First off go get yourself a flickr account for $25 a year and pump it full of every photo you have ever taken. No need to synch photos from your home computer when they can stream effortlessly from the web. .Mac is a bit more of a hassle i think. More $$$ too. Flickr is the best and cheapest site for packing thousands of high rez photos. You can even use flickr for the screensaver. I swear without Flickr this machine would be half as cool. So thats the skinny on the photo aspect of this.
Once Apple partners with Netflix this will be the ultimate. It is nice to get the latest slop off this box for a few bucks but once I can get any film then i will be happy. I'm sure it's in the works. if I am conceptualizing it in my basement i am sure there are businessmen riding the idea like a donkey. Even though I can not rip my own DVDs to this i do not care. Wild workarounds are not for me either. Once we can rip a DVD like a CD in a few minutes then perhaps I will want that feature. Still if i can access anything in the future for a few bucks or a monthly fee then i will never buy a DVD again. only the short sighted will think of the loss of the DVD market. They have 2 choices the way I see it. Either allow us to rip our own store bought films, or make it all available to us online. Anything less will just create a bottleneck and keep many folk from coming to the market at all.
So anyway... back to Apple TV. It should have a terabyte hard drive. 160 gigs today is peanuts. It will do me fine for a while. Hopefully they will allow a stackable USB drive to attach in the future. Hopefully.
Films download nice and fast. Fast enough to begin watching right away anyway. Youtube is amazing. Fast & funny. The podcast was never my thing but I took a look and it's almost all free and very fast too. If you are into it you will be happy. the TV shows are more plentiful than the movies which is a bit backwards. Anyway, very nice. Could be a bit cheaper. TV shows should be no more than 99cents, especially old garbage.
Short films are amazing and now have a new home on Apple TV. I can not wait to delve deep into that section.
Music sync is nice and fast just like an ipod or iphone. I don't sync everything anyway. i'd fill it up in right away if I did. Hence the small hard drive. If I could get all my music on there I would, but until then i'll just put some of it on.
A few more settings would be nice. Music playlists for specific photo albums would be cool.
A pointer mouse like the Wii would be nice, or a wireless bluetooth keyboard?
A DVD drive for ripping my own store bought films. If Apple thinks I'm going to shell out more money for films that I own they are smoking something.
All in all, a great little product that can only get better.
Once you all start commenting then I'll add more...
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Great product with a lot of potential. See awkward TV about what this can do.
Pros
1. Can play all video content
2. Compact size
3. Nice interface
4. reasonable price
Cons
1. Sometimes sluggish in menus
2. 160 gig of space is insufficient if you are storing a lot of full res video
3. Max resolution it will play is 720p, sufficient for dvds but not for 1080i video
4. No way of turning it off (uses 20watts at its most off state). Over a long period time it uses power
5. Heat. It gets very hot.
Overall I am quite satisfied with the product. Just keep in mind the cons above.
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