My boyfriend and I are thinking about going cable-less by buying an Apple TV and FiOS service when we move in March. We watch a lot of TV and movies, but we can keep up with most of the series we like through Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix’s streaming options. It’ll save us more than a hundred dollars a month, minus the few extra dollars we’ll spend on buying episodes off iTunes. I’m not seeing any big downsides here, which makes me suspect that there’s something we’re overlooking, which we won’t realize until after we’ve bought the Apple TV unit. If you use Apple TV or a similar set-up, tell me: do you like it? What, if anything, do you miss about regular TV? Do you have trouble finding all the programing you want (by legal means)? Is there something other than the Apple TV that you would recommend?
I have an Apple TV, but only as a complement to the Mac Mini and DVR I have hooked up.
I bought it a couple years ago mainly so I could rent movies. And I do so. But not as often as I would like. It seems (I’m not sure as I haven’t really looked into it) that rentals are a tad behind availability as rental stores and NetFlix. Also, some of the more obscure or quirky movies are only available for purchase. So when I find a movie I want to see, I get kind of bummed out, as I don’t want to pay 14.99 or 9.99 for a one-off movie.
As far as TV shows, are you willing to purchase every show you watch? Assuming it’s available. And if it is, it can be a day or more behind broadcast. The amount of TV I watch (and honestly, it isn’t a whole lot), would be more expensive than my cable/DVR package. Not only that, but it’s not live, and if I’m bored one night, I wouldn’t be able to just flip through the channels to see if there’s anything of interest to watch.
It’s good as a YouTube and PodCast player though.
That’s why I also have the Mac Mini hooked up. The Hulu application is great for watching shows I’ve missed, and I can just play stuff in Quicktime, or surf the web to wherever. This is something the Apple TV can’t really do.
Also, I have Comcast, and as evil as they are, their OnDemand service is pretty damn good. There’s a lot of free stuff on there, and when I miss an episode of one of the shows I usually watch, chances are good it’s on OnDemand for free (in HD). Which has been diminishing the amount of times I use Hulu.
In short, I don’t see cable TV/DVR going away anytime soon. At least for television, it’s still the best option IMHO.
I’ve got an AppleTV. It’s currently unplugged and sitting in a closet. I’ll make ya a great deal on it!
It just didn’t fit our lifestyle. Like cmyk, I used it mainly to rent movies but even at $3 a pop, it’s expensive compared to Netflix’s $9/month. These days I use Instant Watch a lot, through a Hackintosh setup that is probably very similar to cmyk’s.
I did hack my AppleTV and put XBMC on it. That way my Hackintosh played my ripped DVDs through Plex, and my AppleTV upstairs could read the same movie library and essentially played any backed-up movie or TV show from my Hackintosh on the AppleTV. It worked well, but was used rarely. Also, a hacked AppleTV will play Hulu through Boxee (at least last I checked), but again this was a feature we used rarely. The AppleTV was eventually replaced by a hand-me-down TiVo, and the AppleTV sent to the closet.
I watch TV very rarely so we did purchase the AppleTV in an effort to cut the cable. My wife watches quite a bit of TV however, but we did find that most of our TV needs were satisfied by Hulu, streaming from the network sites, and the rare episode purchased from iTunes or Amazon. We did cancel Comcast, but they never flipped the switch so we still get live TV. It’s a blessing and a curse I guess, since I do think a cable-less lifestyle would be better. I’m not sure my wife agrees though.
I’ve been thinking of getting an AppleTV purely to replace an aging Squeezebox. About 99% of my desire to have one is to access my music from something other than an iPod. The Blu-Ray player talks to Netflix, and that’s been all the video streaming I’ve wanted to do.
With that in mind, how is the AppleTV?
If you want to stream music, photos and even video/movies from your computer(s), it’s fantastic.
I’ll weigh on on the gamer angle I suppose. We have an xbox 360 that is our primary method of accessing Netflix streaming and you can purchase/rent TV and movies from a selection that is admittedly limited compared to iTunes. And we have a PS3 for bluray/dvd disks, purchasing/renting TV and film with a somewhat different selection than xbox live (though still limited compared to iTunes), and now the PS3 can also be used to access Netflix streaming. We also have an adapter with which we can connect our ipods to our HDTV to watch stuff from iTunes, but it is not hi-res and we honestly don’t use it that much, instead opting to just watch iTunes stuff on our laptops.
We’ve been quite happy with this set up, no cable/satellite/dish/TV service of any kind, for over 3 years.
I was under the impression that the content doesn’t stream from your PC but copies over to the Apple TV box. Is this true?
Does the AppleTv let you view other video sites besides those mentioned? Because with a few of those I find that I no longer need cable at all, although I do miss just flipping through the channels just to find out what’s on.
I know for certain the Apple TV will stream audio from any of your local iTunes apps. The Apple TV even shows up in the Devices column on iTunes. I’m guessing it may copy video and photos to Apple TV’s hard drive because of the limitations wifi bandwidth.
Only thing I can see it’ll let you view is YouTube. There’s also PodCasts, both video and audio, but nothing like Hulu.
Works great as media extender as already noted. I have my music and photos copied to the ATV, and I have ripped my DVD’s to my mac and stream them to my ATV. Home movies work as well. I also like having youtube and podcasts on my big tv.
The ATV replaced a Tivo that died. Went with the cable company HD DVR and an ATV, and had almost all of the functionality back. The ATV is great for niche uses, it does not take the place of a DVR, cable package, or full computer with Hulu.
I have a Satellite Receiver, Wii, AppleTV, xbox360, and PS3…of all of them, my AppleTV gets used the least. While it’s the newest device, the PS3 seems like the one most capable of hosting up media.
The AppleTV gets used occasionally when I work at home, otherwise, all the other sources seem to get used much more. Now that the PS3 has Netflix, I’ll be cancelling my Xbox Live Gold subscription.
Thanks for all the advice so far. It sounds like the Apple TV may not be the droid we’re looking for. I’ll have to look into the PS3.
One minor thing about the PS3 and Netflix (and I maybe dumb and not using it right) is that you have to put a Netflix disk in the player in order to access your streaming queue. We use the xbox for this more often because it doesn’t require a disk and we’re lazy. And I think the interface is just smoother and faster on the xbox compared to the PS3.