apple tv

My Experience with the Apple TV

January 04, 2011

I've only been using the Apple TV for a few days now, but I have used it enough to jot down a few first impressions. I'll likely do a full-on review at some point in the future.

Apple TV (2010 - Black)

Some of the things I really, really like about the ATV (I have the black/2010 model):

Disappearing act: This thing is tiny, and it's black. I hate seeing anything besides my speakers and my TV, and the Apple TV is much better at hiding in my cabinet than my now-RROD Xbox 360. Oh, and it's silent.
Surround Sound, HD, Effortless: It's awesome to finally be able to stream all my movies (HD or not) from my Mac with 5.1 digital surround. So awesome. (See my article on how to rip Blu-Rays and DVDs and get them to work with the Apple TV and other devices).
Speed, Wireless N: Since I have an AirPort Express with 802.11n networking and a decent Internet connection, everything is fast—watching videos on YouTube, popping around the system, browsing my computer's movie and music library. Awesome.

Some things I don't like all that much, but will definitely live with:

You have to have iTunes and your Mac on at all times to share to the Apple TV: Hopefully Apple will find a way to sell me another device to store all my content off-Mac so I'm not burning an extra 100W when my computer is serving up content.
No 1080p: Not a deal-breaker for me, as I have a 720p 42" TV, but someday, I'll upgrade, and want those extra pixels.
Harmony Remotes don't work out-of-the-box with the Apple TV: Still takes some time to have to program the remote manually if you want everything to work correctly. Ah well.

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Ripping Movies from Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and DVD, Getting them onto Apple TV, iPad, iPhone, etc.

DVD to iPhone Apple TV and iPad - Ripping

For many years, I've been in search of the 'digital nirvana,' where all my videos, songs, and photos were accessible on any device, anywhere, at any time, without having to do a complicated digital dance with wires and different sychronization tools.

I am getting ever closer to the realization of that dream... today I will introduce you to a few tools I use to help me get all my videos (be they plain old DVDs or newer high definition Blu-Ray discs [edit: I found I can even rip HD-DVDs on my Mac too!]) converted and stored on my computer so I can play them on my computer, my iPhone, my iPad, my Apple TV, my Xbox 360, a Playstation 3, and do so from anywhere in the world.

There are a few key applications you need before you can do this on your own - I'll describe the programs you need for each step of the process, and how to do everything you need to do to get your videos digitized and readily accessible.

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