Apple TV - how does it work and what exactly is it?

[Frye7127]

we are buying a home where they use Apple TV for movies and stuff in their finished basement. They are leaving the TV and equipment, but I am sure not the Apple TV device. What is it and how does it work? Do you have to have a Mac also?

TIA!

 

[ksantilli]

It's a box that connects to your tv and home network that allows you to buy or rent media from the iTunes store. You can view media from your computers across your home network, and gives you access to third party services like Netflix, YouTube, NHL.com,

If you have iPhones or iPads you can view some of that content on the tv as well.

We have 2 tvs in our house, and each has an Appletv connected to it. All of our movies (300+) are available on both TVs at any time, by using the Appletv.
We can do this because the Appletv is connected to our home network, and has access to our main computer (also, obviously on home network) which has all 300+ movies stored on it.
So anytime we purchase a new DVD we rip it and store it on our computer, or we just buy the digital copy and store that on our computer - this way they are viewable from our appletvs.
Some benefits:
- The kids can't lose/scratch/break/etc our DVDs anymore
- having all our movies digital makes it a piece of cake to sync them to iPods, iPhones, and iPads for trips and whatnot.

If you have any questions, my husband could answer them- as he wrote this for means I'm forwarding it on. I just get to enjoy the benefits of a nerdy husband and all of his toys.

 

[love2disney]

http://whatisappletv.org/ is the website I used when I was researching the product. I ended up buying a Roku XS2 instead of this only because of the formats I wanted it to play from my home computer. Apple Tv is a far smoother and sophisticated interface and if you have other apple devices they are easy to connect.

 

[cjlvsccm]

we are buying a home where they use Apple TV for movies and stuff in their finished basement. They are leaving the TV and equipment, but I am sure not the Apple TV device. What is it and how does it work? Do you have to have a Mac also?

TIA!

All of what ksantilli said! DH has iPod and we just got iPad + Apple TV. We have a wireless router for our home network, so that allows us to access anything on the PC from iPad... then you can stream any of your music (or iTunes radio stations) to the tv with Apple TV hooked up... you can view a slideshow of your pix, or run them as background with the music... you can surf Safari with iPad or iPhone and it streams to tv.

I'm new to the "i" collective , but it's fun seeing everything this little device can do!

Good luck with it, and congrats on the new house!

 

[holycow]

I love my Apple TV. Got it for Christmas. I also love the fact that I can get Netflix on it.


Thanks ksantitli for all the info. I'd love to do that with our movies.

 

[hauntedcity]

We have been using Apple TVs in our house since they first came out. We not only use it for movies and TV shows (some purchased from iTunes; most ripped from DVD using Handbrake), but also for playing all the music in our iTunes on our TV & stereo system.

It can be used with Mac or Windows, but does need iTunes.