[Macworld]

Post your comments for The straight-up lowdown on Apple TV annoyances here

[NW_Mike]

Yes, Sometimes my Apple TV does not work well. The reason QA and bug squashing is so important for the Apple TV is that most people are expecting it to act like their other components. No, not computer ones, but AV hardware. you turn it on and it just works. Sadly, this is not the case. It 'mostly' works, but not always. I loathe having to restart the Mac and the Apple TV so new content shows up (no it doesn't happen all the time). My favorite message to see, you know, instead of the video itself, is 'this content is in unrecognized and cannot be played by the Apple TV' or something like that. Last thing, allow PLENTY of airflow! My Apple TV kept locking up, and after taking it off of my Sony AV receiver (and nearly dropping it it was so hot) it hasn't done it (locked up) once. Yes occasionally I switch from Tivo to Apple TV and it is displaying the Apple logo, but hitting the menu button has always resolved it for me within a few seconds.

[MacTechAspen]

Macworld said:

>fermented potato products.

Only a very few vodkas are made from potatoes. Almost all are made from grain.

As long as I am passing on arcane spirits knowledge, whisky, vodka, aquavit and eau de vie all mean the same thing: Water of life.

[woodworks]

That's just scratching the surface. The still scandalously small catalog of available movie rentals, the HD movies that take 13 hours!!! to be ready to play (on a ~8Mb/sec internet connection), the way-too-minimalist remote (oh please, let iPhone 2.0 have remote capability!), and lack of external USB hard disk access all make the Apple TV not ready for prime time. I'm not going to recommend this thing to my sister or anyone else until these shortcomings are addressed. Even after two martinis!

[Philmco]

You know what's REALLY annoying?? (aside from the lame remote) You can't customize the order of the menu screen. It really ticks me off when I try to return to using the ATV as a music player, but I am forced to scroll through the movie rental screen and then the itunes rental screen to get to the "My Music" option. It wouldn't be so bad if it would remember where you were when last used, but when left on pause for long periods, it automatically resets so I'm forced to turn on the tv just to get back to my music collection. Update this preference please!

[NW_Mike]

The inability of the Apple TV to connect an external USB drive is what keeps this from being a truly great product.

[slaurel]

And I thought I was the only one. This hit the nail on the head for me. When I recommended an AppleTV to a friend, I was excited about all the things that worked but at the same time, in the back of my head, I thought maybe I shouldn't allow my friend to buy it. I still feel a little emberassed about having recommended it.

[Saundhaus]

I'm not sure why everyone is having problems. Aside from the lack of a USB port for an external drive (someone's got to hack the USB port on mine soon enough) I haven't had any problems.
HD movies may take a long time to download, but I rent one then wait about a half hour and start watching it and no blips and I've only got 3Mbps download.
Maybe my luck is I got a refurbed ATV and maybe at Apple they always get it right the second time!

[gshake]

Wait a minute! Is the author of this article the very same Christopher Breen that gave the Apple TV Take Two 4 out of 5 mice in the review? 4 out of 5 mice is a recommendation if I ever saw one. Many of us depend on these reviews to help us in our buying decisions. If you regret recommending the Apple TV to family members, please do not recommend it to us.

[Chris Breen]

Yep, same Christopher Breen who gave it 4 out of 5 stars when version 2.0 was released. The same Christopher Breen who wrote:

>Finally, my Apple TVs running the Take Two software aren?t as stable as they were running software version 1.1. In my week of testing I had to force-restart one or the other of the Apple TVs a couple of times when the device became unresponsive. There?s no pretty way to do this as the Apple TV doesn?t have an On/Off switch. You pull the power cord and plug it back it to reboot the machine. It came back to life with all media and settings intact, but this isn?t something I?ve had to do more than once with version 1.1 of the Apple TV software.

Also the same Christopher Breen who assumes his audience reads a review from beginning to end.

[gshake]

Although I didn't read it from beginning to end, I did read the very paragraph you highlighted and also read the 4 out of 5 mice (Macworld doesn't use "stars").

So, I'll try to ask more clearly and hopefully you will address in a reasonable way this time: How can you recommend a product as problematic as the one you describe in this article to your readers when you obiously have regrets about recommending it to a family member?

[Chris Breen]

And I'll respond as clearly as I can.

I think the Apple TV is very, very good. And my rating reflects that. This is an important piece of technology and it's changed the way I watch TV and movies. But it's not perfect, as I said in the paragraph I quoted (and the few before it) and in this follow-up piece. If it were perfect, it would have received a more perfect rating.

As I said, I expect that our readers are smart and careful enough to read an entire review before risking their hard-earned cash. Having read the review they can agree or not that the rating was warranted.

[gshake]

Thanks, Chris.

[tracyvalleau]

Got to say I agree with, and have experienced every one of those issues. What's nice about this article is that it lets me know that my hacking of my ATV isn't the cause.
I have a NAS on gigabit Ethernet. I use EyeTV to record; export as mpg (in about 2 minutes; none of this waiting >hours< for H.264) and drag it over to my NAS. Bingo! Instantly available for viewing in the living room.
that's what Apple forgot, IMHO.