Lovin’ Me Some AppleTV, and the Social Cost
I’ve had the new Home Theater setup installed for a few days, and I plan to be hosting that High Resolution Popcorn event soon. I’ll be gone for a week - I’m going to the NAB show in Vegas. After that, I’ll be sending out the invitations.
For now, I’m doing some intensive playing with the AppleTV - It’s full of potential, and well-worth the $299, though I can see lots of room for improvement. Its job is to turn your big-screen TV into a high-resolution iPod that plays the video, music, podcasts, audiobooks and iPhoto albums that exist on your computer(s), somewhere else in the building. I never thought that I’d care much about such a concept, though it is definitely growing on me. The AppleTV has become just as essential to our family’s enjoyment as our five iPods put together.
First, the good stuff, and then the wish-list:
It’s awfully simple to use, and I can easily see a technophobe like my mom getting good use out of an AppleTV without a single complaint. Apple definitely nailed the “elegant and simple” part, right out of the gate.
When fed with good-quality media, the AppleTV really shines. I can see that my low-resolution Tivo’s days are numbered, because it puts out horrid-quality images that almost hurt your eyes. I never noticed this until we retired the old picture-tube TV to the upstairs bedroom, and now we never watch it. We’ve become media snobs, frankly. I haven’t used a VCR in years.
I take a lot of multi-megapixel photographs, and the AppleTV is the best way to enjoy them, hands down. I’ll take a bunch a photos at an event, and then gather the family for a nice slide-show. The quality is astonishing.
GETTING media is a problem for most folks, unless they use Apple’s online store. The visual quality of what you can buy there is pretty stinky, given what the AppleTV is capable of. Being a media snob, I’ve been converting my other media files and DVD’s so that I can get maximum quality for our viewing pleasure. I use VisualHub to convert existing media files (AVI files, WMV’s, etc.), and I use MediaFork to convert DVD’s to AppleTV format. Watch both of those programs very closely, because new versions keep coming out that really make them more and more AppleTV-centric. Now that the AppleTV is out, you will see other file-formats withering into irrelevance.
I was originally planning to buy an actual antenna for our new high-definition system, to pick up HD channels! Why would I even consider going back to rabbit-ears? Because I’m a cheapskate - I couldn’t imagine paying something like $100 per month just to get high-definition channels. We’re skating by on Cox with Basic Cable, which is something like $13 per month for local channels, and no HBO or Cinemax. We don’t need them, and won’t pay for them.
Well, it turns out that cheapskates are extra-blessed: If you use Cox Cable without a cable box, then you get all of the local high-definition channels for free. If Channel 15 is the old, traditional-style PBS station, then channel 15.1 is the PBS HD digital channel. Not only that, by tuning into the channels right around Channel 100.1, we shared somebody’s pay-per-view enjoyment of the movie “Borat” (including the rewind after that person’s bathroom break), for free. No antenna needed. Somebody let me know if this is true for Time-Warner and other providers.
I’m not kidding - Our two-year-old Tivo box is providing low-resolution images that would make your eyes water. We’ve stopped using it - We’re ACTUALLY WATCHING COMMERCIALS AGAIN! That’s not gonna happen for much longer.
So, now we are thinking about replacing the Tivo. We MIGHT upgrade to the Tivo 3, but the idea of paying $100 per year for the subscription service is annoying. Did I mention that we’re cheap? We are also considering using the Macs around here to take the place of the Tivo, by using something like the EyeTV from El Gato Systems. I suspect that this might be a viable choice soon, since there will undoubtedly be a version coming up that is 100% joined to the AppleTV at every step.
As always, the problem with buying an AppleTV version 1.0 is that there are all sorts of compromises.
It doesn’t yet support surround-sound, so we’re not getting the full experience of our best material.
It’s not super-duper high resolution, to match my zingy 2007-model TV. Incidentally, the TV is a wowser - a big LCD that has better specs than a plasma. It took almost two weeks to arrive from New York, and the wait just about killed me. The only complaint I have about it is that I’m going to have to remove the back panel and glue a metal washer to the inside. The security slot is too big to safely secure the TV to its cabinet with a cable and lock. My 1918 Craftsman-style bungalow’s living-room is a dinky thing, and that humongous, expensive-looking, highly pawnable screen is visible to anybody on the front porch. We’ve got a couple of ginormous Lab Experiments to guard the place, but I would still feel better knowing that things are locked down.
The AppleTV supports VERY few file-formats. Having to convert media to work on it is a pain. My laptop is running 24 hours a day, and it’s currently converting the BBC Life on Earth series. Yes, folks are hacking the AppleTV so that it can handle more file-formats, but I can’t be bothered with all of that, at least so far. I’m on the end-user-enjoyment end of things, not the twist-it-until-it-breaks end.
It was expensive, switching from the old analog TV to the new, zoomy Home Entertainment System. I can’t believe how many things I can’t wait to leave behind, such as the idea of going to a movie theater, watching commercials, videocassettes, and even DVD’s! Our existing DVD player does a bang-up job of “upscaling” its output to match our high-end TV, so it gets a reprieve, at least for a while.
The biggest downside to the rush to Home Theaters is the social cost - Why would we want to leave the house when we can get everything that we want, right here? Will future generations even have the experience of shared communal high points, such as when the very first Star Wars movie came out? I can still feel the fevered anticipation as we stood in lines that stretched around the theater and down the block. I remember the roar of the crowd around me as the Death Star blew up… even now, thirty years later.
I used to host huge, popular dance parties a few years back. I can’t get them organized any more, because the general public has fractured, and can no longer be reached by traditional means. When everybody is on a zillion different websites, blogs and mailing-lists that are centered all over the world, we lose the ability to have a central, unifying connection for local news. Traditional-style clubs are failing everywhere - why join a club and commit to helping out, when you can just join a mailing list and click a link to unsubscribe when you’re bored? Why leave your high-res screen and your comfort-zone?
The AppleTV and its surrounding hardware are getting cheaper, easier and even more tantalizing. I plan to stay conscious about my need to be among friends and getting exercise, because it’s awfully tempting to wallow permanently in the megapixels and the Dolby sound.
April 10th, 2007 at 8:28 pm
Even if you get the local channels in high def on cables, there is still a very good reason to switch to over-the-air reception. Believe me, the video quality is nothing to compare! The cables signal is highly compressed and poor quality while the broadcasts use reasonable video compression that doesn’t deteriorate the HD picture. The over-the-air HDTV is typically much better. Try it, and you will see.