Apple TV: Thoughts?

[Russic]

Originally Posted by Jedi Ninja

Can a person feasibly replace their cable subscription with Apple TV, and if so, how much would it cost a person?

Absolutely, but there are catches. You can purchase a season of a show for around $30 - $50 depending on the show and whether you want it in HD or not. If you are the type of person that only cares about 4 or 5 shows then for a couple hundred dollars your could have them automatically download to your computer the morning after they air and they'd be waiting for you when you get home from work. For me I watch enough shows that the price is pretty close to what I pay for cable over the length of a tv season.

If you're a hockey nut like me it gets a little more complicated. I suppose I could just go out to a bar to get my hockey fix, but for now the hockey is the prime thing that's keeping my cable hooked up. I am however giving very strong ideas to canceling my cable in favor of apple tv.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Actually, the real answer to his question is "Yes." - if he's like me and only watches select shows.

Other than live sports, the only TV shows I watch are House, Weeds, 24 and Californication... all 4 are available in HD and commercial free on the AppleTV.

If I wasn't a sports nut, I could very easily get by without cable - using only my AppleTV.

That's what I was getting at. Probably the word I should have used was "affordably" rather than "feasibly". Specifically, I was wondering how expensive to pick up packages of programs, like the entire season of 4 TV shows. (2 hers, 2 mine.) Because we have 2 kids and my wife works shift work, and I work long hours, I don't get to watch much more than 2 hours of TV a week, and even then, it has to be PVR'd.

[Jedi Ninja]

Originally Posted by Russic

Absolutely, but there are catches. You can purchase a season of a show for around $30 - $50 depending on the show and whether you want it in HD or not. If you are the type of person that only cares about 4 or 5 shows then for a couple hundred dollars your could have them automatically download to your computer the morning after they air and they'd be waiting for you when you get home from work. For me I watch enough shows that the price is pretty close to what I pay for cable over the length of a tv season.

If you're a hockey nut like me it gets a little more complicated. I suppose I could just go out to a bar to get my hockey fix, but for now the hockey is the prime thing that's keeping my cable hooked up. I am however giving very strong ideas to canceling my cable in favor of apple tv.

So, I'm looking at about $150-$200 for a season for 4 shows. A season is about 6 months, so around $30 / month?

[MacFlame]

Well technically you can't purchase shows like Weeds, and Californication in Canada. I have Apple T.V, and that's my only complaint about it. If you like Corner gas and Southpark....you'll love Apple TV. I'm waiting for some quality TV (not that I hate Corner Gas) to be made available.

[FanIn80]

There are ways of setting up and funding a US iTunes account.

[Jedi Ninja]

Bah, is this our punnishment for having lax piracy laws?

[Mightyfire89]

Any other Apple TV owners having problems with super long download times for movies? When I rented movies before, it would take a minute or two to be able to start watching, now it's over 2 hours?

Also, anyone have a clue what's up with the Dolby digital being gone from all the movies?

[MacFlame]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

There are ways of setting up and funding a US iTunes account.

Which is why I said "technically". I just don't understand why I should have to do that...

[fredr123]

If you could get Hulu/Boxee working reliably on your Apple TV in Canada you would be laughing. The quality probably isn't what you'd get by buying the shows in HD after the fact, but the price is good (free) and you get the shows quicker than a DVD release.

[Russic]

I should have mentioned apple tv without an American iTunes account can suck if you're a big tv watcher. Thankfully setting an American account up is dead easy and only requires that you not mind funding the account with eBay purchases.

[Antithesis]

Looks like the Canadian iTunes store has made some improvements - is it on par with its US counterpart now?

Thinking of getting one of these from apple.ca, just wondering:

If I were to purchase a movie, how much space would it use on the box?
Can you download movies to the Apple TV box, and then stream them for storage on a laptop?

[Russic]

Yes the Canadian iTunes store has improved greatly over the last 6 months. It still isn't quite as awesome as the american one, but it's very usable for standard use. They don't have certain shows from showtime like Dexter, True Blood or Mad Men, but the staples from NBC, CBS and the like are all there.

You can definitely put content on the box, but I prefer to keep everything on my computer and stream it all to the box. I currently only have photos on mine, everything else gets sent from the computer. For this reason I can't confirm if the stuff you buy directly from the box can be sent to your computer for storage.

File sizes are available in itunes on the movie pages. Quantum of Solace is 1.5 gigs in standard def and 3.5 gigs in high def.

[FanIn80]

Mmmm... Gigs...

Edit: Whoops. Sorry about that. My 2TB Time Capsule keeps sneaking on the internet and posting random things at different sites using my accounts...

[Antithesis]

Originally Posted by FanIn80

Mmmm... Gigs...

Edit: Whoops. Sorry about that. My 2TB Time Capsule keeps sneaking on the internet and posting random things at different sites using my accounts...

Can one of these bad boys be connected somehow to the Apple TV for ease of use in maintaining and storing a movie/TV show collection?

I'm sorry for the noob question, I am nowhere near the level of computer nerd I was in the days of 386 processors, and I appreciate much of Apple's technology (love my iPod Touch), just trying to best spend my half of the anniversary/b-day money from our parents.

[FanIn80]

That's exactly what I do. I sync all my music over the the ATV and leave all the big stuff (movies, tv, etc) on my time capsule and stream it as I watch it.

The only thing that sucks is it still requires an external iTunes library to manage everything. Anything that is physically copied to it will play without any external support, but anything stored outside the device needs an external iTunes library to manage it.

[Antithesis]

So basically, I can do it, it's relatively simple to do (requires 2 libraries? is that right?) so I should just buy one because it is awesome?

[FanIn80]

Yeah, it's a piece of cake. You do all the hard work on your laptop or desktop. ATV just uses the same iTunes library that you're already using. The setup will walk you through everything.

The pain in the ass part that I was alluding to, is that I have to fire up my MBP every time I want to watch a TV show from my Time Capsule... since ATV needs the library on my MBP to tell it where everything is.

[Antithesis]

OK, I'm convinced and am going to order my Apple TV right after posting this.

I assume that means things are easily transferred from Apple TV to Time Capsule?

Does it go like this:

Apple TV ---> Computer ---> Time Capsule

or

Apple TV ---> Time Capsule

and if so can it go the opposite way?

Also, my laptop is a PC (I know, I know)

[FanIn80]

More like:

Time Capsule <-> Computer <-> Apple TV

You can sync things back to your computer. The only thing I'm not sure about is the HD stuff that isn't available through regular iTunes. There are quite a bit of movies that have HD versions when renting/buying from ATV, but don't have an HD version when renting/buying from a computer. Those files might not be able to sync back to the computer... I'm not 100% sure.

[Antithesis]

And does it matter that the computer in this case is one of those rotten, horrible, no-fun PCs?