The Wall Street Journal Reviews Apple TV, Cautions Power Users To Not Get Too Excited
- March 21st, 2007
- 4 Comments
The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg scored the first review of the Apple TV wireless media streaming device and the big conclusion is that it “work[s] great…” for the average person. In other words, power users may feel that the Apple TV is a little too limited to appeal to them. As a power user, this news saddens me.
First, though, the good. The Apple TV was simple to set up and easily interacted with all six of the computers (three PCs and three Macs) Mossberg hooked up to his wireless network. Even though Mossberg is only rocking an 802.11g wireless network (Apple TV supports draft 802.11n), video streaming worked flawlessly. Well, flawlessly to a point, since Apple TV requires a TV with component or HDMI inputs. Essentially, what it does, it does well. Then again, it really doesn’t do all that much.
For whatever reason, Apple TV doesn’t stream photos. While Apple says that this feature will be added in subsequent revisions of the device’s firmware, it’s kind of silly to think that it can streams gigs and gigs of video data but not you’re pics from spring break. Oh, and you’d better already have all those videos on your computers’ hard drives because the Apple TV cannot download content directly from the Internet.
So the Apple TV — John’s is winging its way over from Hong Kong right now — is a fine product for Joe Everyman out there. More advanced users might do well to build their own home theater PC. In fact, a properly configured Xbox 360 can stream media from a network to a TV, too, and download content directly for the Internet. While it probably won’t be as big a flop as the iPod Hi-Fi (remember that?), don’t expect the Apple TV to become a nano-like success overnight. Maybe with future updates these problems will be solved, but right now it’s definitely aimed at novices.
Shawn King (Who am I?)
1 year ago
“the Apple TV cannot download content directly from the Internet.”
Did you even read Mossberg’s review? Mossberg says, “It can also pull a very limited amount of music and video directly off the Internet onto the TV.”
Martin Hill (Who am I?)
1 year ago
There are quite a few issues with the Xbox that the press release forgets to mention:
Heavy DRM on MS movies downloaded to the Xbox:
- Each movie available for rental only during a several-week window.
- Must watch movie within two weeks of downloading it.
- Once you start watching it, you must finish watching within 24 hours.
Otherwise the movie is deleted.
Can’t copy movies to other PCs, Macs or portable players or burn backups to DVD. (While you can’t burn video DVDs from iTunes, you can burn movies to data DVDs)
Typical Microsoft quality code. David Pogue got a nasty “Can’t play this content because it may not be supported. Status code: 69-00-80004005.” when he tried to fast-forward a movie. Sheesh.
The Xbox is big and noisy and the game remote makes a poor movie/media controller.
Who wants to fight with the kids who want to play a game when you want to watch a movie which you have only got 2 more hours to watch it in before it expires and you waste your money?
The Xbox 360 is $100 more expensive before you even think of adding the wireless adapter ($100) and then a hard drive (only 20GB) yet another $100.
The Xbox could be a good option if you have one, but it won’t be for everyone, just like the AppleTV won’t be for everyone. However, with 100 million iPod/iTunes users out it there represents a potentially massive existing user-base.
-Mart
Martin Hill (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Oops - I didn’t mean to include the first line of that posting. What I wanted to say was that Nicholas obviously missed something else in Mossberg’s review, namely the fact that the AppleTV does synchronise the photos off the master PC or Mac. It is only secondary or guest computers that don’t yet streeam photos to the AppleTV. That feature is promised in a soon to be available update, so don’t go overboard with your criticism.
-Mart
robotraff (Who am I?)
1 year ago
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