Apple TV MB189LL/A with 160GB Hard Drive [OLD VERSION]
by Apple Computer
![Apple TV MB189LL/A with 160GB Hard Drive [OLD VERSION]](/images/Apple-TV-MB189LL-A-with-160GB-Hard-Drive-OLD-VERSION-B000RQHAUA-L.jpg)
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Our Price: $399.95 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $110.00 (click here) Category: Home Theater See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Apple TV MB189LL/A with 160GB Hard Drive [OLD VERSION]
Customer Review: The Perfect Music Server
Summary: 5 Stars
I realize many buy this as a video server. There are too many ways to watch TV - Netflix, Comcast, DVDs - for me to fool with downloading and saving discs. I was shopping for the perfect music server - in my budget - and this is it. I am not an Apple devotee but recently bought an iPhone and it works flawlessly, actually it works exactly like technology has been promised to work my whole life. It is easy, intuitive, seamless and downright revelatory. Now back to Apple TV. It is the same. I followed the over-simplified directions, plugged it in and had music streaming to my living room in seconds. Now my vast CD collection is instantly available and searchable and I can see the artwork and track listings. Tonight we had some friends over and I set up a playlist of back ground smooth jazz and let it rip. The whole process took seconds (!) and I theoretically had 9 hours of shuffled music going. Of course there is also the endless variety of internet radio if you are feeling lazy. This affordable device has caused me to rediscover my collection of music (both during the burning process and sitting flipping through the albums on screen) and brought casual enjoyment to a new level. Sound quality is fine - most would be hard pressed to hear real differences. And I am not listening through little earphones on an iPod. I am feeding through mt TV via HDMI to my Onkyo reciever and JBL S310s. This product is a game changer and there is nothing else like it. I am hard pressed to find any thing to say negative about it. Buy it for what it is which is the perfect music server.Customer Review: GREAT if you install ATV Flash on it!!!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I agree with the previous reviewers that Apple TV stinks right out of the box. BUT, if you install ATV flash through the USB port on the device, it allows you to use the USB port to expand the hard drive space using external hard drives, so the sky's the limit in terms of storage (I bought a USB splitter, and have three 2 terabyte drives plugged into Apple TV simultaneously now). Also, after I installed the ATV flash program, it allowed me to view all my ripped DVD's through my external hard drives. One thing I would note is that most external hard drives are formatted in NTSC format, and you have to reformat them to FAT32 format before the Apple TV will recognize them. Also, ATVflash installs a program called Sapphire that downloads all of your movie background info via the internet (original movie poster and movie summary, etc), so when you click on the movie prior to watching it, you can see the movie poster along with a full movie summary, length of movie, etc. The user interface for Apple TV is the best and fastest I've experienced so far (I had a Seagate Freeagent Theater HD media drive prior to this, but it was slow and tended to lock up, and had a very dull user interface). I also like the fact that I can access my iTunes music through Apple TV wirelessly through my router onto my home theater system without having to download the songs onto the Apple TV hard drive. Wifi streams TV shows and movies pretty seamlessly to Apple TV from iTunes on my desktop computer as well. All in all, I am really happy with Apple TV now and would definitely recommend it.Customer Review: Completes The Digital Media Experience
Summary: 5 Stars
For some time I had looked at the Apple TV product and had wondered how I might use it with my already existing Tivo and Samsung BD players which all have ways to rent movies on them and Tivo already allowed me to play my music as well as view my photos from my Mac. That is until a friend of mine told me about the Apple Remote application for the iPhone which allowed me to control my iTunes music and volume right from my iPhone as well as Apple TV's ability to stream my iTunes music from my Mac using AirTunes. I also had another reason to look into using Apple TV product and that was I had shows that I was keeping on my Tivo and taking up valuable space but no way to archive them unless I wanted to put them all on DVD's using the Tivo Transfer and the Toast Titanium 10 application. Then I found out that I could archive and stream them from my Mac to Apple TV but I still had a challenge. Toast would only allow me to transcode them to the 640x480 resolution which is fine if I wanted to play that back on a 4x3 monitor or my iPod. I ended up finding an application called Pavtube HD Video Converter which can transcode Tivo files to be played back on a number of devices including Apple TV at 1280x720 which is the highest quality video that Apple TV can accept for streaming. After some trial and error I am now able to stream my archived Tivo HD and SD shows from my Mac to Apple TV over my wireless connection. Another benefit I found was that my family who are not very technically savvy have also really enjoyed using Apple TV for all the shared media as well.Customer Review: Great Once it's Hacked
Summary: 2 Stars
My two problems:
1. I'm a PC user
2. I wanted to play my media files
If i bought this system just for the regular appple tv features, i would rate this a 3. Nice feature, but Apples really really limits your ability to have "fun" with this device. Buying/renting movies and listening music from apple tv is just like owning another ipod/itouch. but i really wanted a media device for home living room tv. So i bought this apple tv with the intent of hacking it to play my own media device. after digging through much information it's possible with boxee/ubmc. Both of those add ons allow you to play your own media files (mostly all from what i see) and Boxee allow you to play internet tv shows like hulu program. And i also found out how access the information on the apple tv with a pc through FTP client like WinSCP. After doing that, i'm happy to have my Apple TV in my living room.
Update: I got frustrated with the hack-Apple TV and lousy remote controller. Typing in ids and passwords with a wheelie button has become tedious. Not all my divx files play because of # channels the divx file is encoded. Boxee and XMBC constantly crashed on me and made reset my Apple TV a dozen time. And plus it go extremely hot. I dont know how long it can last without a fan. After realizing the true limit of this device i decided to sell it on e-bay. I bought myself a true home media desktop -- Viewsonic VOT550. Great storage, great processor, great web browsing, plays all my media files and internet streaming device and more.
Customer Review: My Favorite Home Theatre Component!
Summary: 5 Stars
I've had the Apple TV for around 2 months now and I just love this product!
- The user interface is superb
- The HD rental feature is excellent (It's like I have a library of 400+ titles that I can browse and preview and watch on demand at any time. The video quality surpasses my HD Video on demand I am getting from Cox. The movie once purchased for rent, starts playing in around 30 seconds.
- The HD rental quality is better than DVD, although slightly worse than Blu Ray. But it's usually more convenient for me to rent via Apple TV than buy a Blu Ray disk. I'd usually have to watch an HD movie 5-7 times to get to the price of buying one Blu Ray disk.
- I also noticed there are tons of HD content for rent on Apple TV that are yet to be announced on Blu Ray. So,even if you have Blu Ray (like I do), it may be well worth it to get an Apple TV.
- I can play all songs from my itunes playlist and the audio quality is excellent. I can even save internet radio stations into my playlist and play them through my AV Receiver.
- Photo slide show feature is also very cool.
- Synching with itunes is a breeze.
I have not tried the new ipod touch remote yet.
This is easily the most used source in my home theatre set up.
One caveat though. Unless you have a fast internet connection, the Apple TV HD rental will be very slow. I have a 20mbps line and it takes 30secs or less to start playing from when I start.