A few flaws ruin the Apple TV experience
Seldom is the day that any product is released without flaws or improvements that could be made to it. Almost every product released these days is an example of that and with each revision, improvements are made. The Apple TV is the latest product to come out of Cupertino, but according to Matt Granite of the NWI Times it has some flaws that need to be dealt with.
The Apple TV is a $300 box about half the thickness of the Mac Mini and about the same diagonal size and lacks an optical drive. Its function is to serve as a media hub storing music, movies and photos which are all available for playback at the touch of a button. It features a host of audio and video outputs for connection to your TV and sound system but those connections, while impressive can be quite limiting.
As with most Apple products, the Apple TV features a beautiful, almost entrancing user interface. And then the flaws hit you like a brick flying at 50MPH right into your face. As for the flaws themselves, you can read the whole list over at the NWI Times, but they include:
- Too little useable hard drive space
- Problems with the volume control
- No surround sound support
- Supports only widescreen TVs
- Runs extremely warm
Granite’s advice is to hold off buying an Apple TV: “Unless you have cash to throw around, I’d wait until Apple revises what should be a cutting-edge product.”
That being said, and since you can also turn Apple TV into an OSX workstation provided you own a Mac, I still think the Apple TV is a very interesting product that offers a lot for $300.
Related Posts:
April 8th, 2007
I disagree with the comment on sound volume. If you have an HDTV you propably have a home theater sound system. With the Apple TV I would route the sound through my amplifier and use that remote to control the volume as I do with sound from my cable box.
April 8th, 2007
Apple TV does do surround sound. I loaded wav files from http://www.diatonis.com/downloads_dts_ac3.html and my receiver switch to DTS and Dolby Digital. Now is just a matter of content being available.
April 8th, 2007
Yes it does surround sound. Yes, the HD could be bigger, and it will be… the iPod didn’t start out at 80gb. It run’s warm because the unit was designed to dissipate heat through the case.
April 8th, 2007
A 40GB hard drive wouldn’t hold all the DVDs in my collection much less all my media but I guess it’s not really designed for that (yet). What I’m questioning is if it supports true surround sound or is simply piping sound to all the speakers (which is not true surround sound).
Running that warm is just a little unnerving. Given some of those issues it might be better for some just to hook up a media center PC and be done with it.
I’ll give the Apple TV a fair chance, let’s see what it’s like in a year.
April 8th, 2007
I agree with most of the criticisms, though I still find the product great.
* 40GB: yes this will be restrictive. However, on our home 802.11g network (which was performing poorly with our Airport Express for music streaming) it is streaming 720p video flawlessly.
* No volume control: I’d like the remote to have volume control. But in all honesty I want it to control my Amp’s (or TV’s) volume, not the AppleTV’s. This is a criticism of the remote – it’s tiny but it’s not programmable! My wish here is for Apple to help me make my universal remote control AppleTV perfectly (I’ve got it working mostly!).
* No surround: Agreed. It’s a software issue that I want to see addressed ASAP. However, my amp is ac3 ony, and mp4s don’t seem more suited to aac and dts soundtracks… so I may be out of luck.
* Supports only widescreen TVs: This surprises me. Apple could gain greater market share with a more universal device. But if I could plug this into my old 78cm I know the interface would be more blurred, the iPhoto screen saver would be less appealing. I’m undecided on whether this is a ‘flaw’.
* Runs warm. Yes it does. I’ve put it outside my cabinet. It’d be nice to run cooler.
All up, I’m hoping for a software update that addresses 3 things
1) passthrough of ac3 (apparently Leopard’s quicktime will do this!!)
2) fix for slideshows (so you can play streamed slideshows, and so that the time set per photo is correctly used)
3) a hybrid sync and cache system – if it’s not synced, I want to quickly see what isn’t synced in a given folder so I can sync or stream it.
I suspect the heat is one of the reasons a DVD reader was impossible. So I’m looking for a hardware upgrade that
a) has an internal fan
b) has a DVD reader & upscaler
c) has a larger hard disk
April 8th, 2007
(oops – I meant that mp4s don’t seem suited to ac3, they’re more suited to aac (and dts?)).
April 8th, 2007
Mr. Alexander above me has pinpointed the exact reason why the Apple remote has no volume control. Volume control is most properly attached to the playback device. Apple TV is not a playback device — it simply supplies the signal. Greg’s desire to control volume at the stereo instead of the TV itself is emblematic of the problems inherent in a signal provider trying to guess what kind of volume signal to send out. This is a very minor issue and a non-problem. Most people in this world are used to dealing with multiple remotes — those few that try to actually solve this problem, like Greg, do pretty well on their own.
Apple TV supports any TV with component inputs, not just widescreen TVs. But you’ve got to pass the signal through something like a cable receiver or a DVR first so that you can correct the aspect ratio. (Or do it on your TV itself if it has that option.) This aspect ratio correction is not hard to achieve since most people already have equipment that can do it. However, it is not “simple”. Apple chose only to advertise the ‘simple’ option — widescreen TVs. I don’t blame them. If they hadn’t they’d be getting a lot more confusion and flack over what exact sort of TVs they are compatible with. Better to take the ‘widescreen only’ hit and let the hobbyists strike out on their own, which is where they’re happiest, anyway.
As for it running warm — this is the dumbest criticism I have ever heard. Have you ever felt the back of your TV while it was running? Did you immediately write an article about how HDTV’s are no good because they “run warm”? If you were to open up your massive DVR case and hover your hand over the hard drive, how warm do you think THAT would be? That heat goes somewhere — just because you don’t feel it as much on the case in larger devices doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I can guarantee you that in terms of pure wattage your Apple TV is not generating any more heat than your DVR, regardless of what it feels like on the case. So just keep your hands off the darn thing if it’s uncomfortable because there is no reason to be touching it, and stop complaining about nonsense.
April 8th, 2007
ATTRIBUTION ISSUES RECTIFIED. A couple of readers commented on the poor source attribution of the first version of this article. The issue has now been rectified.
BLORGE.com has introduced guidelines for all its writers to ensure that source material is properly attributed, and I have advised Jonathan to follow these guidelines strictly in the future.
Because the attribution issue has been dealt with, I’ve deleted the original comments, but in the spirit of transparency, here they are:
Trotskiii:
April 8th, 2007 at 11:06 am e
Hmm.. sounds remarkably similar to an article at nwitimes.com I wonder who copied who?
Chucky:
April 8th, 2007 at 12:08 pm e
“Hmm.. sounds remarkably similar to an article at nwitimes.com I wonder who copied who?â€
Yup. It’s even got the same two errors about wrongly claiming the AppleTV doesn’t play surround sound and won’t work with non-widescreen TV’s.
Bizarre.
BLORGE.com treats reader feedback very seriously, and we thank both readers for taking the time to point out the issues with the original post.
April 8th, 2007
Fellas, time to rethink both the design and execution of this here particular foray
into review land . . . Seriously, this site looks like 5 miles of bad jpeg compression. You know the non-breaking space entity? I shouldn’t be seeing it…
April 9th, 2007
Hi Max,
Thanks for your feedback. We’re in the process of redesigning the design for our official launch in early July.
John
October 1st, 2007
Online and Offline Promotion
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting
October 1st, 2007
Software Development Guide
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting