A Few Thoughts on my AppleTV

by Jonathan Longnecker

So the other night the wife and I were at the Apple store looking for Time Capsules for 47m. Happened to see the new AppleTV setup while we were there, and the HD movies looked incredible. I mean, jaw droppingly good. Yeah, I know BlueRay is better, but seeing Transformers in “almost” HD compared to the standard def movies I was used to; I was hooked. No more trips to Blockbuster, I nudged the wife (Gently nudged, of course)!

We went home sans AppleTV that night, but the next night we were talking about it and she was like, “well go get one.” I was a little confused. “You mean you want me to go spend $300 bucks on a whim?” “Yeah,” she said, “Go get it right now if you want.” So my sister and I promptly headed down to the Apple store and got it, no questions asked!

First of all, setup was pretty easy. But for some reason I managed to get one still loaded with the 1.0 software, so it took 20 minutes or so to get it all updated to 2.0. I didn’t realize this, but it will sync with one Mac (or PC) in the house and stream live from the others. So we setup Ashley’s iMac as the “syncer.” It took most of the night to copy over the 15-20 gigs. No problem.

Things I love: If you’re listening to music, you can set the screensaver to kick in and do cool slideshows of your pictures. When the song changes, a little notification pops up in the left corner. It’s very nice. The kids love seeing themselves and we get to listen to decent music in the family room and control what we listen to. YouTube is a blast. I’ve watched way more YouTube on my AppleTV then I ever do on my computer. If I subscribed to any video podcasts, that would be great, too. Oh, and we’ve got the kids movies on there so we don’t have to load up DVD’s everytime they want to watch one. THAT is awesome.

Let’s rent it. Oh, we can do it on the Apple TV now. Oh wait. A month.

Things I don’t love: The stupid 24-hour window on rented movies. Why? What does it matter to you, movie studios? You’re not out a sale if I keep it two extra days like Blockbuster is. I’m paying a lot for a digital download here, the least you can do is let me keep it a few days. I’m not asking for a month. Just more than 24 hours. Shoot throw in my 8 hours of sleep cause if I don’t finish it the first night I have to make sure I finish it the second night before I started it the night before. And if you have kids, you’ve just wasted 5 bucks.

Ok, last thing. Why do the movies come out 30 days after they come out on DVD? Why? The movie studios are pushing, say, I Am Legend. I mean, a commercial for it every 20 minutes. I say to myself, “I really wanted to see that (hypothetially…I’m not really sure if I want to see it or not). Let’s rent it. Oh, we can do it on the Apple TV now. Oh wait. A month.” Guess what I’m probably going to do? Go down to blockbuster and get it cause I’m not going to remember to see it a month from now. So the movie studios have just lost money cause I know they’re making more off a digital download than a physical DVD.

That is so completely lacking in common sense and business sense on their end that I’m not going to say anything else.

I know it’ll change eventually…I wish they’d hurry up already! I can easily see this being the future of movie renting. Too bad the movie studios don’t. Done ranting, feel better now.