Apple have released the latest version of the Apple TV set-top box that they hope will become the centre of your living room but have they pulled it off this time or is it destined to be a rare Apple failure?
By Leo Stiles
Overpriced and without a killer application, the original Apple TV was one of those things that was the wrong kind of product at the wrong kind of time; a set-top box that allowed you to watch TV shows and movies by downloading them to the built-in hard drive, along with some rudimentary internet features. It was a difficult machine to get excited about and consumers voted with their wallets and avoided it like a Vanilla Ice revival concert.
In September, Apple announced that they were going to take another shot at Apple TV and unveiled a stripped-down product that looked to get rid of a lot of the features that nobody wanted, such as the hard drive, and repackaged it as a €119 entertainment solution for your home.
The Hardware
The new Apple TV is tiny and measures about the same as two bars of soap stuck together. On the back of the device is a HDMI port, an optical audio port, an Ethernet port and a micro-USB port, which Apple have claimed is for service requirements only (more on this later). When switched on, the machine runs silently and the only thing that lets you know that the device is even running is a small silver light on the front of the machine. From purely a hardware design point-of-view, Apple TV is a winner and gives you an entirely new set of entertainment options without adding yet another overlarge box to your TV set-up.
The Apple TVnremote is a very thin slice of silver and features only a few buttons; the bare minimum we’d say that Apple could have given it without going for a touch screen remote and driving the cost of the machine up into the stratosphere.
It seems Apple was thinking along the same line and in a really smart move they have updated the Remote app to be compatible with Apple TV. The app is available for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad and gives you a much greater degree of control and best of all a full keyboard for searches. The App is free and is available from the app store.
Setting it up.
Setting Apple TV is straightforward. Plug it into you TV via a HDMI cable (not included), plug in the power cable, switch on your telly and you are ready to go. The next part is where is can get a bit painful as the machine will first prompt you to connect to your home Wi-Fi network. Depending on your security configuration this can be a couple of clicks or a letter by letter slog as you navigate an on-screen keyboard via that minimalist remote. This isn’t a deal breaker but it is a mildly frustrating first experience on a new machine, when all you want to do is get to the good stuff.
Once this is done and you are connected you will have to suffer more text input as you set up your iTunes account name and password. If you don’t have an iTunes account then you are going to have to log on to a computer and set one up. Finally, you should turn on home sharing, which will allow the Apple TV to access all iTunes libraries on the network that are associated with your account and this means that you will now be able to share media from these libraries.
Once all this is done you can get stuck into the all the good stuff.
Movies
The first option and the main function of Apple TV is renting movies. From this menu you can browse the iTunes store and view trailers in high definition while you check the reviews that are supplied by Rotten Tomatoes.com. The selection isn’t too bad, with all the major studios offering new releases and a decent amount of back catalogue titles. The impressive array of word cinema titles and independent films were a real surprise and we would hope that the current visibility of these titles doesn’t get drowned out by the big studios as the service evolves.
Renting a film is easy; just pick your movie and decide whether you want to watch it in High Definition (€3.99 or €4.99) or DVD standard definition (€2.99 or €3.99). Click the rent button and the movie is available to play after about 30 seconds. Once rented, you have 30 days to begin watching it and then when you first start watching the film, you have 48 hours to watch it as many times as you want. In all cases you are watching an internet stream of the film; nothing is being downloaded permanently so you don’t have to worry about things like memory management.
Video Playback in HD was flawless with a resolution of 720p and there were no stuttering frame rates or visual glitches of any kind. We tested Apple TV on a 12Mb Eircom connection and Apple does claim that the service will work on a basic broadband connection, though we wouldn’t recommend trying to watch a movie on a connection slower than 3Mb. Our internet connection did bug out half way through but once we reset the modem, Apple TV continued to play the movie like nothing had happened. Some of you might be disappointed by the lack of 1080p support but unless you have a TV of gargantuan proportions, we challenge you to see any real difference in picture quality between Apple TV and a Blu-Ray player.
TV Shows
Thanks to licensing issues, iTunes doesn’t offer any TV shows in Ireland and because of this, the Irish version of Apple TV is a bit hamstrung. The inclusion of ad-free €0.99 episodes of our favourite TV shows in HD would have made Apple TV almost essential, especially for shows that are broadcast on Sky. There is no way of telling whether this will ever be resolved but we certainly won’t be holding our breath, given how long it took for Ireland to get movies in the iTunes store in the first place.
Internet
Apple TV provides you with full access to YouTube on your TV and while there is nothing available here that you can’t see on a PC; watching sneezing pandas and the Old Spice Guy on the big screen is strangely compelling. The Flickr photo service is also available as well as your Mobile Me gallery if you subscribe to that service.
Through your iTunes account you have access to the full range of audio and video podcasts and we were very impressed with the HD video podcasts and the diversity of content. You can even listen to internet radio which is a nice bonus but it can be difficult to find specific stations without the use of the remote app.
There is no web browser included but this isn’t much of a loss, especially given the usually terrible functionality of these types of browsers.
Computers
Through the home sharing feature of iTunes, users of Apple TV can stream the contents of their iTunes libraries from their PC or Mac to their TV. This sounds great on paper and the photos and music parts work just fine but this can’t be said for videos.
It’s true that videos can be steamed but only if they are in the Apple-friendly MPEG4 format, an issue that is common on the iPhone and iPad. Those devices have apps to solve this particular issue but on the Apple TV you have to re-format every file and re-sync it with iTunes before this will work.
This problem effectively renders your digital movie collection useless if don’t have the knowledge or the patience to convert them. Naturally, movies purchased on your computer through iTunes work perfectly and the streaming quality is great but its maddening how Apple get so much right in a product, only to throw a spanner in the works with proprietary nonsense like this.
This is a great shame because we were all but ready to retire our Xbox and PS3 as media hubs and free up some space in our entertainment centre but for now it looks like we will have to soldier on with multiple boxes under the telly. Other than this negative aspect, there was no messing about with configuration options and after the initial set-up, Apple was communicating with four different computers without a hitch.
The Future
Apple TV is being positioned as the missing link between your mobile devices like your iPhone, your PC or Mac and your television, creating your own entertainment ecosystem. The Apple TV that has been delivered this week falls a little bit short of this goal but there are a few things that point to where Apple is going with this device:
- The same A4 chip and iOS operating system that are at the heart of the iPhone and iPad are present in Apple TV and already there is speculation that Apple TV-specific apps may be on the way, including games and media players that will open up the machine to all your content regardless of format much like the VLC Player app has for the iPad. Google TV will be launching next year and will have these sorts of features as standard and it is hard to imagine Apple not being ready for this.
- The micro-USB port is important for more than just service requirements and could also be used to add storage drives to Apple TV, a feature that was part of the original machine and would be useful if you wanted to free up space on your computer.
- iOS will be updated in November to 4.2 and will bring with it the highly anticipated Air Play feature. Air Play will allow you to stream movies, music and photos from your iPhone, iPod or iPad directly to Apple TV and even if you were halfway through a file, Apple TV will resume playing from where you left off. Any movies rented on mobile devices will also be able to be viewed on Apple TV.
Because some of these features have yet to appear we obviously cannot factor them into our final score but for anyone interested in Apple TV we would say that you should take these things into consideration.
The Verdict
This is the third major Apple product we have reviewed this year and yet again we have to dial back our praise for the product due to one issue. For the iPhone 4 it was the antennae problem; for the iPad it was the lack of Flash and now for Apple TV it is the restrictive nature of what it can stream to your TV.
As far as a rental service goes we are completely on board and have said goodbye to late fees without a hint of sadness. In the absence of a similar video service in Ireland like Netflix it looks like Apple TV is the only game in town; just as well as it’s a good one.
Easy to set up and easy to use with good quality video and sound, Apple TV gets so much right but thanks to the restrictive nature of its allowed formats for home videos we can only give it a ‘good’ rating when a great one was so easily attainable.
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