Apple TV - Part 2: Apple Enters the Digital Home
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 26, 2007 1:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
Unboxed and Setup
Setup is extremely simple; if you've got a TV with an HDMI input then you only need to plug in two cables: power and HDMI. DVI is supported but only if you have an HDMI to DVI cable, in which case audio would be passed over optical or stereo RCA ports. Your final option for display is over component where, once again, audio is sent over optical or RCA outputs.
We tested Apple TV with a Westinghouse 42" 1080p LCD over HDMI, giving us the easiest setup option. After connecting the HDMI cable, we plugged in power and the unit started up. There is no on/off button on the Apple TV itself, although you can put it in standby mode by holding down the Play button on the remote for 6 seconds. If you want to completely power cycle the unit, you'll have to yank out the power cord.
While the Apple TV boots the single LED on the front of the unit blinks amber; the actual boot process takes about a minute but in theory you'll only see it boot if there's a power failure. Apple TV allegedly runs a stripped down version of OS X, which should be quite useful for those interested in modding the unit.
Upon startup, we are greeted with a familiar Apple logo and then a very short video of iTunes content filling up the Apple TV. Much to our surprise, we got no sound during this process over HDMI. We actually had to turn off the Westinghouse display and turn it back on before we'd get audio. After doing that we got audio until the next time we had to power off the device, which as we mentioned before should be rare. We didn't have the problem if we used the dedicated stereo outputs on the Apple TV. We're not sure if this is a Westinghouse or an Apple problem, but for what it's worth we've never had this issue on any other devices.
Over HDMI, the unit configured itself to a 720p output but over component it defaulted to 480i and asked us what resolution we'd like to use. Apple TV supports 480p, 576p 50Hz, 720p, 720p 50Hz, 1080i and 1080i 50Hz.
Getting connected is an equally simple process, as the unit had no problems discovering our 802.11n network. The wireless setup brings up an on-screen keyboard for you to supply a password if the network is encrypted, and although there are no options for selecting what sort of encryption is enabled the unit obviously had no problems figuring it out when it connected to our local Airport Extreme.
Once on a network, if you've got iTunes running on any computers on the network they will detect the Apple TV. The Apple TV will put up a five digit code to supply the first computer you'd like to connect it to; simply type that code in when iTunes asks for it and you'll establish a link between the two devices.
The setup process is identical between a Mac and a PC, and in our tests we had no problems with Apple TV - even on a Vista PC. The only real requirement is that you have at least iTunes 7.1 installed.
The only other problem we ran into during our initial setup of Apple TV had to do with a MacBook Pro we had in the same room. When we were using it, so long as the Apple TV remote had line of the sight to the MacBook Pro, our button presses on the remote brought up Front Row on the MacBook Pro. Putting the MacBook Pro to sleep didn't help as the button presses simply woke it back up. In the end we were forced to simply cover up the IR sensor in order to avoid accidentally playing back music on the MacBook Pro while we were testing the Apple TV. Word to the wise: use your Apple TV in a room where there aren't any other Front Row devices around.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
48 Comments
View All Comments
rexian96 - Tuesday, March 27, 2007 - link
The video in mini is very crippled though. At least this one has a 7300 chip which would help in H264 decoding. I'd say an XBOX 360 is a much better choice (price wise) if you have an MCE PC around, or nothing beats an HTPC.feraltoad - Thursday, March 29, 2007 - link
I didn't even think of that ninjit. You guys are both right. The Video does suck in the MacMini. -Intel GMA 950 graphics processor with 64MB of DDR2 SDRAM shared with main memory(1)-I think this means no way in hell is Apple gonna up the MacMini to 7300 graphics cuz if they did it really would take tard to buy an apple TV over a macmini when ur alreayd willing to shell out 300. Looking at that the Apple TV looks really insane. And even that looks crazy if Microsoft puts in a HDDVD drive now that the 360 has HDMI. Also, PS3 really flubbed up IMO by not leveraging the media center xtnder aspect since it would be preferable to the MacMini to my mind for an entertainment machine considering the gaming and the BR drive since they are ~same price. I here PS3 can do media extending work, but I don't here much from anyone about it. This crap makes me mad. The only "convergence" I ever see are companies with what seem like kick-ass winning products that ultimately "converge" into the s#it hole. They need to just make an extender that only relays video and audio but digitally (and relays commands) for those who want cable free extension. Til then I'll have to stick to my "30 dollars worth of cables" as someone else suggested.
Novaoblivion - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
I just picked one up yesterday evening and have been enjoying it so far. I bought it after having heard that it has been hacked to play xvid files :D.Trisped - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
What is so great about the 7300 that it warrants the statement, "http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2952&a...">even with the help of the GeForce 7300." A 7300 doesn't rate high on the processing side no matter how I look at it. Now if it was a 7800 or 7900 or an ATI 1800 or 1900, or better yet a 8800, then yes I would say that the statement applied. I just don't see it for a 7300 GO GPU.Fast Forward is when you play the video back at an accelerated speed (1.5x, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x, etc). What is described http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2952&a...">here, "Fast forwarding through video content is done very well: simply tap the forward button on the remote to skip ahead by a fixed interval and the player jumps ahead"here is more of a skip ahead, since you are skipping some video to move forward, or ahead, in the video.
Trisped - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
Also, why was the review so tame? Normally Anandtech drills anything that isn't perfect, but this one was more of a "for your info" type review.We should we expect a compare contrast between the AppleTV and the XBox360?
rexian96 - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
Didn't see it mentioned, but I am assuming it supports MP4 container only to be compatible with iTune. In that case, no Dolby/DTS sound tracks. And since it doesn't have analog 5.1/7.1 output, I think it's safe to assume stereo is the best audio you can get? Hmmm, like someone said it's just an ipod with video out & no display.If these assumptions are right, I think it's safe to say that it's NOT targeted towards enthusiasts.
Questar - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
Of course it's not. This is targeted at the mass market.archcommus - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
Every review of a device like this just confirms my thoughts even more that if you want this kind of device behind your TV, you're better off just building an HTPC yourself and having a nice gigabit network throughout your home. Then you can have a server PC with hundreds of GB or even over a TB of storage for videos, music, photos, etc., and also with multiple HD tuner cards in it, and then all you need for each TV in your home is a cheap client PC with a good network connection and some old processor and like 40 GB HDD, that can then stream HD television, video, music, photos, YouTube, whatever the hell you want from the server.Sounds a lot better to me.
vision21 - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
Is not that the solution to lot of these problems? Laptops already have graphics cards that support 1080p resolution. I have seen VGA ports and DVI ports on laptops, but not HDMI or component cable outs. Instead of keeping AppleTV connected to HDTV, can't we connect laptop directly to HDTV? Am I missing something?abakshi - Monday, March 26, 2007 - link
A bunch of laptops now have HDMI outputs, such as the one I'm typing this on (HP dv9000t).But more importantly, that has the same issue as directly plugging in a desktop to your TV -- people don't do it - they want a simple, set-top box type of device, so that's where a Media Center Extender / Apple TV / X360 / etc. comes in.