Life with Apple TV - Episode 2

Friday, January 21, 2011
Day 5 With Apple TV

So here I am, almost a week in with Apple TV.  Admittedly, I haven't had a lot of time to play with it, but that didn't stop Apple from billing me for the movie that failed to download to the device.  Every morning I get up and try to play "Dispicable Me", which I rented on day one, and every morning I am met with the unchanging progress bar.

Seems to me that the core functionality should work before they start shipping product.

In any case, we have been having internet connection problems lately (thanks a lot Quest).  I wonder if I just kinda-sorta paid my bills once in a while if they would be happy with my account.  Seems only fair to me, since the service kinda-sorta works once in a while.  But enough rambling about my lousy internet service.  Even with a spotty connection, you would think that the Apple TV would be able to download a rental movie within say, 5 days or so.  Needless to say, this is somewhat disappointing.

While I have been waiting for my rental to download (and well after it has been paid for), I did manage to order and receive a refurbished MacBookPro.  After applying the latest software download, the AitPlay feature streaming to the Apple TV is working very well.  Also having good success using HandBrake to convert some of my AVI files and DVDs to MP4 to replay on the Apple TV.

Unfortunately, I need to leave my MacBookPro turned on and iTunes running for AppleTV to be able to stream movies from it.  A somewhat clunky solution if you ask me.

I was really hoping that Apple would have a refined, useful product before going to market.  AppletTV at this point is little more than a very small, decent Netflix player that integrates nicely with an iTunes library on a running computer that has iTunes open.  In hindsight, I suspect that the Roku is a better value, as it has a lot more features for the same or lower price.  I also suspect that most of the features actually work, since they don't have the power of the Apple brand to drive sales.

I'll keep using the AppleTV and hopefully publish some better news once the next software update comes out.  At this point, for me, the core features simply do not work.  I will also get on the phone with Apple support when I get a chance and give them the opportunity to rectify the situation, however for the moment, I am pretty disappointed.