Just ordered an Apple TV for the family.

[coius]

After squabbling over cable tv and how much it cost, with the new Apple TV coming out, and the cheap price, I bit the bullet and bought the new Apple TV. Not sure when it's gonna arrive (I don't think it's shipping yet) but we are gonna replace cable with Netflix, which we are in a trial period on. It's a viable alternative, and costs 1/10th the cost of digital cable, and even has HD programming. Much better than having to pay for digital cable, and then more for HD channels (stupid cox communications). or even getting basic cable, they want $15/mo on top of the cable tv service for a box that would give us HD channels of the local air waves, and don't even include all of the local stations (like IPTV and NETV, both are public TV stations that is viewer funded)

So I hope we will be happy. For those interested in the final cost, shipped with free shipping, the total came out to $105.93 with tax for Omaha NE.

I got my unused Mac Mini setup right now to our HDTV so we can watch it, and I control it through my Powerbook G4 w/ OS 10.5.

Works great too. full HD programming and I got access to a ton of stuff, including some of the latest movies and even old TV programs I used to watch as a kid. I mean, c'mon, they got Howdy Doody! that's old stuff, and they got it!

I will let you know when it comes. I just got an email that it will be here on Oct. 14th. So it will be cool to hook up

 

[Osgeld]

its not the final cost, let us know how much you end up spending on content from the day it arrives to the day you stop using it

:-/

 

[akator]

We moved last December and faced a similar situation... $120/month + tax for digital cable with no HD, or a $220 deposit + $80/month + tax for satellite. I found neither to be acceptable.

We looked into Apple TV but instead bought an Acer Aspire Revo 3610 to use as an HTPC. Dual core Atom, ION graphics, Wireless N, 250 GB HD, 6 USB ports, wireless keyboard and mouse, and HDMI out for $325 shipped. Now we watch shows from network sites, Hulu, Netflix, whatever and it looks better than the neighbors' cable and satellite. Only 9 months into things and that one time HTPC purchase + $9/month for Netflix has cost half of what the other options would have and provided us with better content and better quality...

 

[Gorgonops]

I have to wonder how large the market for the new Apple TV is going to be, now that almost every Blu-Ray disk player (and many TVs, for that matter) includes network support out of the box. Between that and two out of three of the major game consoles (Xbox360 and PS3) offering similar capabilities it seems like a good bet that most of the people who would be interested in online TV would either *already have* a device capable of doing it or could easily acquire the functionality for "free" with an entertainment center component upgrade.

The original Apple TV had some "unique functionality" in the form of its onboard disk cache so you could make a tenuous case for its existence, but the new one? I guess if you're an "All Apple" household and don't watch Blu-Rays or play video games (well, I suppose you might have a Wii), have a fast enough internet connection for diskless streaming to work, and *really* want seamless integration with the Apple video store it's... an option. Otherwise it's a redundant box.

 

[Dog Cow]

Otherwise it's a redundant box.

No, it has an Apple logo on it. :lol:

 

[Osgeld]

I suppose you might have a Wii

even the wii has netflix

I have a xbox 1 softmodded with XBMC on it, it does not do hulu or netflix (or maybe it does now, I havent looked at the xbox plugins latley) so its quite hit or miss hoping that google, youtube, and all the network websites have much of anything really worth watching to totally replace tv .. its getting there

 

[Gorgonops]

No, it has an Apple logo on it. :lol:

Snicker.

Seriously, though, "dinky little media players that hook to your TV" is a grossly oversaturated market. That little Apple logo and the accompanying iTunes-store "Yum" factor is pretty much all that thing has going for it. If Apple's licensing policies provided for even a tiny modicum of cross-platform support, and for a reasonable fee would allow the perfectly good third-party solutions out there to accept their streams, there would be no reason for it to exist.

Of course, allowing that would be like Apple supporting iTunes sync with third-party media players in addition to iPods. Heaven forbid!

(Granted, Microsoft backstabbed a slew of partners in order to create its own closed little "Zune" universe so it's not like Apple is an unusually bad actor here. Vendor lock-in is good for the consumer, right? Right?!?)

 

[zerotypeq]

I actually see the appletv doing well this time around. People might think this market is saturated, but I think it hasn't been tapped correctly. Sure, it doesn't appeal to me because I already have a device hooked into my tv playing media from my few tb server;however, I'm not who this is for. The xbox 360/ps3 media are nice add-ons for gamers and most of the other media streaming devices, as nice as they may be, just are not marketed well enough. I really think with the nice ui that the apple tv has + marketing ability of apple + itunes store this thing stands a pretty good chance of surprising me and being in one of my friends parents living room.

 

[Paralel]

I agree with Gorgon, redundant.

 

[coius]

Well, the main reason I got it for the family is that we don't have any gaming consoles, our Blu-ray player doesn't do netflix, and our TV doesn't have a net hookup, so this is our only option for netflix.

My mom is not very computer savvy and we can't just use my mini and hook up a keyboard to it and a wireless mouse. Not with where our TV is and how the furniture is situated.

Right now, the way we control my mac mini, is I use my PowerBook G4 to remote into it, pull up the browser, head to netflix and start a movie. It works, but it's not the easiest thing for my mom to do. Sure, my dad could do it, but it's not a good enough solution to be called perfect.

We have a 15Mbps internet connection, so streaming isn't an issue, and we don't need a hard drive in the Apple TV since we don't plan on storing any movies. We don't have the space for what Apple considers the proper media format for iTunes, and it just doesn't make sense to try to rip our movies in, and even then, with the new encryption on the current DVDs, it's making it very hard to do that without any pay-for software that is quite expensive.

I think that while it's not the perfect solution for everyone, since they have other things that can access netflix, but it is for us. I will let you know how it works out. This will finally give my iPod Touch something to work with

 

[4seasonphoto]

The joy of ATV is not having to trudge through the snow in the dark to return disks! As an owner of the original ATV, it's still not clear to me whether the new model gives me any new functionality besides Netflix? Just looked through their streaming selection and thought it was sort of lame and totally eclipsed by ITMS itself. Probably will supplement my ATV with an HTPC running Boxee (or whatever) in order to gain access to a wider range of goodies.

Sony's PS/3 movie rental store is just a joke: Weak selection, no trailers, no nothing.

 

[trag]

As an owner of the original ATV, it's still not clear to me whether the new model gives me any new functionality besides Netflix?
Probably will supplement my ATV with an HTPC running Boxee (or whatever) in order to gain access to a wider range of goodies.

You realize that you can hack the ATV to run Boxee, right? And if you don't want to follow the clearly written instructions to do it yourself, there's an outfit which will sell you an app which will hack it and install Boxee for you for something like $49.95.

The free stuff: http://code.google.com/p/atvusb-creator/

 

[ClassicHasClass]

When I saw this thread, the first thing I thought of was a Macintosh TV. No, seriously. )