Rotten to the Core
I’ve begrudgingly become an Apple fan over the last few years, but the Apple TV is a piece of junk. Engadget’s review nails why :
Requirements - When purchasing the Apple TV, the Apple employees were very clear about the requirement for an HDTV.
. . .
The movies and TV shows from the iTunes music store are only VGA (not even DVD resolution), and certainly don’t sport Dolby Digital 5.1. They may look good on your laptop, but up on a massive screen is still just such a far cry from HD.
. . .
Another issue we ran into is the 4GB file limit and 5Mbps bitrate limit for the media it does support. Not even Apple’s own 720p HD trailers (8Mbps) have a low enough bitrate to play. Re-encoding is an option, but besides the perpetual desire not to have to do that, the results are often less than stellar, especially when this low bitrate video is blown up on a nice, big, high resolution HDTV. We kind of missed the point of watching movies in HD if you’ve got a screen full dancing pixels and artifacts. Simply put, if anyone is thinking about buying this to watch HD movies and videos: don’t.
Yet, the Apple TV requires an HDTV? I don’t get it. Why build a device for HD that plays back video at YouTube-levels of quality? Even the demo units at the Apple store have low quality clips from The Incredibles which look like a cheap bootleg. If you want low-quality video, the Wii can play YouTube videos, plus play games, and it’s $50 cheaper.
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Greg,
It is not true that you need HDTV for the Apple TV. Any recent TV (flat screen or otherwise) that supports component cable inputs will work. I have old Panasonic (> five years old) non-HDTV with component cables and it works fine.
Comment by innerdaemon — April 7, 2007 @ 4:13 pm
According to Apple’s site, the AppleTV needs :
“Enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen TVs capable of 1080i 60/50Hz, 720p 60/50Hz, 576p 50Hz (PAL format), or 480p 60Hz”
Comment by greg — April 10, 2007 @ 10:38 am
I’ll chime in. You can connect AppleTV to standard 4:3, but it looks even worse. That being said, I think Engadget (and like reviewers) are missing the poin of AppleTV. While its currnet deficiencies are true, these can (and will) be fixed sometime soon via software upgrades.
However, the larger point of AppleTV is the natural extension of Apple ‘digital hub’ strategy it laid out quite some time back. Your media (photo’s, movies, music) all reside on your computer and you can easily move it to various devices (AppleTV/iPod, etc) easily.
While the gadets you mention (Wii, PS3, Xbox) all currently can play movies back at a better quality than AppleTV, they do further complicate the matter of ‘where is my stuff’ and ‘how the heck to I download it/movie it’ there. You must consider the ‘non-techie’ perspective on this… you know, joe consumer.
I think AppleTV definitely needs some technical improvements, but it really is a step in the right direction.
Comment by Tim — April 10, 2007 @ 3:46 pm
If you have a Wii you’d like to sell me at retail, I’ll take it. Those frigging things are like leprechaun’s gold.
Comment by Jeb — April 12, 2007 @ 10:18 am