"what does this even do?? is it just a T.V tuner/recorder..."
Less than that, I'm afraid... It streams your crap from iTunes. So whatever you may have bought on iTunes, plus your music, plus any videos you happen to have in the H.264 format. Streams it all to your TV. Useful? You be the judge...
Also, no AV cables in the box? You have got to be kidding me. I can't wait for all the stupid fanboys to try and justify THAT decision.
Go ahead, kids. Lower my post rating. You still know I'm right.
i agree lack of an HDMI or component cable is pretty shitty on apples part.. but what can you expect.. back when i got my iPod photo they used to package an AC adapter with it.. now a days... they AC adapter isnt packaged and they charge you $30 for one.
@Aaron: To be fair, there are a lot of A/V components that do not come with cables other than run of the mill RCA composite types. But, no, there should be, at least, component cables in there. When you look at something like monoprice.com and see what prices they have on cables, it's almost criminal that there aren't cables included in the package.
One really nice thing, though, is that there is no power brick. Admit it: that's slick in a box this small.
Now, as for taking things from iTunes: If you know what you're doing, you can get quite a bit into iTunes. I've ripped the DVDs I watch quite a bit and placed them into iTunes for syncing to my iPod. The issue with that, of course, is that watching the same "Seven Samurai" file on my 51" HDTV that I use on my iPod would be insane, which means ripping a higher-quality of the movie, which means storing it twice, which means I will run out of room very quickly...
However, for the end user with an SDTV and has locked themselves into the iPod and the iTMS, then the Apple TV makes a lot of sense.
I, however, am passing on this one and will stick with my Series2 TiVo and TiVo Desktop for now (note: the TiVo is not on the 51" TV)...
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"what does this even do?? is it just a T.V tuner/recorder..."
Less than that, I'm afraid... It streams your crap from iTunes. So whatever you may have bought on iTunes, plus your music, plus any videos you happen to have in the H.264 format. Streams it all to your TV. Useful? You be the judge...
Also, no AV cables in the box? You have got to be kidding me. I can't wait for all the stupid fanboys to try and justify THAT decision.
Go ahead, kids. Lower my post rating. You still know I'm right.
i agree lack of an HDMI or component cable is pretty shitty on apples part.. but what can you expect.. back when i got my iPod photo they used to package an AC adapter with it.. now a days... they AC adapter isnt packaged and they charge you $30 for one.
@Aaron: To be fair, there are a lot of A/V components that do not come with cables other than run of the mill RCA composite types. But, no, there should be, at least, component cables in there. When you look at something like monoprice.com and see what prices they have on cables, it's almost criminal that there aren't cables included in the package.
One really nice thing, though, is that there is no power brick. Admit it: that's slick in a box this small.
Now, as for taking things from iTunes: If you know what you're doing, you can get quite a bit into iTunes. I've ripped the DVDs I watch quite a bit and placed them into iTunes for syncing to my iPod. The issue with that, of course, is that watching the same "Seven Samurai" file on my 51" HDTV that I use on my iPod would be insane, which means ripping a higher-quality of the movie, which means storing it twice, which means I will run out of room very quickly...
However, for the end user with an SDTV and has locked themselves into the iPod and the iTMS, then the Apple TV makes a lot of sense.
I, however, am passing on this one and will stick with my Series2 TiVo and TiVo Desktop for now (note: the TiVo is not on the 51" TV)...