I am not a techie by any means, setup was easy, and I like the box so far. I use it to display my digital photos with our music from itunes, great to listen to music with your our photos going by as a screen saver. We have downloaded several HD movies which is awesome, I think the movie rental and price is better than DirecTV, which we have also. The only surprise was with our 2.5M Internet service a HD movie takes around 2 hours of download time before you can start to watch, a standard movie takes about 5 minutes. Not a big problem, we just have to rent movies before we are ready to watch them.
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I own an Ipod, so buying an AppleTV seemed like a logical extension. It can do so much more than just listen to music. My kids (4 and 2) enjoy watching YouTube content with it. Let me tell you, by having access to YouTube in your living room, it unlocks a whole new world. Plus, the AppleTV also lets you watch trailers for current movies for FREE. Maybe this isn't a big deal to most people, but my kids love watching the trailers to Madagascar 2 and Bolt and all the other kids movies in theaters. In addition, the AppleTV allows you to rent movies without having to leave the house. This becomes a bigger plus when the movie is lesser-known and not stocked in the RedBox kiosk (where we normally rent movies). And the biggest advantage of AppleTV is Boxee (do a Google search). The AppleTV would be worth it if it had nothing else but Boxee.
Overall I am very pleased with this device, and have recommended it to others.
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My Apple TV (ATV) worked fine for over a year. That changed with the latest software upgrade. Apple support is the worst I've experienced. Syncing with iTunes has stopped since their latest version 2.3 of the ATV software. A number of people are having this issue and reported it on the Apple support forum. Apple Support was totally unhelpful. Wanted me to pay for "extended care" since I bought my ATV last year. I said it's not my out-of-Apple support ATV, but their new software that's the problem. Told me it was "buyer beware" with respect to updates your ATV prompts you to do, and that my only recourse was to role back to the factory default (version 1.1) - that is unless I wanted to pay for support. So I asked her if she'd heard of the problem, and she said no. Excuse me? What would I be paying for then? Why can't this company support the software they just released for free like any other responsible manufacturer??? They are shooting themselves in the foot because now that I've rolled back to 1.1, I can't buy the new content they're pushing from the iTunes store. So much for the Apple mantra that "it just works."
And here's the icing on the cake - when I posted my experience on the Apple Support forum and asked for help, they deleted it as a "non-constructive rants or complaints." Apparently, customer dissatisfaction is something they don't want to hear about or for others to know. Interestingly, when I searched for my problem with the search function on Apple's forum, I couldn't come up any postings on point. I then went to Google and found relevant posts on the Apple forum right away.
So to be clear, I loved my Apple TV until Apple released this upgrade to its software. If there is a solution to this problem, good luck in getting it out of Apple since they don't even acknowledge there is a problem which is posted on their user forums.
Think long and hard before placing yourself at the mercy of Apple's support policies. And I certainly wouldn't buy this product until Apple announces that the problem has been fixed.
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Setup took a while, downloading of iTunes library and my photos taking the most time. I've only had to reboot it once due to hanging up. Itunes movie rental library is limited. Video podcasts are great, many are higher quality than those that I download on my TiVo series 2. I also enjoy the screen saver feature with my digital photos flowing while I'm playing songs from my iTunes library.
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