Tech Review: Apple TV

What You Need To Know

• Apple TV is much smaller than any other media streamer we've seen.
• It measures just under an inch tall and will fit anywhere in your living room.
• It would be hard to not like the design but since it's so small, it doesn't quite have all the outputs we want.
• It features an HDMI out, optical out and Ethernet in but no component or composite out, so you'd have to have a television with HDMI inputs.
• The easy set up and interface from the previous generation of Apple TV still applies here.
• The set up is simple: plug it in and connect to Wi-fi.
• The interface is immediately intuitive: everything is at a glance and has pretty little thumbnails.
• Browsing shows, movies and music looks especially nice in 720p.
• Another major change from the old Apple TV is that this new one actually streams.
• Before, Apple TV would start downloading your video to the hard drive and wait for enough of it to buffer before playing.
• This one is much smoother since it's only streaming.
• Home sharing is also really easy: it's an option that you turn on in iTunes, so as long as your computer is on the same network, you can stream anything from that computer to Apple TV.
• It only supports video within iTunes, though, so don't expect WMV's to play.
• You can also control Apple TV with the remote app on the iPhone or iPad, which actually is better than the standard remote since it doesn't have a QWERTY keyboard.
• Some people have complained that there isn't enough online content in addition to all the iTunes music and video, which is still the case.
• It's nice they have Netflix, YouTube and Flickr, but almost any modern home theater device offers these features and more.
• We reviewed a Western Digital Media Streamer before that streamed Pandora and Live 365, and we've also seen a number of Blu-ray players with Amazon video on demand.
• That said, iTunes does have 8,000 movies and more for rent.
• They are still lacking in the TV department, since there are only a few networks represented through iTunes. We're sure more will sign on in the coming months.
• AirPlay is also coming in November, which is a feature that allows you to stream media from your iPhone, iPod or iPad directly to Apple TV.

Price

• $100

Rating

• 4 Seals of Approval out of 5 (How do we rate gadgets?)
• This device works extremely well for the price, but the content is not all there yet. When they add more shows and get AirPlay working, it should be 5 out of 5!