AppleTV and Me

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Written by Rebecca Peck · 4 minute read

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My home entertainment center is probably second only to my computer(s) inn “things I interact with every day.” Barely a day goes by when I don’t spend a little relaxing time watching TV or movies.

I have a Hitachi 1080p 42-inch television, an Onkyo receiver attached to a 5.1 surround sound system (Polk Audio subwoofer and Energy speakers), a DVD player (that rarely gets any use anymore), a VCR (that gets even less use) and a PlayStation 3. But the star, and my single favorite piece of equipment in my living room is my AppleTV.

Yup. My AppleTV.

You might be asking why I profess love for a device that many people consider to be a failure. After all, the way some people, including some of my coworkers, talk about this device, you’d think it was Battlefield Earth bad. The kind of bad that you ask for your money back after using. The kind of bad that makes you regret waking up that day, and makes you want to drown your sorrows with a pitcher of Natural Ice.

And yet I, as an AppleTV owner, am trilled with it.

I love it simply because of its typical Apple simplicity: it’s all the best parts of a HTPC without all the bull** that comes with having a HTPC. Powerful enough to be usable, and yet simple enough that my wife - whom I love, but is most definitely not a computer person - can figure it out. It was simple enough to set up that all I had to do was plug it into my TV and get it on the network. And, it integrates incredibly well with the rest of the Apple products in the house.

And now, Apple has come out with a new AppleTV, and I could not possibly be more thrilled, because it addresses almost all the issues I had my current AppleTV, and with an upgrade price of $99, it’s a no-brainer. I might buy one for every TV in the house.

Let’s go through some of the differences:

  • No onboard storage. I have two AppleTVs. One in the living room - a 160gb model, and one in the bedroom, a 40gb model. You know how much storage space I’m using on them? Zero. Nothing. I stream everything off my iMac upstairs. Sync’ing is slow, and I have way more content than could even fit on the 160gb model. Moreover, streaming from iTunes shares works seamlessly, so there’s really no reason to use the local storage at all. Apple did away with it.

  • No composite. Non-issue. I use all HDMI. The new AppleTV has only three plugs on the back: power, HDMI, and ethernet. Perfect.

  • Movies from the iTunes store are rental-only. I don’t quite agree with this, but it’s not very strong. I never purchased a movie from the iTunes store. But I did rent on more than one occasion, so I don’t foresee this being an issue, especially because of …

  • Netflix support. That’s right. You can stream all the free content on Netflix straight to my AppleTV. This in and of itself is enough reason for me to want to upgrade.

In other words, it’s as if Apple fixed the device to exactly reflect how I use my current one. Since Steve Jobs never called me, I can only conclude that there were a lot more people out there using AppleTVs in the way I use mine. Frankly, at this point, the only things that it’s missing that I really wanted were 1080p and Hulu.

An image of Rebecca Peck

About the Author

Hi, I'm Rebecca Peck (she/her)! I'm a parent, blogger and software developer. I'm into bike riding, photography, writing, making wine, listening to history podcasts, 3D printing, home automation, being a complete and hopeless Apple/Star Trek/Disney fangirl, and anything involving airplanes, trains and model trains. I am based in Fort Collins, Colorado. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

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