I bought an Apple TV after Apple’s promised rental changes. Ok, so it is a toy, really I mean come on, $230 just to pay Apple more money to rent movies, but i love tech and wanted to check this out.

I’ve always wanted a 1080p Apple TV and while this is still 720p, my TV does a great upconverting job.

I rented “SuperBad” in SD via iTunes earlier in the month. Once the update installed, I tried to find the movie via streaming, but it could not be found.

I then realized you have to sync to watch movies rented on your computer. So I set up a custom sync and moved the movie over to the Apple TV.

This process, about 1.6gb of data, took 30 minutes. You can’t play a rented movie that is syncing, you have to wait.

The audio was prologic, and the colors a bit dull and dark, but the quality was very acceptable.

After that movie, I decided to rent The Simpsons movie in HD. After about 14 seconds, my movie was ready to go.

WOW, the colors are fantastic. The audio is 5.1 and sounds great.

This could get expensive. Even though we have Netflix for Blu Ray, renting HD movies via the Apple TV is fast and fairly affordable.

Oh yes, we’re watching Simpsons while iTunes is doing a new “automatic” sync, which will keep as much data on the Apple TV and let me stream everything else, in theory at least

Hopefully this saves someone else an hour.

If I stuck one of the IR buds directly to the IR “eye” on the Apple TV, the Apple TV would not recognize any IR.

I had to stick it below the IR “eye” in order for IR codes to be received.

As pointed out in the EULA by John Gruber, HD rentals can only be done on the Apple TV and are not transferable to a computer, iPod, etc.

ok fine, maybe they did this for licensing reasons, or maybe because an iPhone doesn’t want nor can play an HD version.

There is a solution.

Make the HD rental give the rentee a license to the SD version as well. If I need it, I can go to iTunes, download the SD version and put it on my phone.

The same key would be used, so if i was 12 hours into my rental, I’d only have 12 hours left.

Fair and works for everyone.

1. no 1080P support - Come on, Apple
2. No HD content! Even the new MGM movies announced today are still 640×480. They’re not even in anamorphic 720P the AppleTV supports! I do not know what Apple is thinking here.
3. No content - Did I mention that?
4. I don’t need an AppleTV to watch stuff, I can connect my MacBookPro via DVI
5. I’m waiting for blu-ray to become affordable, say for a second bay in a Mac Pro, and then stream that content to the AppleTV

Apple can do much better than they have. Rev B anyone?

Gates Proclaims Internet to Revolutionize TV in 5 Years.

Meanwhile, Steve Jobs yawns and says “So last MacWorld“

I cancelled my order for AppleTV and Airport Extreme .n. I’ll pick up an AE at The Mac Store when they are in (am going to preorder today) and with my 1080i TV, I just can’t see the 720p of AppleTV working well with my cruddy scaler.

So I’ll pick up Aperture instead and get to work on an Aperture compatible BetterHTMLExport.

If it wasn’t clear by Apple, MacWorld Expo is ending as we know it. Today Apple used the MacWorld Expo venue to do three things:

• Introduce Apple TV, a consumer device to shuttle media from your computer to the television
• Introduce iPhone, a brand new phone platform
• Change its name from Apple Computer, Inc. to Apple Inc.

See a theme here? Think Differently is well in place at Apple Inc.

So lets talk about these products.

Apple TV

Alright, I bought one for the following two reasons:

• Apple in the living room interests me
• I wanted something to play with the 802.11n Airport Express I was ordering also

I have some questions about Apple TV though. Here are a few:

• Does the Apple TV upscale to 1080i or does the TV need to do that? My Toshiba has a poor scaler and if Apple TV leaves this up to the TV, it will look poor.
• Of course I want to rip my DVDs onto a server for playing them on Apple TV - When will a instant Handbrake for Apple TV be available?
• As mentioned, I ordered an Airport Extreme for the speed, but as with other 802.11x technology, the speed of the network is only as fast as the fastest devide on the network. This means if I use the router with my laptop, or my girlfriend’s laptops, or my Wii, the performance will be negated.
• Will Apple sell 720p content? If not, what 720p content do they expect me to watch?

I think this is a fascinating first step for Apple. I plan on giving them a lot of feedback.

iPhone

Alright, we can finally stop talking about the rumors, and now speculate about what it will and won’t do! Lets see some concerns I have over the iPhone as shown today. (I will skip the obvious drooling of the amazing stuff it does)

• Battery, battery, battery. Whats with the built in battery? Its ook for an ipod to go dead, but watching a movie on your phone will surely reduce the battery life by a large amount. So then you get an important phone call and oops, its off. Slide finger, damn. dead.
• Memory - 8 gigabytes is awesome for a phone, but its not enough to replace my iPod. So I will still need both. I guess that fixes the above problem. Altho a card slot would have been nice.
• Applications - All indications are that we will not be allowed to install our own applications. I hear that the binaries are digitally signed and the SDK will be closed, and the future iPods will all have digitally signed applications as well - no more linux on ipods. The real reason for this move is likely virus control - Neither Apple nor Cingular will have to support your screwed up phone if you installed a malware application onto it.
• 3G - I’d really like a faster internet connection than EDGE
• Touchscreen - Ok it rocks, yadda yadda. Until I use it, I am skeptical.
• One handed use - This is a biggie, even when just walking around, I want to be able to answer, dial, etc one handed. Again I won’t know until I hold one if this will be possible.
• No mention of a voice recorder. This feature is invaluable when parking in the Disneyland parking structure. No joke.
• Charger - What is the charger going to look like? Another brick to carry around with me? At least the car charger should just be an iPod car charger. I bet someone makes a charger with two dock connectors on it now.
• No mention if we’re locked into lame Cingular pay per ringtones or if we can do what we should be able to do, make ringtones from segments of songs right in iTunes.

There are just too many questions that popped up during the day. Time will provide answers.

iPod

What I would buy, like now is an 80gb iPod with that screen. Yum.

Leopard

What the hell? Its MacWorld. Where were the secret Leopard features?

iLife

Again, no iLife? What’s going on in Cupertino?

iWork

I see a pattern emerging.

Summary

In summary, this really was a big day for Apple. Apple has not been just a computer company for a long time, but now they’re really not a computer company. Apple will learn - Apple will take their lumps, listen and keep innovating.

I’ll own an iPhone - Just not sure which version I’ll own.

Sorry Erick, I wanted in on the early batch

Yes, Apple did release a 802.11n Airport Extreme, they just didn’t mention it in the keynote.