It seems most have underestimated the value of Apple’s latest product offerings, namely Apple TV. Majority of the conversations are centered around the Macbook Air, it’s understandable why, the advantages of the Macbook Air are as obvious as they come. But what about the Apple TV? Try asking your coworkers or friends about it, and I assure you, you’ll get one of two responses, “What is that?” and “Yea, I heard about it, but I don’t see what the big fuss is about”.

I reluctantly purchased the Apple TV (160GB model) shortly after Steve Jobs keynote, only to find out the update wasn’t quite ready yet. Waiting patiently for weeks wondering if the Apple TV could really live up to the hype Steve Jobs created. In retrospect my only regret was that I didn’t purchase the 40GB model instead of the 160GB model.

You can’t beat instant
Movie rentals, movie rentals, movie rentals, did I mention movie rentals? We either drop by a brick and mortar store like Blockbuster or rent our movies by mail through Netflix. Driving out to a store or waiting for your movie in the mail isn’t so bad when you have no other alternatives, but what if I told you there was a better way? What if I said you could choose a movie and start watching it in under 30 seconds? If living in America for 25 years has taught me anything, it’s that we love instant gratification and convenience, which nicely sums up Apple TV movie rentals.

Essentially Apple TV is a set-top-box that uses your home Internet connection to deliver movies. It’s also important to know that Apple TV is not the first to attempt movie rental service via Internet. There are also notable competitors in this emerging online movie rental market, namely, Amazon Unbox and Netflix video downloads.

What’s in the box?

• Apple TV
• Power Adapter
• Remote
• Manual

As for dimensions the Apple TV has a very small footprint, 7.7 by 7.7 inches, and 1.1 inches thin. Apple TV doesn’t have any fans inside, it’s all passively cooled, so you can expect perfect silence.

Apple doesn’t provide video/audio cables, so you’ll need to do some cable hunting. I can’t really blame them, it wouldn’t make much sense to provide cables for every conceivable home theater setup. Before you go off buying the most expensive video cables on the market, I’d highly recommend checking out this news post over at consumerist, Coat Hangers vs Monster Cables.

The Apple TV remote
The Apple TV remote is the same remotes used for Macbooks and iMacs, so if your Apple TV is located in close proximity to your Macbook or iMac you could end up sending remote commands to both devices, to resolve this issue follow Apple’s guide on pairing your remote with your Macbook/iMac.

Complete movie rental library
Not too long ago there was the format war between Blu-ray and HD-DVD, which thankfully is over, but as some of you could recall, we were all torn about what player to buy and seeing our favorite movies being sold only in one of the two formats. Now that the format war is over, all the movie studios are supporting Blu-ray, and the question of if your favorite movie will be coming out on Blu-ray is now just a matter of time.

Having full support from movie studios brings peace of mind that the technology you invested in will be worthwhile. The whole Blu-ray vs HD-DVD debacle just comes to show us just how important full movie studio support is. Of course the online movie rental service is still young, iTunes movie library is still small at the time of this writing, expect the library to increase in size significantly over the next few months.

What interested me the most about Apple TV is it’s strong support from movie studios, Steve Jobs managed to garner support from all major movie studios, which is an amazing feat in itself, other online movie rental services have tried and failed. It’s important for consumers to have access to all the major movie studios library of films and not just a select few.

Broadband Internet is key
Not all broadband is created equal, so before you go out and purchase an Apple TV, make sure your broadband Internet is up to the task.

Use the chart below as a guideline for performance you can expect from your broadband Internet connection. To check how fast your connection is, try visiting speedtest.net, you’ll want to focus on the download rather than the upload speed results.

You’ll thank yourself later for checking your broadband Internet speeds, I’d be pretty grouchy too if I dropped $330 dollars on an Apple TV only to wait 8 hours for each movie rental.

From my personal experience, I’ve found the guidelines to be quite accurate, according to speedtest.net my download speed is roughly 5,897 Kbps, which is just a hair off from 6 Mbps. I was impressed to find that standard definition movies started in under 30 seconds as advertised and high definition movies began at just about 1 minute in most cases.

It’s also good to keep in mind that your Internet connection is shared among the household, meaning little Timmy watching YouTube videos in the next room could put a dent in your Apple TV movie rental experience.

Should I rent Standard or High Definition?
I was surprised when I learned my friends were actually renting HD movies on their SD TV’s, I guess I can’t blame them, most people automatically assume HD is better in any case. If you have a SD TV you should save your money and skip HD movie rentals, as there are no visual advantages.

Even if you do own a HD TV you may still want to rent SD movies instead. The main benefit HD provides over SD is closer viewing distance, but if you sit far enough the advantage diminishes. When you are able to see individual pixels on the screen then you are sitting too close.

You could get really detailed about viewing distance and start looking up equations online, but I’d rather not rely on those, I prefer to rely on the only pair of eyes that really matter, mine.

Trust your own eyes and forget what the experts say. To find out if HD movies are worth renting, try renting a SD movie, if you can’t see individual pixels you have your answer, no, it’s that simple.

If you do want to take advantage of HD movie rentals, you could adjust your sitting distance, moving closer and closer, just before you are able to see individual pixels, that would be the sweet spot in terms of sitting distance.

So what’s the catch?
When renting a movie keep in mind you’ll have 30 days to start watching the movie, and once you do start watching it you’ll have 24 hours to finish it. I’m not too fond of the 24 hour viewing period, life does happen, sometimes you just can’t get back to it in 24 hours. It seems like a hassle we’ll have to accept for the time being, as other online movie rental services have similar restrictions.

I mentioned earlier about the full major movie studio support for Apple TV, which is true, all the movies from major movie studios will make their way onto the Apple TV eventually, meaning one month after the DVD release then the movie be available on Apple TV for rental.

Why is Apple TV only 720p, isn’t true HD 1080p?
It’s true, Apple TV HD movie rentals are only 720p, it’s better than DVD but not as sharp as Blu-ray. It makes sense that Apple TV wouldn’t provide movies at 1080p resolution, since the average broadband speed in the US is only 4.8Mbps, in order to stream movies effectively the broadband Internet speed should be close to the movie’s bit rate to keep buffering time to a minimum.

For example, if the broadband speed is 5Mbps and the movie is 5Mbps, this means you could stream the movie to the Apple TV almost instantly with just a few seconds of buffering, however if the broadband speed is less than the movie’s bit rate then there will be a delay before you could start watching the movie, how long the delay will depend on how large the gap is between broadband speed and movie, bit rate wise, and length of movie.

It’s not uncommon for a Blu-ray movie to have a bit rate of 20Mbps, which is significantly higher than the average broadband speed in the US, ruling out the possibility of 1080p HD movie rentals on Apple TV, or for any other Internet based movie rental service for that matter. Designing a set-top-box capable of streaming 1080p isn’t the problem, the real bottle neck in this situation is the Internet infrastructure in the US, ranking among the lowest world wide in terms of speed.

Conclusion
Apple TV is a great start in the right direction with their instant movie rentals, providing us with a real alternative to renting from local stores or through mail. The price of convenience is always high, and Apple TV is no exception, costing $230 to $330 depending on the model you choose. Apple TV isn’t for everyone, although the pricing may be on par with the brick and mortar stores like Blockbuster, Apple TV doesn’t really compare to movie rental services such as Netflix in terms of pricing. For 10 movies you would pay $30 to $40 dollars with Apple TV or you could pay just $17 with Netflix assuming you could finish them in one month. In a way Apple TV and Netflix are on opposing ends of the spectrum, it’s basically cost vs time.

The Apple TV could use some improvements, it would be great to see a DVR feature included in the next iteration of Apple TV and hopefully Apple adds enough graphics power to… dare I say it, add games to the Apple TV. I can’t see Apple TV turning into a full fledged gaming console, most likely Apple will stick to the sales pitch, instant movie rentals with casual gaming as an added bonus.

Filed under: Apple TV