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Preliminary reviews of the 3rd-gen, 1080p Apple TV are here. The Geekosphere has spoken and deemed it a phenomenal device but may be worth waiting on if you already own last year’s model.
Is HD worth £99 to you, asks Macworld?
At £99, the third-generation Apple TV continues to be as excellent a value as the previous model — and now it supports higher-quality video too. That’s a good thing. For those with the previous generation, however, the decision to upgrade comes down to whether the difference in quality between two high-definition formats is important (and noticeable) enough to you.
A lack of content still raises questions about the Apple TV’s future.
This year’s Apple TV is a strange little device. Nearly everything it did before, it now does better — it streams 1080p content, is easier than ever to navigate, and remains one of the simplest devices to set up and use that we’ve seen. But when I reviewed the 2010 Apple TV, my biggest concerns were all about the content: the available content on a device like the Boxee Box or the Roku positively dwarfed the Apple TV. That’s still true, though the iTunes integration with Netflix is a solid sign that Apple’s thinking the right way.
No lag, and iCloud works perfectly, says The Loop.
Having 1080p video on my 60-inch HDTV is magnificent. I’ve been watching movies and trailers all week and the experience of watching a movie in 1080p that you are streaming from Apple is incredible.
On my network, the movie starts almost instantly, so I don’t have any lag time to download. I walk in, choose a video and watch it.
The Apple TV is the epitome of convenience. With iCloud, I have access to all of my iTunes Match music and videos, so I don’t need to connect to a computer anymore. I can purchase movies, TV shows and I can watch content from Netflix. That’s perfect.
Could Blu-ray’s death knell be ringing?
The good news is that the Apple TV software update also works on the last iteration of the Apple TV. So unless you really want access to 1080p content, there’s not a huge incentive to buy a new one. (Even with the new software, the older Apple TV is limited to 720p.)
And because Apple has moved all of their TV catalog and much of their movie catalog to iCloud (some studio deals are still being negotiated, but sound close to being done), all applicable HD content can be automatically upgraded to 1080p from 720p (SD content will remain SD).
So no, Apple didn’t give a huge incentive for current Apple TV owners to upgrade to the newer box. But they gave a huge incentive to millions of people without an Apple TV to get one. And that’s bad news for Blu-ray.
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Apple’s forgotten child, if I’m honest I’m more interested in Apple TV than I am the iPad.
I am thinking of buying this update as it seems to finally matches my expectations of what it should be. The only thing nagging at the back of my mind is that this really should be built into a TV and not a stand alone box. For £99 I still might be tempted.
I’ll admit. If you don’t already own a console, the Apple TV is a good bet. I still think an Xbox 360 or PS3 still gives you more value for money though.
I think i’ll be picking one up, primarily for the airplay-OS X feature coming this summer. That way I don’t have to worry about where or what my content is, it will fly over to my tv in HD.
The only outstanding features I would want would be DNLA streaming (or a viable alternative) so I could access media that’s on a NAS without the need of my Mac being on.. (heck; just adding movie to iTunes Streaming Server software would solve that one!) and I wouldn’t mind an App Ecosystem (iPlayer? Notifications? lots of possibilities..) but one thing I don’t want is to have to buy a TV to get these features. Surely Apple would be able to make the AppleTV a box and live off the app and content 30% cut…?
The Apple TV does become more and more tempting to me every day – especially with the idea of being able to stream video from my mac. That would mean I could easily get iPlayer onto my TV without having to deal with all the cables, but agreed this would be an amazing amount better if we could get iPlayer and 4od native apps.
As for Apple sticking with the Apple TV rather than moving into the TV industry – that would probably be great and just as effective, but the profit on a £99 box is going to be far less that on a £999 TV, so the option that Apple will go with is almost entirely down to business. Although there is the small advantage to everything being built in, and that is kinda Apple’s forte…
Don’t forget that the iTunes Movies In The Cloud doesn’t work in the UK yet. Damn content distributors. Hopefully it won’t take too long to arrive, similar to iTunes Match.
TV does work though, used it on a few of the free episodes I downloaded, very nice.
I wasn’t aware of such a service… does it work with iTunes match, so if my ripped DVDs are in my library it will match them to iTMS versions? That’s kind of huge, isn’t it?! I suspect I have the wrong end of the stick and it only applies to past purchases..
I don’t think so… that would be somewhat dubious for them to support since while copying a DVD for your records isn’t illegal, breaking the copy protection on one to do so is. (I’m I wrong?)
That said, this service is more one where if you’ve downloaded or bought a movie on your laptop, you can go ahead and download it on your Apple TV too. A bit of a joke you couldn’t do that already though.
Agreed. If I’m honest, the iTunes Match service is pitiful at the moment… I’m having horrendous Album Artwork issues, and Genius Playlists don’t work properly… the whole system could have been implemented so much better, and this set up doesn’t feel very ‘Apple’ at all.
Bring on a fully functional OS X-Airplay service to win people back!
If you’ve bought a film from the iTunes store (or it seems if you have one of those digital iTunes copys from the DVDs) then it will show up on your AppleTV and you can stream them, and it has to be an American account for the moment. It’s the same as how you can re-download apps, music and tv shows you’ve purchased from Apple in the past.
iTunes Match is just for music and to be honest I expect it to stay that way for a while, it seems that Apple has a much bigger pull over the record companies than it does over film studios.