Too much emphasis on getting you to spend money in the iTunes store and not enough emphasis on allowing the Apple TV to control your real media library. That’s my conclusion about the Apple TV mark 2.
Let me start again!
So I took the plunge and picked up Apple’s hobby device to see if it would fit in with my audio/visual setup. It will have limitations (it’s an Apple device) but it should ‘just work’ so will the trade-off be worth it or will I end up looking to ‘hack’ it within a week? Actually, I also bought my folks an ATV for Xmas.
Now without hard drive, the Apple TV (ATV) Version 2 is a box that becomes instantly lost beneath the TV, its piano black edge is swallowed next to the behemoth that is my AV amp because the ATV is tiny – remote size rather than DVD player size. The packaging was finished with typical Apple aplomb and setup was extremely quick: power cable (internal power supply), Ethernet for me, WiFi for my parents (both worked equally well) and…there was something missing. How are you meant to connect this thing to the TV? Luckily I was fully aware of this before buying but the ATV does not come with an HDMI cable or any other cable for connecting up to a monitor. So I connected the ATV up to my Amp (my parent’s ATV connected straight into their LCD TV) using my separately purchased HDMI cable and turned it on via the menu bottom on the sleek silver remote.
All I had to do was input my Apple ID used for Home Sharing and suddenly I had access to all my iTunes media on the ATV. Photos have to be shared from the advanced menu in iTunes but that took only a few seconds. Turning on my iPad and starting up the remote app showed me the new ATV to take control of without more settings to work through. This really is the Apple way. Even with less Apple gear my parents had no more trouble getting up and running though updating iTunes on Windows is a chore.
The ATV asked me if I wanted to update it. About ten minutes later it had rebooted with the latest incarnation of iOS in place and I gave it a test by watching the new BBC documentary on Steve Jobs by streaming it (AirPlay Mirroring) from the iPad’s version of iPlayer. Absolutely perfect.
We watched some trailers, flicked through some music and set up the photos in a slideshow. It all worked and yet I was left feeling slightly underwhelmed because here was a box that should do so much more. It feels like the underperforming family member.
Apple has very carefully ensured that their customers need to buy one of each piece of equipment they make to do everything you want. An ATV alone doesn’t allow you to watch BBC iPlayer but add an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S in to the mix and you have a perfect partnership. But you shouldn’t need the iPad at all. The ATV is capable if only you could unlock it a bit. I am happy streaming my photos from my Mac but I would prefer to link a box.net account to the ATV and store my photos remotely. Also, the ATV cannot connect to network drives.
Ahhhh! Limitations.
I cannot control iTunes DJ from the ATV. Why? Is it so I have to have a Mac serving up the tunes. Otherwise I could just stream music from the iPad directly to the ATV and this would cannibalize sales of Macs? Surely not. And while I’m at it, the ATV doesn’t use its real estate effectively. If I’m playing music from a huge library I don’t want to only see the album art blown up to 30 inches. Show me what’s playing, what just played and what’s coming up next. In fact, let me see the next ten songs because I’m wasting electricity just displaying one single album cover. /rant over!
My folks loved the easily rented movies and great selection of trailers. The TV shows work beautifully with season pass but they are seriously overpriced. I was simply amazed at how easy they found to use it but they would always have needed a little help with the setting up.
I could easily write several thousand words on this review but ultimately I don’t feel I have spent enough time with the ATV. I’ll come back in a few months with an update but for now I’ll wrap up. Since I have plugged the ATV in I have been able to mirror my iPad’s screen to ‘share’ the experience and I have watched over 1000 photos that I had forgotten about. I have smiled and frowned and decided to edit a few photos but basically I have been shown some fantastic memories. The ATV is unpolished, for Apple, and feature crippled yet there is so much potential.
But I simply can’t recommend the product whole-heartedly. Not at the moment. But my folks are enjoying it, limitations and all.
