Apple TV: So I Finally Did It
Well. I finally did it. After my kids manage to lose yet an other DVD and I looked at what replacing a Disney DVD cost I realized it was time to get the AppleTV. The way I figure it I need only justify the cost of 12 DVDs and I’ve paid for the AppleTV. Plus I get the convenience of having all the movies handy without having DVDs in a place where prying little hands can scratch them or worse put them in the trash.
We’ve talked about Apple TV’s before. (I’ll not use the unicode for the Apple system since it doesn’t always display right on Windows) Most recently here. There were always things I liked about it - especially relative to kids. But also things I didn’t.
It might be a sin, but I think one thing I’ll like is using NetFlix in combination with the Apple TV. One problem I have with Netflix are those movies you want to watch but you have to be in the right mood for. I’ve had some movies home for two months. With the Apple TV I can rip those and watch at my pleasure while getting a new movie I might be in the mood for sooner.
Plus I can rent kid movies without being terrified that my kids will destroy the disk if I leave them alone with it. I just rip the DVD with Handbrake which converts it to the Apple TV. Then play it at my whim. I’m very excited about that - considering how much money I’ve wasted on the Disney DVD club. More than enough to justify the cost of the Apple TV.
Here after a day of use are my feelings.
Pros
Makes dealing with kids very nice.
I can quickly select movies.
My photos are all easily available.
I can put the family movies up.
The UI is surprisingly nice.
I can output sound from the Mac to the Apple TV so I have music going coherently in multiple rooms.
It now handles 5.1 sound.
Cons
No 1080p video. But 720p is probably good enough. Who knows, by the time I actually consider buying an overpriced BluRay player and its overpriced disks a new AppleTV that handles 1080p might be out.
Trailers seem more compressed than the 720p trailers on Apple’s website.
I can’t figure out how to block rentals and purchases from the UI to make the remote “kid safe.”
YouTube videos look even worse resolution-wise when blown up to the size of a TV. Somehow they look bad but are bearable when on my laptop.
You can only sync one Mac to the Apple TV. This bugs me as I have half my stuff on my laptop and half my stuff on my old iMac. Plus the old iMac has only a g network and not the faster n.
No auto syncing of iMovie 08 that I can see. (I may just be missing something)
How many movies can you store on it?
Comment by Susan M — May 26, 2008 @ 11:32 am
It depends how much you compress them. I’m averaging 2 - 3 GB at the level I’m compressing. So that’s probably 60 - 70 movies. If I did a bit more compression and perhaps skipped the 5.1 sound I could get over 100.
I’m going to try Bit Torrenting a 720p HD movie and seeing how much space it takes and how hi-res it is and how well it plays on the Apple TV. This may end up being better than a BluRay drive.
BTW - you can block downloading movies or songs by going to Settings > General > Parental Controls and putting a password on it.
Comment by Clark — May 26, 2008 @ 2:56 pm
This looks like something that could be a benefit to my sister and her five kids.
Comment by danithew — May 26, 2008 @ 8:52 pm
To add Susan it has a real cool feature. You can have it sync for immediate access some number of movies. But other movies that you have on your Mac’s hard drive stream when you access them. So you might have 20 movies on the Apple TV’s hard drive but say 300 more on a big hard drive for your computer. So it is as if they are all on the Apple TV.
I’m very impressed with how fast streaming is on it.
The real nice thing is how integrated video podcasts are with the Apple TV. And there are dozens of them that you can quickly browse. Some are full 720p podcasts. Most are either SD or lower though. But some such as National Geographic’s are quite good. There are tons of cooking podcasts that I am surprised how great they are. (Such as America’s Test Kitchen) Then there’s a lot of tech podcasts on Photoshop or digital photography. Beats buying books.
I’m actually getting much more impressed with this.
I’ve not tried renting any movies yet because I think the price is way too high. (I can go to Redbox at McDonald’s or any of the local grocery stores and rent a DVD for $1. Why pay much more to get it through Apple? And $5 for an HD rental? Ugh.)
Comment by clark — May 26, 2008 @ 10:42 pm
we are gearing up for a move overseas, and i was thinking of dropping some cash for one…since I won’t have cable,I want to be able to pick up Lost and such.
What size hard drive did you get?
Comment by hayes — May 26, 2008 @ 10:51 pm
I got the 140 G (which I think is a 160 G drive with 20 G being taken up by software) I’ve not tried to hack it yet. In theory you could get a cheaper 40 G one and expand the drive with a cheap 250 G.
I’ve not hacked mine at all but I suspect I’ll expand the formats it plays as well as a few other things once I have time.
Of course the size doesn’t matter as much I’ve now found. I was just so underwhelmed by streaming with the XBox 360 that I got the higher drive thinking it was necessary. But streaming on a local network is impressively fast.
Comment by clark — May 27, 2008 @ 8:32 am
I took the plunge shortly after that last thread, and our Incredibles dvd was destroyed.
I agree with the cons you listed, though none of them are that important other than the synching thing. It sure would be nice if you could just load everything from every Mac you own. I’m using Handbrake as well, and it’s full of 60 movies and a bunch of Top Chef episodes.
The rentals are overpriced and take too long to download on my connection. I haven’t even considered actually purchasing anything. The synched photo look amazing on my tv. Podcasts aren’t the greatest quality, but they download quickly.
Overall I’m very happy with the purchase.
Comment by jjohnsen — May 29, 2008 @ 10:43 pm
I’m going to high jack this thread in hopes someone can answer a quick question about my Apple Mac Book. I used Handbrake to copy a home DVD, but it ended up on my desktop and not in my imovie. Does anyone know how to get the movie into imovie? I would like to be able to edit the material and when I open the movie from my desktop it opens Quick Time Player. I’ve already tried dragging and dropping into the imovie. HELP!
Comment by Abby — May 30, 2008 @ 10:43 am
My problem with Handbrake is that some disks it has trouble with. The Wallace and Grommit DVD (the three shorts, not the movie) it crashes on every time. I’ve not figured out how to use it with shorts yet either (say the Bugs Bunny DVDs).
Anyone have some suggestions?
I’m thinking of installing the hack via the USB thumb drive which lets you add all sorts of things to it. You can actually buy one with all the stuff pre-installed. I’ll probably just do it the hard way though.
I don’t have a whole lot of avi files so Perian isn’t that big a deal to me. I do like the integrated weather plug in from Awkward TV. There’s also one with sport scores and even Safari for the aTV. The one I want most is Sapphire which give advanced organization for your movies. (Nice once you get past the 20 movie stage)
Abby, iMovie is pretty picky about the formats it will import from. What format did you encode it to? And what version of iMovie are you using? 08?
Comment by Clark — May 30, 2008 @ 10:56 am
Clark, I’m using iMovie 08 and used MP4 format.
Comment by Abby — May 30, 2008 @ 11:03 am
OK, I’ll check when I get home.
From what I’ve read it should work via drag and drop but is quite slow.
Unfortunately I believe Handbrake only exports via Mpeg-4 and won’t work with other codecs. That’s unfortunate since mpeg-4 is a delivery format and not an editing format. So it’s not ideal for use editing.
Comment by Clark — May 30, 2008 @ 11:34 am
Clark, it was the Apple one-to-one class where I learned to export via Handbrake and they even recommended MP4. I’m questioning their knowledge (dorks), because I specifically told them I wanted to download old home videos (Years ago I had them transferred from the analog to DVD) so I could edit them.
What would work for editing??
Thanks for you help.
Comment by Abby — May 30, 2008 @ 11:49 am
Mp-4 will work for editing but it’s not ideal because it’s so heavily compressed that it uses a lot of CPU power to just play. I suspect that if iMovie imports it they’ll just be converting it to a different format that they can edit on the fly with.
I’ll see what else works as I’ve not had a ton of experience ripping DVDs.
Comment by Clark — May 30, 2008 @ 11:59 am