Jason Snell spends a week with Apple TV

As already mentioned, to get DVDs onto into iTunes (and thus AppleTV) use Handbrake/Mediafork. If you are a quality nut I found that 1500kbps h.264 encodes look indistinguishable from the original DVD. Also note that you will lose anything but basic dolby pro-logic surround with this approach.

To Maurice Sharp: I'd change your statement and say that AppleTV is for those not technical enough to use a Mini OR those who believe that a full operating system functions as a poor living room interface. The living room is all about instant gratification and dead simplicity, not about replicating what I was doing in my office on a bigger screen (IMHO).

oops, the link to MediaFork was cut off in my post above. It is:
http://handbrake.m0k.org/

For accessing DVD's, I have encoded all of my dvd's using the excellent MediaFork program I usually encode them as H.264 videos with a 500kb bit rate and AAC audio at 128k. It works quite well.

I used to have a Mac mini (PowerPC version) hooked up to my TV and sound system. Thanks to the Front Row hack, I was able to run Front Row on my mini, and I used my Bluetooth keyboard to control it. Aside from the
fact that the BT keyboard makes for probably the world's largest and most unwieldy remote control, the setup worked well, and I listened to a lot of music and watched a lot of video this way.

Recently, however, my main Linux mail/web/file server died. Since this is a machine that I rely on daily (my personal and business e-mail runs off of it), I needed to replace it quick. So I had to sacrifice the mini connected to the TV; loaded PowerPC Linux on it and reconfigured it as a replacement server (which works very well btw).

At first I thought about replacing it with an Intel mini. Had Steve not announced that the product formerly known as iTV would be shipping sometime in February (which turned out to be very late March, but that's another story), that's probably what I would have done. But $600 is a
pretty steep price ($100 more than what I paid for my PowerPC mini), and I was short on cash at the time.

But when I heard about AppleTV, I thought "maybe I should get one of those." For one thing, it's half the price of a mini. For another thing, it's a box that's actually made for the purpose I had in mind. And, the fact that I happened to need to go to an Apple Store on the day
that AppleTV's began hitting store shelves helped too; I walked out of the store with one tucked firmly under my arm.

Having a box that's actually purpose-built to serve as a media extender really matters. I too had the video display issues that Jason Snell had when hooking my mini to the TV; I couldn't get things looking *just right* and always had to make some sort of compromise (a nearly-hidden menu bar/Dock, big ugly black borders, etc.) With the Apple Tv, however, everything displays perfectly and beautifully.

I was pleased to find that streaming works beautifully. Even on my old 802.11g network (using a Linksys box instead of an Airport Extreme), it works quite well, with no stuttering or skipping. Since my iTunes server is on 24/7, I almost never use the syncing feature of the Apple TV, although I did sync some content onto it for those few times when the wireless network acts funny.

I am especially impressed with the AppleTV's software. One of my major annoyances with Front Row is that, when streaming content off of a remote iTunes server, it would NOT mark the content as watched/played once you finished watching it. Say, I watch an episode of Battlestar Galactica. It does NOT mark that episode as played; so when I later go and plug in my iPod, the same episode of BSG is copied onto it. Moreover, Front Row does NOT display the little blue dots that indicate that I have not yet watched/listened to that program/podcast/whatever. On the Apple Tv, however, both of these features work perfectly; if I watch a program being streamed from a remote machine, it is properly marked as played when I'm done watching it (so that the program isn't duplicated on my iPod when I go out); and it also displays the little blue dots that indicate a program is unwatched. This alone makes the apple TV well worth the price of admission.

I had the same issues as Jason with my Mac Mini. It overscanned on my 42" plasma. When Front Row was running, the words were cut off. I tried changing the resolution to fix it, but it never was perfect.

I also have had a lot of problems with Front Row and my network. Trying to pull music off my wired network would work most of the time, but not all the time. Same with video.

Apple TV... that's a whole new story. It just works! :) No overscan, no network issues. My mac mini has been moved to the basement and it is now just a server.

Reading Jason's editorial, I felt like he was reading my mind.

So he connects a Mac Mini to a TV to do...what? "Watch untold hours of video," is all he says. I'm guessing that means iTunes videos, maybe some web video. Notably, since mentions owning two Tivos, he isn't recording or viewing high definition video. Show me someone who's *really* using a Mini/TV combo and you'll have my attention. This is just an AppleTV, not a comparison of any depth.

Can anyone tell me how one might get access to their home DVD library via apple tv? Similiar to what James poster #8 said? We were going to buy one as our DVD player died, but at 40gig I don't see it holding too many movies. I have hooked up my powerbook to my Bravia, but that was a little too cumbersome.

James (#8),

You mention that you have access to all of your DVDs through the Apple TV. What format are you using to rip and compress them, at what final resolution, and how does the picture quality look?

The picture quality of the Apple TV:

Download a 720p movie trailer from Apple's Website. Using Quicktime Pro, "export to Apple TV". If you don't have Quicktime Pro, pretend the bitrate on that 720p trailer was lowered a tad. That's how good video on the Apple TV can look.

Video from the iTunes Store, on the other hand, is a different matter entirely, and that's what they are showing you at the Apple Store.

And, for the recored, I have an AppleTV, have no intention of hacking it, and couldn't be happier. Totally digital access to ALL my music and DVDs in my home theater without ever touching a disc and all through an easy, family-friendly interface that is completely streamable with no lags or hiccups for $299 = awesome.

This is why I canceled my subscription to Macworld. The only reason why people are buying the Apple TV is to hack and turn it into a Mac mini of sorts.