The joy, sadness and potential of the Apple TV

The Good

I purchased my 40GB Apple TV a about a year ago and thought it was a nice looking, functional device. It allowed me to play the movies and TV shows I ‘obtained’ online on my TV with what I considered at the time to be a mostly painless process. The device itself looks great. It is small, quiet, and actually looks like it belongs in your living room unlike those homebrew PC’s people usually hook up to their TV. It connects to your TV via HDMI or component cables, and has built in wireless and 10/100 ethernet for transferring/streaming content. The OS running on it is polished, intuitive, and does the job well.

The Apple TV has some great out-of-the-box features going for it. You can download podcasts directly from the Apple TV or stream the podcasts you have on your computer. You can also sync or stream your music and put your pictures on it for a screensaver or slide show. You can sync or stream any content in your iTunes library on this device provided it is in the correct format. Also, you can download TV shows and rent/download movies in standard quality or in HD for a fee. This allows you to either download and keep the content forever from the comfort of your couch for around $15, or just rent the content for about $2-4. The content you rent is automatically removed from your device after 24 hours. I rented and watched the movie “Sex Drive” in HD when some friends were over, the quality was great. We didn’t want to go out and get a movie, so this was a perfect, convenient solution (however I had to foot the bill as it charges your iTunes account). It is a joy to use if this stuff is what you want to do.

The Bad

However it isn’t all bunnies and rainbows. First of all this device only plays MPEG4 video, meaning if you want to play the XviD/DivX video you ‘obtained’ online, it needs to be converted first using a program like Roxio Toast, handbrake, or one of the other handful of solutions to convert the video to Apple TV format. This is fine, but it is very VERY time consuming depending on the speed of your system. Using my 2.4GHz Core2Duo MacBook Pro I still thought it took forever to convert content. I guess I understand why the device cannot play DivX/XviD movies, after all most legitimately obtained content does not use those codec’s, and Apple is also trying to get you to use their Store. But still, come on Apple.

The Solution

So what does any technical person do when Apple releases a product that limits a desired behavior they want? They hack it (I’m looking at you iPod Touch/iPhone), why should the Apple TV be any different? Apple was kind enough to place a USB port on the back of this thing which makes modifying the software VERY easy. I will not explain how to do this due to legality reasons, but feel free to google it (*cough*click here*cough*). But basically what you do is download the program on your computer then put in a USB thumb drive and it will create a bootable drive that you stick in the Apple TV which will automatically modify it and add a bunch of cool features.

What kind of features does this add you may ask? Well it allows you to install a web browser for example (which I found quite pointless really, but thats just me), video codecs to allow the playing of nearly all video formats, SFTP access, SSH access, the ability to mount network shares and play the content, and much more. When it works, it works well. I was able to bang through all 6 seasons of The Sopranos in no time flat thanks to my ability to stream them in their current DivX format directly from my Mac mini. This is what the Apple TV should be able to do out of the box, it is overly tied to iTunes and MPEG4 content. Ugh.

However like any 3rd party hack solution, this one is not without its faults. Apple TV software updates break functionality and require you to rehack the device each time. Thats understandable and the dev’s thought of this by implementing a block that prevents system updates (optional). Second, its buggy. Like really buggy. For example mounting network shares is a tedious hit-or-miss task. Sometimes it works, other times it falls flat on its face with errors. When it works, its great. When it fails, it fails hard. But again, that is to be expected by anything 3rd party.

To avoid dealing with mounting network shares you can transfer content directly to the Apple TV hard drive via SFTP but that is SLOOOOWWW. You need to wait for the entire movie to transfer before watching it, and who wants to do that?

The PlayStation 3

Enter the PlayStation 3. We all know its a gaming device, but it also makes a great media extender. The PS3 can natively do things that the Apple TV should be able to do out of the box. What, you ask? Play nearly all kinds of media files without the need to convert the content first. It’s that simple. The PS3 can play my DivX video without needing me to run it through handbrake, Roxio, etc. It just plays it. It just works. Wait, isn’t that the slogan Apple uses? The Apple TV doesn’t just work. It tries, but it falls short for anyone but strict iTunes customers.

Oh and whats with the remote? Its awful. The PS3 blu-ray remote blows the Apple remote and the Remote iPhone app out of the water. Apple, offer us a $20 remote that doesn’t completely suck. Please?

The XBox 360 is also capable of the things the PS3 can handle but since the 360 sounds like a jet (very loud fans), its not as well suited for the family living room.

The Potential

The Apple TV has potential. Its smaller than the 360 and PS3, its silent (no fans), it looks good so your significant other won’t complain that you have another technology item in the living room, and its decently priced. But even with all of these things going for it, devices like the PS3 and 360, which are gaming machines first and media extenders second manage to blow the Apple TV out of the water at its own game: playing media. Because the Apple TV is so picky about what it is willing to play all of the joy is sucked out of using the device. I would rather fire up my PS3 and watch a few episodes of The Sopranos, or Seinfeld instead of having to convert the media to a different format or fiddle with mounting network shares using the clunky Apple remote.

If the Apple TV could simply handle more video codec’s, I would be willing to recommend it to everyone I know. In its current state, I just cannot do that. The device is far to much of a hassle for anyone besides a strict iTunes only customer, and is simply too restrictive.

The Verdict

Enough said.