MacFormat investigates… Apple TV
- Article 81 of 89
- MacFormat, January 2010
Rob Buckley takes a look at the new-look Apple TV and asks whether it’s as good as it gets or if there are better options available
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The mini is also very much more expensive (£499) and designed to be a computer. While you can use a remote control to control it, when you want to change passwords, update software, etc, you’re going to have to use a keyboard and mouse, unless you’re a very patient person indeed. The Apple TV needs only a simple remote control that can click and select.
Of course, you can probably deal with the hassles involved with that. The question is: can everyone else who uses your media centre? What happens if there’s a problem? Can they work through all the menus to set up a TV recording? The Mac mini might be more powerful but will it disempower your TV co-user?
There are other alternatives, too. It’s very possible you already have a set-top box that can double as a media player: a games console. The Wii just got its own iPlayer channel, and there have been efforts to get the Wii to play media streamed from Macs, including the open source Wii Media Center X (http://www.redkawa.com/mediacenters/wiimediacenterx/) and the superior Wii Transfer (£12, http://www.riverfold.com/software/wiitransfer/). However, since videos have to be in FLV format and music in MP3 format (Wii Transfer will do the conversions for you, but Wii Media Center X won’t), this is quite limited. The Wii’s maximum output resolution is 480p, too, so this is more of a nice-to-have than a real threat to the Apple TV or anything else.
The Playstation 3 has a built in Blu-Ray player and web browser with Flash 9, so can play some streamed web video, including the iPlayer but not 4oD. It also includes the Universal Plug and Play AV standard (UPnP AV). This allows media streaming from any UPnP AV server on your network, provided it’s in a format that the PlayStation can understand. The Mac doesn’t support UPnP AV, but with the addition of either MediaLink (£12, http://www.nullriver.com/products/medialink) or EyeConnect (£30, http://tinyurl.com/MFEyeConnect), you’ll be able to sync or stream your content to the PS3.
MediaLink is better for the PS3 specifically and it offers iLife integration: photos in your iPhoto library show up in the PS3’s photo menu, and iTunes music appears in the PS3’s music menu. For videos, you can designate any Mac folders as being accessible on the PS3.
The PlayStation is an appealing media centre, but it’s expensive and isn’t as fully featured as the Apple TV or even a Mac mini. Although it finally has a very good video store, which includes 2,000 movies to rent or buy, there are no TV shows and you can’t play anything you’ve bought from the Apple Store on it. If you have a PlayStation already, of course, then the addition of MediaLink is a whole lot cheaper than buying an Apple TV and is probably ‘good enough’. But unless you’re into games and want to get a Blu-Ray player as well, the PS3 isn’t worth buying specifically as a media centre.
The XBox 360 is surprisingly the poorest of the consoles as a media centre. It has an online store (http://social.zune.net/movies) that streams 1080p movies, but there’s not much in it. Out of the box, it doesn’t work with a Mac, but with Connect360 (£12, http://www.nullriver.com/products/connect360), you can stream and sync the majority of your music, photos and videos. But unlike the Wii and the PS3, there’s no web browser so the iPlayer et al are off limits. It’s not the best option and it is very expensive.
The Apple TV also has set-top box competitors, of course, and unsurprisingly, they’re the ones with the best features. However, they almost always have a fatal flaw. Although it’s ugly, Netgear’s Digital Entertainer Elite (£242, http://tinyurl.com/MFDigitalElite) is probably the pick of the bunch. It has almost all the same features as the Apple TV. It works with Macs. It has USB ports for connecting sources of media. It has all the TV outputs you could want, including SCART and HDMI. It works with more video and audio formats, including protected Windows Media and iTunes files and DVD disk images. It can access online stores. It upscales videos and images to 1080p. It has a 500GB drive that you can upgrade.
On paper, it’s almost perfect, but some of the features advertised, such as playback of protected iTunes files, require a PC – iTunes for Mac doesn’t cut it. It’s also got a horrible, unintuitive interface and is far from easy to configure unless you’re very technically able.
The Apple TV, like the Mac, is designed for everyone to be able to use, easily, and works equally well with Windows and Macs. The new Apple TV 3.0 software is far easier to use than Front Row or any of the other combinations and integrates content from linked computers far more simply. The ability to rent and buy from the iTunes store directly from the Apple TV is the main draw, as is its ability to play content you already have in iTunes and iPhoto.
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