’ve acquired from the iTunes Store.
Of course, the first thing I’d noticed about this screen was the reported capacity - 32.96GB? Hmmm … I’d thought it was a 40GB drive in there, according to the specs. Sure, I understand that they’d need a bit of space for the embedded operating system in the appliance … but 8GB?!?! No, I can fit an entire copy of Windows Vista into far less space than that. So Apple is clearly holding aside part of the drive for some purpose — but for what? More on that later …
Sync Time
Once I had connected the Apple TV up to iTunes, it was time to sync my content down. The process was about as simple as can be, and you have a lot of control over what gets sync’d down to the Apple TV. For movies, you can select all movies, the “X” most recent movies, or the “X” most recent unwatched movies, or manually pick specific movies off of the list to synchronize. Movie purchases must be made from iTunes (for now) and can’t be done directly from the Apple TV just yet. Obvious speculation is that this will eventually change, to make the Apple TV a truly on-demand type of platform. But for now, it will suffice for me. For kicks, I purchased a copy of The Prestige, which iTunes downloaded in about 90 minutes or so. Once it was in iTunes, it went straight over to the Apple TV.
Similar granularity exists for other categories of media to sync - TV Shows, Music, Podcasts, Photos. I’m glad there’s a decent amount of flexibility here, as it lets me save space on the Apple TV if I want to. For instance, maybe I only want to sync my video podcasts to the Apple TV, and not the audio-only podcasts I have. I can do that with the controls provided in iTunes.
The actual amount of time it took to sync, though? Well … ok, it’s about 12 hours after I unboxed the unit, and it’s just finishing up the last few files now, giving me almost 28GB worth of content stored on the Apple TV and synced with iTunes. That’s not the greatest performance, and normally I would actually calculate out the performance into a megabits-per-second reading - but the reality is that at the same time iTunes was syncing up my Apple TV, my desktop system was also consuming and parsing about 20,000 (not kidding) RSS feeds. Also, my system ran a full desktop virus and spyware scan at one point during the day as well. So, any attempts to clock the speed of the Apple TV transfers wouldn’t really be fair.
Interestingly enough, iTunes has a description of what order content will be synced into your Apple TV, right in the iTunes display:
Notice anything about that order? Effectively, the highest cost content gets synced first, then the lower cost content, and finally the free content. Clearly, the Apple TV is all about enabling the iTunes store, as there’s no way to override this option and set another content type (i.e.: podcasts) to sync first.
Streaming, Syncing, Playing
While the Apple TV was working on its big first sync, I decided to try to stream a few items as well and see how smoothly the video played. I’d purchased an episode of Battlestar Galactica a while back, and it was listed in the Apple TV display, but hadn’t been copied down to the unit yet. I selected the episode, hit play, and waited a bit while it began to stream in some of the content and start playing.
Overall, I’d have to say it did a fair job with syncing in the entire library, streaming another media item in, and doing playback at the same time … but there was some stuttering in the video. That really surprised me, although like I said before I’m on a mixed-mode 802.11b/g network, and my desktop was doing a lot of additional work as well. So I really threw a worst-case scenario at the Apple TV, and it almost performed flawlessly. Having said all that, I’m sure if my network was clearer or my desktop wasn’t crunching other tasks, I’m confident it probably would have streamed just fine over my network.
Movies
As I was watching Battlestar Galactica, I have to say I wasn’t entirely blown away by the video quality. It was good enough, I suppose, but it certainly wasn’t great. However, looking at the Quicktime file info for that particular episode, it seems to be a 640×360 resolution. I guess stretching 360 pixels out to 1080 (the resolution of my HD TV) is probably expecting a bit too much?
Perhaps not… The copy of The Prestige that I purchase is listed as having a resolution of 640×272 in Quicktime, and the quality was much higher than the episode of Battlestar Galactica. The quality was just about as good as movies on the premium channels of my digital cable, and only slightly less than DVD quality. Overall, I was impressed by the video quality of my first iTunes movie purchase, although I’m not sure I’ll buy a ton of movies this way as I don’t like having my content all locked up in DRM. If Apple ever gets into video rentals, though, it would make a great platform to take on Netflix, Blockbuster, etc. I could easily see myself starting a rental downloading in iTunes on a Friday light, leaving the house to take the girlfriend out to dinner, coming back home and having the movie ready to go. I’m definitely looking forward to Apple’s entry into the video rental market. No more trips to the video store, and no stuffing DVDs in envelopes.
Music
As far as navigation goes, browsing through and playing your music collection is very similar to what you’re accustomed to on the iPod. However, with the inclusion of cover art in iTunes, and the beautiful HD output of Apple TV - it’s a wonderful browsing experience as these shots show:
Interestingly enough, another one of the “gripes” I’d read about today (I think it might have been that same Gizmodo article) was that low resolution album cover graphics didn’t look good on the Apple TV’s display. As if, somehow, that’s Apple TV’s fault? I’ve never scanned or downloaded any cover art for my MP3’s - everything came with whatever iTunes could find - but if I had very low-res images, it wouldn’t surprise me that it doesn’t upscale well. For what I have that iTunes managed to find, I have to say it all looks incredible. I can definitely see this making me get into my music collection again as covers float by the screen and I realize there’s so many great CD’s I have that I haven’t listened to in years.
While music is playing back, the album cover (if available) will display on the left part of the screen, and track info on the right. But while the song is playing, this layout will visually “flip” on the screen - moving the album cover to the right, and the track info to the left. Obviously, this is designed to prevent burn-in on expensive screens, and seems smartly designed by Apple. After a little while longer, under the default options, the default Apple TV screen saver will kick in (a view of photos) as well.
Podcasts
Podcasts are the main reason why I bought the Apple TV. I’m at a point where I probably consume an equal amount of mainstrem media (regular TV and movies) and new media (audio/video podcasts) in any given week. However, getting podcasts onto the TV and easily browsing through them is a bit of a hassle … and this is what the Apple TV is perfect for. All my podcasts, got synced down to the Apple TV, and browsing through and watching/listening to various episodes was just as easy as browsing through my music collection. Now if only TikiBar TV could release another episode!
Interestingly enough, I noticed that some podcasts actually seemed to have better video quality than anything I’ve bought from the iTunes Store. Specifically, MoBuzz TV looked especially sharp. Going in and looking at the files, it seems as though their feed is 640×480 … still not quite HD yet, but a good size anyway. I’ll have to look around for suggestions on HD podcasts. I know they’re expensive to distribute, but I’m sure there must be a few out there. If you know of any, leave your suggestions in the comments at the end of the review.
Photos
I’ll have to admit, I’ve not done much with the photo browsing yet. I’m sure it’s nice - but this is never really a feature I saw myself using too much. I still show friends my photos the old-fashioned way … on my PC 
… but I’m sure the Apple TV does a beautiful job with this task as well. I found it interesting that I couldn’t select several separate folders of images for downloading. You either have to select PhotoShop albums (this is on the PC, mind you) or a single directory. From that single directory, you can include subdirectories … but I really would have preferred the flexibility to simply select a set of image directories to sync down to the Apple TV. Perhaps that will come in a future upgrade it iTunes.
Gripes
Having said all of that, I’ll admit that I (too) have a few small gripes with the Apple TV. First, I’m reading that there’s not any support for surround sound at the moment. I don’t have a surround sound setup at the moment, but given that there’s an optical audio out and HDMI out, at least we know that the unit is physically capable of driving a surround sound system. Hopefully a later upgrade to the Apple TV will enable this support.
My second gripe is about playlist support for podcasts. Specifically, in iTunes I have defined a smart playlist to collect only new podcasts in the last 3 days that have not been listened to or watched yet. I was hoping this would be a great way for me to get comfortable on the couch when I got home from work, and start this playlist up and catch up on the day’s tech news. But there’s no “Playlist” option under the podcasts menu, and attempting to play my podcast playlist under Music reveals a message from Apple TV that there are no music files in the playlist. Apple, a fix for this one if you don’t mind? Mmmmkay, thanks.
Conclusions
Apple TV - you’ll either love it, or you’ll scratch your head and wonder “Why?” That’s a lot of what I’m seeing in comments on other reviews “Why do you need an Apple TV when you can [insert any of: modify your XBOX360, build a MythTV, build a HTPC] instead?”
If I’m not mistaken, a lot of people had similar feelings about the iPod when it was first released (Cali Lewis covered this in one of the early episodes of GeekBrief.TV, but I can’t remember which one) and if you’ve ever seen some of the early comments trashing the iPod when it was first announced, you’d laugh. Similarly, I seem to recall a lot of similar comments about the TiVo as well. Obviously, a lot of people bought those devices and still enjoy them today. But, can you whip up your own home-made version of an Apple TV? Sure - with enough time, patience, knowledge, and desire to tinker … of course you can. And back in my early 20’s, a weekend project like that is something I actually would have enjoyed doing quite a bit. I’d even build a HTPC back in the early WinAmp days to have all of my CD’s available on my TV screen. It was klunky, but it worked. But, I suppose that after nearly two decades in the IT industry, I can say I’ve grown tired of equipment that requires too much care and feeding anymore. So Apple TV fills a niche, for me. It might not be for everyone - just like some people prefer to change their own oil in their car, while others prefer to have Jiffy Lube do it for them - but there’s room in this market for both types of people.
I’ve heard the common hockey analogy of “skating to where the puck is headed” regarding Apple TV, and I think the concept is right on the mark. When I look at the Apple TV, I don’t see it for what it is today (although it’s good enough for me as it is), I see it for what it is two years from now - when all the content is coming through in HD, and I can buy and rent movies directly from the unit itself without going through iTunes. And with the extra hard drive space that seems to be missing from the unit, there’s also speculation (apologies to the original author who blogged on this idea, I’ll have to find the article reference and link back to it later) that Apple might be designing a peer-to-peer delivery model for content, perhaps like BitTorrent … where bits and pieces of the most popular movies in iTunes can be seeded across all the Apple TV’s in the world. Then, when you go to make a purchase and start downloading - the transfer would be incredibly fast, but more importantly … Apple would not have to bear all of the bandwidth cost of delivering the movie purchases and rentals. It could all be done peer-to-peer, which would put Apple at an extreme advantage in terms of profitability compared to its rivals. Personally, this makes me think I should buy some stock (actually, I knew I should have bought some in August when I got my MacBook, but that’s a story for another time).
The Apple TV? It’s a keeper!