AppleTV is now shipping

[Lawrence Sica]

On Mar 21, 2007, at 10:49 AM, Larry Sica wrote:
>>
>
> It does depend on the hardware support side I'd imagine.  If the
> appleTV part does not support those types internally, and has to, then
> anything done on the iTunes side would be irrelevant.
>
> Fedex is being a pain...it still says somewhere in China...
>


Well, FedEx showed up Thursday afternoon and I got it.  Here is my  
quick review.


The packaging is typical apple, very slick, simple and nice.  Not  
much else to say here.  It was easy to open and unpack.  It came with  
a manual, a couple of FCC-related items, the stickers and the  
warranty card.  Also came with the cord and the box itself of course.

Setup was pretty simple.  I plugged it into my TV, plugged in the  
power and then ran through the menu.  It auto-detected my wireless  
network and I just had to enter the password for the network.  One  
problem I ran into here.  I restrict access to my network by MAC ID.   
The box doesn't have this information anywhere on it, the only way to  
get it is to look through the settings under the network  
preferences.  This caused a slight pain.  They should include it on  
the outside of the box w/ the serial number or in a card in the box.   
The rest of the setup was easy, once I got it hooked to my network it  
worked like a charm, I had to enter a passcode into iTunes to allow  
it to sync up.

The tv interface reminds me more of the iPod than Front Row in some  
ways, it's like a mix of the two really.  The iTunes interface is the  
same as the iPod.  My only thing here is the disk is too small for  
syncing everything.  But the streaming works flawlessly so far.  I've  
not had any problems with streaming shows or movies.  It will not  
sync if you are streaming either, it says the appleTV is busy and  
will automatically sync when it is not if you try and manually sync.   
I guess that is how they work around any possible bw problems.

Picture quality is pretty good.  It's about DVD quality, with very  
little artifacting.  Aspect ratio is fine.  I have my TV set to  
adjust to the program and everything is widescreen so far.  Sound is  
good too.  Overall I like it quite a bit.  It looks like it may  
replace my Airport Express stereo connection.  I am not sure here  
since having to have the TV on to listen to music is kind of meh to me.

It's funny, at first when I watched something I wanted to adjust the  
volume.  Instinct was to do it on the Apple remote since I was  
holding it.  I hope they have a universal remote code for this thing  
soon, it will make life easier.  I worry about losing the remote  
since it is so small and i can't hang it on the side like i do on my  
iMac.

--Larry