My family and I have given the Apple TV a heavy weekend of testing, here’s what we’ve discovered.
After my initial startup problems the Apple TV has been working flawlessly.
I’ve converted about 75 items from my videos into the correct format. They’re about 10-20% larger than comparable xvids, but not too much of a problem.
I’ve converted video tapes from my camcorder, DVDs, various format video files I’ve collected, material from my DVD recorder… basically everything I could think of.
Converting formats is a hassle and, now, I’m going to give serious thought to changing my “standard†archive format to H.264. I seriously wonder if that is what Apple is trying to accomplish. I’ve noticed that bitorrent sites are already offering things pre-encoded for the Apple TV. Could it be that Apple is trying to make H.264 encoded video the de facto standard, as MP3 is for audio? It doesn’t accomplish a “lock in†but it might erode the usage of those awful .WMV files.
I have got two gripes, one that could be easily fixed, the other not-so-easily fixed.
First: Subdirectories. With 75 “movies†in my iTunes library, I’d really like to organize them into subdirectories or playlists. For example, I produced a show called Fusion Patrol several years ago and there are about 20 episodes. I’d like a “Fusion Patrol†directory in which I can put the episodes. This is easily fixed with a software/firmware update.
Second: (No surprise) I’m out of disk space. I’m not quite ready to void my warranty yet and pop a larger drive in there. Especially since I’m probably going to have to return mine for service. We’ve had to switch on “only sync new videos†option, but that means once something is watched, it disappears. It can still be streamed, but it makes it less convenient when you want to watch something more than once. Maybe they can open that USB port to external HDs.
One idea that crossed my mind would be some form of “pull†from the Apple TV. Consider:
One iTunes library is designated as the primary and syncs videos to the Apple TV. In my case, the drive the iTunes library is on is 120GB and used exclusively for iTunes. The Apple TV has 32GB useable. In most cases I watch a recorded program once. In which case, using the “sync new items only†works OK, but not great. WHat if I want to watch the show and leave it for the other members of the family? It doesn’t work that way, it’s gone. You have to go to the master iTunes library and manually push it back to the Apple TV. It’s possible to stream the previously viewed videos from the master iTunes library, but that requires that you know it is there and to go change your source. Not very simple if you’re just sitting down to see what’s available to watch on the Apple TV.
What if the Apple TV could maintain a listing of all videos in the master iTunes library? It could also maintain an on/offline status for them. Synced items would be online, the others would be offline. If the master iTunes library is running, someone using the Apple TV remote could ask for an offline video to be synced. If the library is not online, it would be requested next time the iTunes machine is activated.
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