by Ben Huot
ben@benjamin-newton.com
www.benjamin-newton.com
Apple TV: First Impressions
What is an Apple TV?
The Apple TV allows you to transfer over all your iTunes audio, video, plus photos, and access YouTube wirelessly to the Apple TV box. The Apple TV which has a hard drive, which stores your media and you get a remote you can move through it with. It only works with HDTVs. Setting up the Apple TV was easy. The 160 GB version had plenty of space and only cost $230.
Why Haven't I Heard of it Yet?
Many people have not bought an Apple TV. It is one of Apple's least successful products since Steve Jobs came back to Apple and they released the iMac, iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, the iPad, and the like. There are two related reasons. One is that it doesn't replace any other box people have like TiVo, their cable or satellite boxes, their DVD and Blue-Ray players, or anything else. Another problem is that for it to be useful to most people Apple needs to either allow people to transfer DVDs onto the Apple TV or else they need to integrate it with one of those other boxes like the cable box. The problem is that powerful industries like cable and satellite companies as well as the movie industry don't want this to happen, because they are afraid they will make less money.
PC or Mac Storage Space Issues
The downside is that it takes a lot of space on your Mac or PC hard drive even for standard definition (SD) video. You need to leave a copy of all your media in iTunes on your PC or Mac and back it up to a portable hard drive and or a series of DVD-Rs.
SD videos of TV show episodes are about 500 MB and most series have 22 episodes in them, so it takes 11 GB per season/per show. Many of the successful TV shows have 4-6 seasons or more. I have been able to clear about 90 GB free on my Mac which has 250 GB hard drive.
Remember to only download from your Cable or DSL broadband connection. You really don't want to be downloading 500 MB files over dialup and unlimited wireless is usually limited to 5 GB a month, regardless of service provider. It might be convenient for you to download over a free public wifi hotspot, but that would likely make the network unbearably slow for others there, and you don't want to be sending your iTunes information over a public connection either.
Remember to leave some free space on your Mac hard drive (and probably your iPad and Apple TV as well) for it to run well. I am leaving about 3 GB free on my 16 GB iPad and 50 GB on my iMac. You also need to allow some extra space for a OS upgrade and for newer versions of applications which will likely grow in size.
Apple TV Media Management
Prices vary from $15-35 on the ones I was interested in. The iTunes store is nice because it has more selection, especially of the older TV shows, than local stores and because it is so much easier having it transfer automatically to my Apple TV, instead of having to pop DVDs in and out of the player.
I have decided to just have my photos, maps, medical and legal references, e-books, digital magazines, Bible books software, documents, games, and Apps on my iPad. Since I want to be able to use it around in quiet places like waiting rooms or the library and because head phones would be awkward with the size of the iPad, I have decided to put my music, iTunes University courses, podcasts, and TV shows just on my Apple TV.
Wireless Router
The Apple TV requires a wireless router, like Apple's Airport ($100). Apple's Airport works for up to 5 devices. I have it set up for my Mac, iPad, and Apple TV and it works well. The Airport is easy to set up. If it doesn't detect the Airport on your computer after plugging the other end into your cable or DSL modem and plugged into an electrical outlet, then just reset it and try again.
I think you can also connect via LAN, but that might not be very convenient, especially if your TV in across the room or in another room. You also still would need a router to handle multiple connections as most computers have a maximum of one ethernet port (network adapter). Copying files over a wireless connection is slow, so you need to allow some time for copying/syncing.
Also never choose to stop syncing to your Apple TV, or unplug your Airport, or else you need to restore your Apple TV to factory defaults to get it to sync again. This means you have to recopy everything from iTunes, but setting it up again is fairly quick and simple. You can set it up to stream over your media to your Apple TV, but that would only make sense, if you had a much bigger hard drive on your computer, than on your Apple TV, and you had so much media on your hard drive, that there would not be enough space for it on your Apple TV.
Why You Cannot Copy DVDs
Unfortunately there is no simple, free, and supported way of transferring DVDs to iTunes like it is with audio CDs. You can thank the Motion Picture Industry for this. Actually, the reason we are able to transfer over songs from audio CDs was an unforeseen consequence of the CD-ROM being based on the same technology as the audio CD and the popularity of CD-ROM drives. The files were too big for hard drives of the time and would be even now if it weren't for the MP3, MP4, and OGG formats. By the time DVDs came out they decided to make it harder to copy them by using DRM.
The irony is that I can steal most things digital (I don't but most people do not have a problem with theft of intellectual property) much easier than I can transfer over my media for backup or transfer purposes that I already legally own, because at least a couple computer programmers find a way to break through the restrictions usually in a matter of 24 hours or less. They usually then make an easy to use program for other people to be able to break the restrictions. Basically, the media industry is penalizing the honest people for what dishonest people do and they don't want to admit that it doesn't stop pirating because they have no other solution.
