February 27, 2007

Apple TV - The next big thing?

Apple TV is Apples foray into more then just streaming music around the house, but rather streaming media of all kinds. With the ability to hook into your iTunes library this little device can stream all the HD content you have bought from the iTunes store and play it right on your HDTV as well as let you listen to all your music. With its small form factor( think about half as big as a Mac Mini ) it will be sure to fit nicely in your media cabinet and with the ability to use the new draft n standard of 802.11 for its wireless connection you should have no problem streaming HD over it. The AppleTV uses a modified version of FrontRow to display your music,video,photos,audio books, etc on a very simple menu system displayed on your TV. Using the supplied remote you just navigate the menu like you would an iPod and select what you want. This is one of those products that is going to help bridge the gap between geeks like us gushing over networked media and mom and pop realizing the beauty of digital storage of all of your media. Lets hope Apple can do it again and revolutionize yet another area of technology!

Some things we like about the device:

No restrictions on playing iTunes content since this is an Apple product
Native support for HDMI and all things HD
Small form factor
Support for the 802.11n standard
Very cool looking version of FrontRow

And some things we don't like

Ships with the same basic remote that lacks any real functionality
Only works with iTunes so no vision of a cool media center of your
creation
Internal hard drive is not currently operational
No PVR support

We will have one in house later this month When this finally ships sometime in March we will be sure to put it through its paces and let you know what our impressions are. Until then enjoy the music.

Read More in: Audio Streaming | Video Streaming