Apple TV

Not a television per se, Apple TV is a neat box that streams your iTunes assets from a drive on your network, and movies and TV shows direct from the iTunes Store with the help of Apple Remote.

Steve Jobs famously described Apple TV as a hobby. It's a monicker that has unfortunately stuck, despite the product being far more powerful and exciting than earlier editions.
The new Apple TV is a small. neat black box. It's far smaller than previous editions - 80% smaller, in fact - having lost the earlier Apple TV's internal hard drive. It has no moving parts, and thus no fan, so it's entirely silent and perfect for sitting in the living room below your television.
Apple TV is, in effect, the ultimate iTunes add-on. It connects to your shared media library to stream your movies, TV shows and music.


Under the hood you'll find an Apple A4 processor - the same as was found in the original iPad and the iPhone 4 - while around the back there's a power socket, HOMI port for connecting to your television, optical output and an Ethernet port for wired networking. A sensor at the front works with the Apple Remote so you can control it from the comfort of your favourite armchair.

Apple TV works even better if you have an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. For starters, you can swap the sleek Apple Remote for the iOS Remote application, which lets you use a full keyboard to search for media by name, rather than using the hunt and peck menus.

Better yet, because Apple TV uses Apple's AirPlay technology, you can play any media downloaded to your iOS device on you without connecting it directly, simply best the icon on the transport control and selecting the appropriate destination.

Apple TV doesn't have a tuner or any built in storage. Instead it relies on streaming media from a hard drive somewhere on your local network, or direct from the iTunes Store. It doesn't need a keyboard or mouse, so to watch a movie through the Store you search it on your TV screen using the Apple Remote, watch the preview and, when you're sure it's the film you want, start streaming it right away. You can choose from SO and HO versions of each film and, whichever you chose, have 48 hours in which to finish viewing it.

If you don't have an iTunes Store account, or prefer not to stream your entertainment from the net, then you can also use Apple TV to stream your local media. The simple menus let you quickly navigate your iTunes library, picking out films and tracks.

You can also use it to show off your photos, making it the equivaler old-school projector

Via ✔ The Independent Guide to the Mac