Apple TV - Part 2: Apple Enters the Digital Home
by Anand Lal Shimpi on March 26, 2007 1:22 AM EST- Posted in
- Mac
iPod for your TV
Music playback is simple on the Apple TV; simply select music from the main menu and then you have a 10-ft version of the iPod interface at your disposal. In order to keep the UI simple, you can't search for songs; instead you have to browse according to Artist, Title, Album name, etc... Just like the iPod, this browsing hierarchy works very well if all of your MP3s are properly tagged; otherwise it can be a bit frustrating. Scrolling through thousands of songs is not difficult and can go by quickly once you get used to how the UI reacts to your inputs. Playlists on your Mac/PC are also accessible through the Apple TV, which makes things a bit better if not all of your music is the easiest to find.
While your music is playing, there are no conventional visualization effects. Instead, you get the usual song information as well as cover art (if it's available) for the album the track is from. Album cover art is synced from your Mac/PC if it's available; otherwise you get a nice looking question mark in its place. During playback, at first all that will happen is the track info and album art will periodically shift from the left side of the screen to the right. If you leave the Apple TV alone, it will begin showering the screen with whatever photos you've synced to the device. If no photos are available, the Apple TV has a selection of pictures it will use - mostly of flowers. Like it or not, that's the extent of visualization effects you get with the Apple TV right now.
There's not much to praise or complain about when it comes to the music playback functionality of Apple TV; it just works and quite well at that. Although at a cost of $299, you had better find some other functionality in Apple TV other than music playback otherwise it may be more cost effective to just get an iPod dock with some speakers.
The only major complaint we had with Apple TV's music playback was that if you went too far back in the menu structure (back to the main menu), your music would stop. The same is true for any other sort of media playback with Apple TV; go back to the main menu and everything stops. It's not really designed as a multitasking oriented platform, unfortunately. It's not like we're asking for the ability to do much: just keep playing music while we are navigating through other branches of the menu tree.
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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.