My Apple TV just arrived here in Sydney.Not much I can say so far except the box is pretty nice. It shipped on the 20th and just arrived now, a bit longer than expected.
Later: Now that I've got it going, here's my impressions:
Issues:
- Very easy to set up, booted, on the network, shows a number that you key into the iTunes you want to pair it with.
- By default it started syncing all my Music. I didn't buy this thing to play music on the TV so I've changed that default.
- iTunes immediately tried to sell me music videos, which is about all there is in Australia at the moment, I fell for it and bought a few clips.
- The TV trailers are tantalising, Lost, Grey's Anatomy, etc etc. Of course we can't buy any of these in Australia. Grrr...
- The interface lags a little but probably because it was madly trying to sync my music library.
- Visually, looks lovely.
Issues:
- It doesn't play everything I can play in iTunes. Not sure why, I've got a quicktime movie in my library that won't sync over.
- Some videos, including movie trailers from Apple lose their Video/Audio sync pretty badly.
- iTunes kind of forgot about my iPod for a while. Had to re-boot the iPod, seems ok now.
- They need a black version, after all, most flat screen TVs come in black.
- Why doesn't the volume control work? The nifty remote control only has 6 buttons and two of the don't do anything.
I would have snapped up one of these in an instant if I had any spare inputs on my TV :( It has a single component input, which I split into two with the help of my receiver. Both are occupied, one with the DVD player, one with the HDTV set top box.
ReplyDeleteMy TV only has one HDMI input, I'll be looking for something to switch that in the future I'm sure.
ReplyDeleteBoy, are HDMI cables a rip off at the moment. The store I went to had them at $160 and $99. Being a digital cable means there would be zero difference.
As I have one spare component input on my receiver, I'd snap one up in under a minute if only Apple ITMS sold the same video content in Australia as they do in the US.
ReplyDeleteI'd happily pay the $70-ish/month I used to pay for Optus cable TV for a subscription to a couple of my favourite TV shows.
Yes, it's frustrating right now. The main source of content I'm watching is video podcasts, movie trailers, and programs recorded with the Elgato eyeTV (which was recently updated to automatically transcode and output to AppleTV.
ReplyDeleteA few weeks down the track now, I do like the box, it does seem to run rather hot though. I notice that turning it off doesn't really do much except turn off the light on the front and stop video output - it still syncs for example.