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.

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helping the 'new to Mac' www.ravemac.com

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!

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

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helping the 'new to Mac' www.ravemac.com

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!

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


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

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.

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.