Apple TV - Any Good??

i personally wouldn't bother with the new one m8, it cant do 1080p so i think you would be better off with a western digital TV that does 1080p and is only about 80 quid, as nice as the new apple tv is its not very functional.

Western Digital TV Live Digital Multimedia Receiver.. | Ebuyer.com

WD TV Live HD Media Player ( WDBAAN0000NBK )

Just my opinion as a macbook owner i was quite dissapointed with the new apple tv so this is what ive gone for.

I have the 1st Gen appletv and it is great. I think the 2nd gen is just for streaming and has no storage.

I've got an AppleTV, and with the latest firmware on your iphone you can stream music/movies/photos to it from your phone.

To be honest though, once the novelty wore off I don't use it anymore fullstop! Lucky I got it for free.

Also, as itunes doesn't support mpeg or avi files you can't stream this type of content.

I've been learning about Apple TV and it's not worth it at all. I'm planning to get a Mac Mini, running Plex, as a HTPC instead

Staz said:

I've been learning about Apple TV and it's not worth it at all. I'm planning to get a Mac Mini, running Plex, as a HTPC instead

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You have alot to learn still, XBMC is out for it now which can run full 1080p videos without the use of itunes, the apps are going to take a while to come out for it but its going to be a hell of a machine when they are, i will be buying one purely for a torrent box when an app is released. And for the price of it its worth the wait in my eyes alot cheaper than a mac mini.

Breezey said:

You have alot to learn still, XBMC is out for it now which can run full 1080p videos without the use of itunes, the apps are going to take a while to come out for it but its going to be a hell of a machine when they are, i will be buying one purely for a torrent box when an app is released. And for the price of it its worth the wait in my eyes alot cheaper than a mac mini.

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Interesting, the way I understood it Apple don't let third party devs add their own applications however there are hacks that can do it. I've also heard that XBMC isn't as good as Plex and Plex has a hack for Apple TV so long as you have a server on another machine.

I don't want to have a machine running 24/7 streaming to an Apple TV device when I can just use a Mac Mini as my server, which supports 1080p, has a vast expandable memory and will play pretty much anything. Not the cheapest way but it's definitely the best (from what I have read, of course!).

If you can teach me otherwise then please do!

You are very right they dont, XBMC will only work on a jailbroken apple tv. Its still very new so theres a few things that need sorting still like adding usb support as it can only stream at the moment although im not sure if you could use a network hard drive or not. If your wanting to buy a mcahine now i would say definatly go for a mac mini as the apple tv has been out for 4 months already and we are only just seeing "enhancements", only trouble is a decent second hand mac mini will cost almost 4x the price of the apple tv.

As for XBMC not being as good as Plex, personally i would have to dissagree but thats only due to plex crashing constantly on my macbook :

Copied from plex forums:

Plex started out as the Mac port of XBMC. Due to a difference in development practices & goals for the project, the devs who originally ported XBMC to the Mac forked the code, which became Plex. The XBMC team have continued to develop the ported code independently, which became "XBMC for Mac".

Because Plex runs on a single platform (Mac OS X), we can build for the strengths of that platform, integrating tightly with OS features & bundled applications. We can also introduce fixes & new features faster, since we only have the one platform to test on.

The best advice would be to try out Plex and XBMC for Mac yourself, and decide which you like better. Both can be installed on the same computer without too many side effects. I don't think it matters much whether you run XBMC on one computer & Plex on another (there are plenty of forum members who already do this).

Thanks for the info.

Streaming is not something I want to do. Originally I had planned to have a NAS upstairs streaming to all my devices but once I started to learn about Mac Mini HTPCs I realised that's the way I wanted to go. I would need to use a to load the media onto it and I'm limited by a) the output capabilities of the NAS and b) the interface on the client. The HTPC makes total sense to me as all my media is on a computer attached to my TV and I can stream from there instead.

I'm new to Mac but have borrowed my dad's old iMac. Unfortunately it's not Intel so I can't try Plex out. I did try XBMC on my PC and thought it was great but I'll certainly try them both when I buy the Mini.

Apple TV + Hacks is too new and doesn't bring a lot to the party. I already have a PS3 which I use to access media from an external HDD.

GOOGLE TV all the way!

Google TV probably won't be coming to the UK AFAIK. I was planning to buy into it myself.

agree with staz.. mac mini, does the same as apple tv and allot more

Cost's a lot more though. Apple TV is good for what it is, if all your other kit is apple it's great although it does only handle the same formats as an iPod / iPhone (unless you hack / jailbreak it) so you may need to re-encode some videos.

I currently have an original one in my kitchen and a version 2 in my lounge, and for cheap streaming they are great, can also be used to stream from iPhone/iPad.

If you have an iMac then you should be able to set it to wake from sleep for network access rather than leave it fully powered up all the time.