Living in the middle of the most innovative and breakthrough period of the digital age, almost every single day we are constantly and consistently bombarded with new and amazing gadgets and gizmos that promise to change the way we live our daily lives. And while some of these wonder products fall well short of the mark, there is one company that has hit grand slam after grand slam in the high end electronics world, which is of course Apple.
Just about everything they roll out is not only designed and built with the end user in mind but also incredibly easy to use and understand, which is something that makes the almost always premium pricing a lot easier to swallow. Using the latest and greatest tools and technologies Apple products have changed the way we go about thinking of electronics, and you would be hard pressed to go into any neighborhood and find a home that didn’t at least have a single Apple product being used. Being it a kind of software like iTunes, or a real device like an iPhone or Macbook.
One of the few products from Apple that we dont hear a lot about is ofcourse the Apple TV. This is a shame as this small device is a great addition to the popular Apple family. We are reviewing this product because we are using it on a daily basis, and we think other people need to know about this product too.
Apple TV in Hand
There is however an Apple product that doesn’t have quite the global fan base that the iPod, iPhone, and Mac line of computers has – but is just as passionately loved by the people who use it every single day. The Apple TV is one of the first products on the market to really get behind the concept of streaming content, and all signs show it is poised to really smash through the mass market barrier in the near future.
Here are the features of the newest generation Apple TV:
- The ability to buy, stream or rent movies via iTunes and other Services
- View photos and videos from your iPhone, iPad and iPod touch or via Flickr
- Gain acces to internet radio and Podcasts directly on your TV
A tiny little black device that has been affectionately called the best designed hockey puck in the world, this miniature device is capable of streaming all of your downloaded movies, music, and media to a TV the moment it’s been hooked up. But that’s not all – it can also log you in and display content from streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Video in the blink of an eye – including many more. This makes it the singular device you need to access all of your favorite media in one little hub, eliminating all of the searching and hunting you would need to do with a traditional set up of a million and one devices. Add to that the fact that it’s controlled by the smartly designed Apple remote, and you have a media center that is second to none.
The Apple TV Allows you to stream your media in 1080P to from any device you want to your television. You can easily show a video that you have on your iPhone, iPad, iPad mini or iPod touch on the TV with Apple’s multimedia device. The device contains a HDMI input, Internet input, and a optical sound input, and all of this in a device as small as four by four inches.
The Apple TV is incredibly easy to set up. You can enjoy your multimedia installations within minutes after you have hooked it up to the TV. You can browse through Netflix, YouTube, Vimeo and my own music and video collection via iTunes. You browse through all of this via the incredible Apple remote, which also works on other Apple computers like the iMac and the Macbook Pro.
Apple Remote
A missed opportunity from Apple is the inclusion of a lot more TV networks, which are available on the competition’s multimedia players. This doesn’t mean that the Apple TV is perfect – but it’s probably as close as a company can get. You’ll still have to contend with Apple’s policy of a locked down experience (meaning you’ll only be able to access the hubs and connections that they allow – there is a workaround and jailbreak but it currently doesn’t work on the latest generation Apple TV) and there is no port of local hard drives or playing localized media.
But outside of those few hiccups you’d be hard pressed to find fault with the $99 Apple TV, the best media center on the market.
