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Apple TV Experiences (Includes Set-Up Help)
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My AppleTV arrived first thing this morning; I hooked it up within a couple of hours and I have a few comments.
Setup was beautifully clean and simple. The only small snag connecting to my Airport Express 802.11n was MAC address access. Easy to fix, they have the wireless and Ethernet MAC addresses printed on the package labelling.
My iTunes library is synced from a G5 to a 60G iPod Video (first rev) and I have around 26G of music, a few of movie rips (temporary), and 14G of TV shows. Too big for all of it to fit, and that doesn’t take photos into account, so I spent some time experimenting and resyncing to get a feel for how I wanted to shape this.
Transfer speed was good; even with stops and starts (reconfiguring sync parms), I’d synced maybe 30G onto it within a couple of hours and it was complete.
So, what do you do with this thing…
Music is fine, not much new to say here. Works perfectly whether it’s all been copied over/synced from the main computer, or not (if not, it just streams) and streaming from a different iTunes library on a different laptop also worked well, although it took a while for the cover art to migrate over.
Video: older encoded lower-res looked as good as could be expected. I’m running on a Panasonic 50” plasma connected to cable with a HD cable box/DVR. The quality of the box/DVR is exceptional and that’s what I have to measure this against - I know that nothing from AppleTV is going to look as good as what the box provides, at least - not at the moment.
700-or-so by 300-or-so Handbrake rips to .mp4 from months ago were pretty good. (but not even close to HD from the box). A DVD rip today from the latest MediaFork variation of Handbrake looked better, at 720x304, H264 and 2500K bitrate. (could be pushed higher). It felt a bit disappointing at first, after the rush of excitement and the beauty of the 720p-generated graphics in the menus, etc. but it’s all very watchable and while it’s not up to the HD channels on the box, it’s better than the upscaled SD channels from the box. A good as “raw” DVD…? No, but better encoding will help.
Watching a few video podcasts was a mixed bag. Some were better, others didn’t have good encoding at all. Not a surprise.
I would say that overall, so far, video is pleasing and I’m satisfied with it. I’m just as interested in re-rendering some of my miniDV footage (which I still have in iMovie projects) to see how good they can get at 720p, and how well Quicktime’s new Export to AppleTV eventually compares to some of the 3rd party solutions as they should be rapidly updated to take AppleTV into account.
For me, so far, the killer app is photos. I have tens of thousands and I use non-iPhoto 3rd party apps to catalog them. Most over the past few years are RAW images from the Canon 300D, 20D, and 5D. Today, I belatedly discovered that you can add images to iPhoto without having it make an internal copy to its library, so this gives me a way of referencing images into iPhoto albums from other parts of the hard drive. I’ve started building albums, smart albums, and keywording images so that I can build layered family albums, landscape/art photography, etc. Syncing the AppleTV with selected albums then sends the photos over directly. Putting RAW images in this way works just as well, as long as you’re satisfied with the default “development” of the files.
What iTunes/ATV must be doing is this: as with the iPod video, higher res/and-or RAW images must be getting downscaled to local copies on the iPod video. Probably done by the host to keep transmission time down.
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People who are saying that ATV will be a disappointment, or fail, would fall silent if they sat and watched what you can do with sets of iPhoto albums synced in this way. The photo display on the plasma is gorgeous. The more I sat and experimented, the more I realized that THIS is the way that people need to see photos. Away from the computer, away from LCDs; on a big, bright, saturated screen; from a couch. Not a chair in front of a desk.
You set the music; depending on your playlists and their contents, it can be more structured, or less.
You set the basic timing for each image, BUT you can override that with the remote. I found myself setting it for 5 seconds, but usually pushing the images through faster than that, and in time with what was happening with the music. The overall effect was stunning.
Because of iPhoto’s keywording and smart albums, you can make a smart album name for: your wife; each of your children; and then you’ll have a slideshow to run that will feature only the images that match. Being able to set up a large photo collection this way, for this kind of browsing in a home theater system, is an amazing experience.
This thing is worth the $300 for the photo capability alone, I’m surprised to say. It’s just that good. And it will get better, I can already see areas that can be easily improved.
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After having used this less than a day, I would summarize this way:
- Don’t underestimate the power of this device in the hands of people who have image and video content already at their disposal in iTunes. When I have family/friends over here and they see some of this, it’s going to blow them away. If you’ve already scanned/converted/created family albums, it will NOT be very difficult to get these into another family member’s home for viewing in a similar configuration.
- Those who have HD sets, and see this, are going to want it. And those who don’t have HD sets yet are going to now see another reason to get one.
- This isn’t a little toy for buying TV shows from the iTunes store. That’s a very small subset of what this can do.
- I spent 2 hours sitting in front of this tonight, watching the first photo albums I’d put together and a number of older, not-yet-well-encoded iMovie projects; and I wasn’t tempted to switch away from the AppleTV to the higher quality HD on the cable box.
That tells me something.
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dmiller ... thanks for the thorough review
My ATV is scheduled to arrive on Friday ... can’t wait.
I have one question ... does album artwork that did not originate from the iTunes store transfer over as well? The reason I ask is that when I was using a Mac mini to use for streaming to the TV in my living room ... Front Row would not display any album art that was not from iTunes.
Thanks again.
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dmiller,
thank you for taking the time to write such a informative summary of how appleTV worked for you.
the photos was the first reasons I consider buying it. now I am even more excited about getting one.
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[quote author=“Derrick”]dmiller ... thanks for the thorough review
My ATV is scheduled to arrive on Friday ... can’t wait.
I have one question ... does album artwork that did not originate from the iTunes store transfer over as well? The reason I ask is that when I was using a Mac mini to use for streaming to the TV in my living room ... Front Row would not display any album art that was not from iTunes.
Thanks again.
I think the answer to your question is “yes”. Some of my album art was generated by the iTunes store, but most of it was not. (There’s a useful little utility app called Clutter that will scan Amazon for album artwork for what you happen to be playing, and then let you copy it in directly). Clutter puts artwork into each track (vs. the iTunes store approach of storing one copy and then using it to label everything in the album), so that the cover art travels with each music file.
At least, I -think- the answer is yes. I’d actually have to take a closer look to see, on specific tracks; I’ll try to do that tomorrow.
(Now you’ve got me wondering)...
(you’re welcome!)
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[quote author=“Ovi”]dmiller,
thank you for taking the time to write such a informative summary of how appleTV worked for you.
the photos was the first reasons I consider buying it. now I am even more excited about getting one.
The more I used the photos, the more I started to “get” what this means.
Needed (but I would think, “easy” improvements):
For photos:
If you pause the slideshow, the music stops. It would be more natural if the music kept playing. (Or there was a way to control this, without making things overly complicated; sometimes you might want to shut it up while paused)
I don’t see any way to shuffle or randomize what’s in a slideshow.
I would like to be able to “attach” or designate a music playlist or file to a each slideshow. Using this earlier, I ran across some wonderful music/slideshow combinations, but they’re not easily repeatable without taking notes about playlists. At the moment, whatever musical selection you make is applied globally to slideshows until you go back in and change it again.
The Ken Burns effect would be my normal choice, but for images which are well-cropped to start, you lose too much of the original, so I found myself turning it off. The transitions were still excellent, but I missed the motion. Having some simple customizations for Ken Burns would make it more useful, such as more/less, or at least a way to more of the original image visible.
For music:
The most obvious thing is: I want better eye candy! I want the iTunes visualizer! There’s no reason why we can’t have it, the hardware/software is in the AppleTV to give it to us. I want to see that on my 50” screen…!!! Let me switch between that, and album view (and fade from one to the other).
What we have now is beautful, clean, and elegant, but you get used to it very quickly. The visualizer on a large screen plasma would blow people away.
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sleepygeek
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[quote author=“dmiller”]Having some simple customizations for Ken Burns would make it more useful, such as more/less, or at least a way to more of the original image visible.
I haven’t tried it, but the current iPhoto appears to allow you to attach a defined Ken Burns effect to an image (start crop / end crop / duration). I presume that would transfer to Apple TV. I’ll give it a try when I get mine. I presume you would then leave the “auto Ken Burns” disabled.
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[quote author=“dmiller”]My AppleTV arrived first thing this morning; I hooked it up within a couple of hours and I have a few comments.
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- I spent 2 hours sitting in front of this tonight, watching the first photo albums I’d put together and a number of older, not-yet-well-encoded iMovie projects; and I wasn’t tempted to switch away from the AppleTV to the higher quality HD on the cable box.
That tells me something.
It tells me you had a blast. I hope that your family enjoys it as much as you do. Sure beats dragging out the old 35mm slide projector and screen.
[quote author=“dmiller”]
I would like to be able to “attach” or designate a music playlist or file to a each slideshow. Using this earlier, I ran across some wonderful music/slideshow combinations, but they’re not easily repeatable without taking notes about playlists. At the moment, whatever musical selection you make is applied globally to slideshows until you go back in and change it again.I know that you can do this in iPhoto. Try making a slideshow in iPhoto and see if you can move it to the Apple TV. (You can’t move it to the iPod.)
I’ve seen the visualizer on a large TV. The local Mac dealer bought a 46” plasma TV which they connected to a Mac Mini. You’re right that it’s spectacular. (They use a DVI-to-HDMI cable.)
Have you tried the screensaver?
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[quote author=“gslusher”]
It tells me you had a blast. I hope that your family enjoys it as much as you do. Sure beats dragging out the old 35mm slide projector and screen.I can see I’m going to spend days gradually building up more sophisticated keywords/albums and moving in references to images that are elsewhere on the drive. All of the emphasis on video has had people overlooking this completely - this does for home photo viewing in a living room/family room environment what the iPod with playlists did for music.
I’ve gone from “never using iPhoto” to a new emphasis on “use iPhoto to catalog/index all important images as AppleTV-playable-keyworded”. iPhoto is going from no use, to the center of all image playback.
[quote author=“gslusher”]
[quote author=“dmiller”]
I would like to be able to “attach” or designate a music playlist or file to a each slideshow. Using this earlier, I ran across some wonderful music/slideshow combinations, but they’re not easily repeatable without taking notes about playlists. At the moment, whatever musical selection you make is applied globally to slideshows until you go back in and change it again.I know that you can do this in iPhoto. Try making a slideshow in iPhoto and see if you can move it to the Apple TV. (You can’t move it to the iPod.)
I’ve seen the visualizer on a large TV. The local Mac dealer bought a 46” plasma TV which they connected to a Mac Mini. You’re right that it’s spectacular. (They use a DVI-to-HDMI cable.)
Have you tried the screensaver?
Answer: just tried it, and yes, you can sync the slideshow with AppleTV, and all customization settings for an iPhoto-created slideshow come across, including image-specific mods to Ken Burns transitions. (excellent) Music as well, it supercedes whatever global slideshow music is chosen on the AppleTV side.
Screensaver: your only choice is the Apple logo; album covers; or photos. (For now, at least)...
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Don’t know if anyone has found this yet.
aTV works on SD TVs
http://www.macuser.com/hardware/stop_the_presses_the_apple_tv.php?lsrc=murss
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The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.
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Apple TV Experience !
Just had to finally join and post after browsing this forum everyday for the last year and a half. Thanks to Everyone for making this the most informative and usefull Apple Forum around.
FWIW ... I’ve been building a long position in Apple for about 2 years now .... last buy was around 86.xx I’m also a huge Mac user and love the company ... which makes it hard for me to be impartial when dealing with the stock ... I see everything through Apple covered lenses ! In any case ... went to the mall yesterday with the wife and kids ... first stop is always the Apple store (Glendale Galleria Branch) just wanted to see what the traffic was like and hopefully get a demo of Apple TV. Turns out that they had just recieved their first shipment a few hours before I arrived and had people in the back configuring the system .. but they grabbed one out of the the back and brought it out to me .... I couldn’t resist .... got it home and did the setup. It was a breeze .... only issue I had was configuring my Marantz reciever so that I could use the digital (optical) input. Now for the fun part : If all this thing did was let you use your iTunes library through your home stereo it would almost be worth it ... I realize I could do it with airtunes but this way I have a visual reference on my tv screeen ... BUT that’s not all it does of course ... I’m also enjoying my iPhoto album on a nice 42” Plasma .... I’ve never seen these pic’s look so good .... we have two small children and family is always over at the house .. now everyone can enjoy the pics without crowding around my laptop. As I type this email ... I’m listening to my iTunes library and have my iPhoto library as my screensaver ... instant slideshow !!! I streamed some TV content yesterday from my laptop ... including a DVD that I converted using Handbrake ... looked great to me ....for the record .. I have a ED Plasma not HD ....
I still have to figure a few things out .... but so far I haven’t even cracked open the manual that comes with this thing .... as far as complaints ... the only thing that I can think of is the size of the hard drive .... 40GB is really too small BUT from what I understand this thing was never intended to store your media ... rather stream ... so I can just buy a huge external hard drive I can dedicate to Media ...problem solved ....
Now for the kicker .... my wife ... she is VERY hard to impress ... is not into technology at all ... to get her to send an email is like pulling teeth ... se really could care less about iPhone, Google , You Tube any of the cool stuff that I enjoy on a daily basis ... well she loves this thing !
God bless Steve Jobs !!!!!
GO APPL !
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OMG - hell hath frozen over (again) .. Scoble raves about the aTV:
http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/22/apple-tv-rocks/
March 22, 2007
Apple TV rocks
I bought an Apple TV tonight.I’ve watched Ask a Ninja, Rocketboom, my show, and Ze Frank on it so far.
Works as advertised. Easy to setup. It rocks.
It makes me want to put out a high res version of my show. But, it’s pretty watchable, even at the low resolution it is.
I’m watching Kevin Schofield on my 60-inch TV on it. The tour he gave me of MS Research’s TechFest really rocks. I’m watching the second part.
I think I’m going to use this almost wholly to look at Internet video shows.
The integration with iTunes really is great. This is a winner. I take back anything I wrote about it before.Oh, and it also supports 1080i HD.
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“Waiter waiter I’m not happy with my Zach Bass. Would you serve it on a silver platter with an apple on the side please?”
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Scoble’s note makes me think that Podcasting is going to get a big lift. Be nice to see the Video podcasts start to take away some youtube business
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FlipFriddle
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Jeez. I never thought I’d have a use for this thing, but the iPhoto linking sounds way cool. Too bad I don’t have a modern TV for this to work on. Are you out of luck even if you’re CRT TV has component or S-Video inputs?
Anyone thought of having your TV act as a digital gallery? Say during a party, the music is playing, and instead of the big empty grey square, it shows a slideshow, with long delays, showing works of art instead of photos (stuff you made yourself or other stuff; no I’m not promoting copyright infringement).
Sounds cool.
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Less is More (more or less).
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[quote author=“FlipFriddle”]Jeez. I never thought I’d have a use for this thing, but the iPhoto linking sounds way cool. Too bad I don’t have a modern TV for this to work on. Are you out of luck even if you’re CRT TV has component or S-Video inputs?
Read my post 4 posts above.
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The study of money, above all other fields in economics, is one in which complexity is used to disguise truth or to evade truth, not to reveal it. The process by which banks create money is so simple the mind is repelled.
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Thought of it ..... we’re doing it !
Eating B-fast with the family ... listening to music ... watching our pictures .... I am sitting here dreaming of other uses .... I can see a time in the not so distant future where we can upload pics or movies to our .mac account ... my folks, a few thousand miles away, can click on a button and view a video I just took on their big screen tv ..... or view my photo gallery .... or ?????
I have a feeling the next few weeks will bring some interesting announcements from Apple .... streaming youtube videos anyone ???
Instead of podcasts being only audio ...here come the videocasts .....
-PD
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Nice overview from CBS this morning:
