Apple TV review, and geek details

Tim:

I just tried connecting my speakers to AppleTV via composite cables (leaving it connected to the TV via HDMI). I could not control the volume using the Apple Remote. Maybe if video was also going out through composite?

after reading and realizing that it doesnt control the volume of your tv, i started to freak out, but then i remembered that on bravias you can turn off the tv's speakers and use just the connected speakers. im sure its the same way on most tvs incase anyone else was freaking out. but just to clarify, it WILL control the volume to connected speakers directly to the tv, right?

now they just need to make the apple remove a universal remote :-D

-tim
http://switchedclothing.com

re: itunes vs. apple tv playback

I've actually been looking into this recently, as I have a bunch of xvid I'd love to play with Apple TV.

The confusion is caused by the fact that itunes (and presumably apple tv) actually hooks into quicktime to play your movies.

If, on your imac, you have the xvid codecs installed for quicktime, itunes can play the movies. (There's a few tweaks you have to make, but they're quick and easy.)

Since you can't (yet) install additional codecs on Apple TV, you can't play additional formats.

In other words, your iMac and your Apple TV each use different versions of (presumably) Quicktime to play the actual movies. On your iMac, it's extensible. On Apple TV, it's not.

Transcoding lots of material is not something I really want to do.
Fortunately, it looks like someone has figured out a way to install Perian on the Apple TV.
That didn't take long at all!

Zack, I converted about 40 movies using QT's "Export to AppleTV" option and they all play without a problem. If you have $23 to shell out, VisualHub makes the process significantly quicker (by about 40%) and has some additional features. On my PowerBook G4, it was encoding at about .9x.

The 33 GB capacity shouldn't surprise anyone who's bought any device in the last 5 years. Computers, iPods, and PDAs typically offer about 80% of the advertised storage.

Here's the thing, though: I'm finding that there isn't a whole lot of need for syncing anyway. I sync all my photos (since those can't be streamed) and latest movies, shows, etc. But if something happens to not be on my AppleTV, I can just stream it. With movies, this takes about 2 seconds of pre-buffering and proceeds without a hiccup (so far) over my wireless g network.

Here are a few things I didn't expect:

- Setup was insanely simple - simpler than an iPod.
- You can't stream something and sync at the same time (bandwidth limitations, obviously). If you're trying to sync quickly, don't play things. Good news is, it's pretty automagic; as soon as you stop streaming content, it continues to sync.
- I've been going on about this, but people don't seem to be aware of it: there's really cool video podcasts out there, and they're free. Some of them are even in HD! Subscribe to a few and you'll always have something to watch on AppleTV.
- Quality of iTunes-purchased videos is, to my eyes, indistinguishable from DVD. It's not HD, but neither is 98% of what I watch on TV.
- The device is very, very responsive. Scrolling is organic, and video operations are much snappier than in iTunes (or QT) on my computer.

Steve, if you have a Harmony remote, you can teach it. Besides it is already there. Just ad a computer device. You will find the Apple Remote.

'If it plays on your iPod, it should play on Apple TV, BUT if it plays in iTunes, it doesn't necessarily play on Apple TV.'

Make sense to me since I can add plug-ins to Quicktime to support more formats Flip4Mac (WMV). No way to add plug-ins to AppleTV.

- mike

Wonder how long it will be for Harmony to update it's remote software to include the Apple TV in it's library of items to control.

Volume control is also not working on the Mac Mini if you are using Digital Audio out - it has nothing to do with the Apple Remote.

Zack, it is my understanding that if you transcode your video into Apple TV format it will, indeed, play on the Apple TV.