Apple TV works with standard square TVs

Hi, I live in Spain too and had the same problem... i'm waiting too for someone to explain how to solve it.

One thing I've discovered: you can watch the apple tv in black & white by connecting one of the composite cables (the red one, in my case) to the composite video input of the TV. If you don't have a composite video input, you can buy a cheap adapter from composite video and audio to SCART.

With this at least you can see that the apple tv is working!

same here, i have a 4-year old LG 32" widescreen CRT.

and i also bought a composite to scart cable. My TV has 2 scart input connectors.... but it doesn't work with my conversion cable.

now im screwed!

Bloody hell - how difficult is this!! First you have to wait 3 months for it and then when you get it theyve updated the page and it says widescreen tv and not just tv....

After looking for a composite to scart which set me back 40 euros and days of looking (i am also in spain). The bloody thing can still not connect.

I can see it looking for different resolutions in the RGB mode of the tv.
However it will not find it.

ive got a 3 year old tv 29´with scart and rgb modes. does anyone know how to configure the ATV. alos tried in 16:9 and 4:3.

Why does apple always do this shit to us. Ive been loyal for years but really this makes me rethink big time!

Here you go. Problem solved. We are going to have to wait one month though!
http://www.svideo.com/appletv2tv.html

Hi, I live in Spain, have just received an Apple TV. I have a TV that's approximately four years old, and has two types of inputs: SCART and S-Video. There are three SCART inputs, and the TV manual indicates that the first port supports RGB. I purchased a Component Video to SCART adapter cable, and hooked everything up. Unfortunately, it didn't work. When selecting the input from the TV, I simply stared at a blue screen. :-( (According to the Apple TV manual, I also tried holding down + and Menu on the remote for six seconds, so that the Apple TV would cycle through its various resolutions. No go. :-(

I can definitely confirm that it works just fine on a standard definition TV. Syncing seems to make iTunes very unstable so I've been doing it slowly after melting down my router once.

and to #12: i probably would have a HDTV at this point but Steve keeps taking all my money.

"There are people in this world still who don't have HDTV's?"

Maybe you aren't paying attention, but the last time I've seen installed base data, only about 15% of households have an HDTV.

So I got my Apple TV yesterday too, and like some others who don't have an HDTV (sorry Eli), I too do not have the widescreen goodness yet.

Thankfully my suspicions were confirmed - my TV has component on the back, the Apple TV has component, that should work, right? Despite all the press and manuals, it does indeed work.

That being said, it's pretty clear it was not really designed for ideal experience on a standard def TV. Hard to read small text of course, and things just have a general "compressed" feel to them. For instance, the icons and words on the main menu are much closer left to right than you see on the demos, and pretty much like the Rogue article linked here.

One issue, and it's pretty serious: on my 30" flat-faced Daewoo CRT, the movies and music and podcasts play fine, but the TV is not scaling well. My TV episodes, converted by me AND those bought at the iTunes store, do not fill the entire screen left to right. It's like it's scaling based on the 480 vertical lines and not going the full width, which I believe is 852 pixels over compenent. So it makes sense that 640x480 videos would not go edge to edge, it's just unfortunate there's no "stretch" feature to scale it out.

Movies play fine edge to edge, probably because they are not 480 vertical lines. Also, confusingly, TV trailers play just fine.

So like I said, having a standard resolution CRT screen works, it's just not the ideal experience.

There are people in this world still who don't have HDTV's?

No one has a SQUARE TV. Sorry, even SD televison's screen is a rectangle. A rectangle with rounded corners.