Apple MA711LL/A TV with 40GB Hard Drive [OLD VERSION]
by Apple Computer
![Apple MA711LL/A TV with 40GB Hard Drive [OLD VERSION]](/images/Apple-MA711LL-A-TV-with-40GB-Hard-Drive-OLD-VERSION-B000MQNMQ6-L.jpg)
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Our Price: $349.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $94.95 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Apple MA711LL/A TV with 40GB Hard Drive [OLD VERSION]
Customer Review: Watch iPod video on your TV, Use your TV as an iPod
Summary: 5 Stars
Think of the Apple TV unit as transforming your television into a large-format video iPod. All of the menus are very similar to how you use an iPod. It comes with a "front row" type remote control that allows you to select what you would like to play. The remote control is very simple, and uses an interface very similar to the standard iPod.
The Apple TV is capable of playing from either its internal hard drive, or streaming from your computer. The beauty of it is that you rarely know which it is doing. After syncing with the computer all of your titles are immediately available. If the title you choose has not been copied to the internal hard drive, then it is streamed. The hard drive only keeps what you frequently access. If your computer is off, you will only be able to play what you have downloaded.
Make sure that your television is compatible. There is no coax or s-video connection! Your TV must support either HDMI or component. You can also use optical audio if desired.
This is not a replacement for a Tivo or your DVD player/recorder. This device only supports playback from iTunes compatible files. If you would like to record or play DVD. But if you would like to watch your iTunes video at HD resolution, this device is great!
Customer Review: I did not want to like it...but...
Summary: 5 Stars
Ok, so I was given the Apple TV for my birthday by my daughter and son in law. At first I was kind of upset that they spent so much on an item that I thought I had no use for. I was perfectly happy with my iPod and iTunes. All of my songs and a few episodes of my favorite TV shows are loaded on my iTunes and if needed, I could access them on the computer at any time.
Let me tell you, I totally love this thing. I was lucky enough to have some time off over the recent holiday and I spent most of my time playing with it. It was a breeze to set up. I love the music interface, it's like having a High Def iPod in my family room. I love having the ability to show all of my pictures on high def screen and put together slide shows with music. The movies and TV shows look great. My favorite feature is the Youtube interface. I spent about 3 hours one night watching music clips from the 70's and the time just flew by.
I know that there are people who will argue that there are much better ways to sync my computer content to my TV but for me, this works perfectly. Since all of my media is on iTunes for me it turned out to be a perfect fit. The only bad thing is that I probably will be spending more time on the couch playing with my new toy.
Customer Review: Apple TV 2.0
Summary: 5 Stars
just upgraded my Apple TV to 2.0 and am pretty happy. I connected into my home network with a wired connection - I expected trouble but there were no problems. The menus are easy to navigate, but some things are a bit cryptic (I had to look up "Ken Burns Effect" in the options for displaying photos). It was very simple to link in photos from my two PCs to display on screen or as screen savers on my flatpanel TV. The movie rental feature (which was why I bought it) works well. I have 1.5Mb DSL so downloads do take some time. With this rate movies are typically ready to watch in 20 minutes. Download rates from Apple were running at max DSL rates so at least they seem to have the bandwith to deliver content as fast as my DSL link will provide it. I connected to the TV through HDMI and I've had no technical issues. One aggravation is that the movie thumbnails on the selection screens are showing up as generic gray blocks. It can take up to several minutes for them to update to something useful - this seems to have gotten worse in the last week. Picture quality for the films I've rented is very good. Selection at the moment (late Feb 08) is still quite limited but some unusual and off the wall selections make for interesting viewing.Customer Review: Handbrake's best friend
Summary: 5 Stars
The Apple TV is awesome. It's easy to use - the setup is seamless, and it looks great (both the product itself and the on-screen interface). I added all my music (about 30gb) to the Apple TV's internal hard drive, and I stream all my movies from my iMac. The streaming is very smooth, even when fast-forwarding. With larger, high-quality videos the rewinding can be a little choppy, but it's a small price to pay for the convenience of having your entire movie library accessible from your remote - pack up your DVDs and DVD player and put them in the garage.
Other features:
YouTube: Be careful with this feature - it can take entire days from your life.
Digital Photos: They look awesome on my HDTV. I was pleasantly surprised at the photo screensaver... such a simple feature, but in my opinion one of the coolest things about the Apple TV. I have thousands of digital photos I've taken over the years that just sit on my computer's hard drive. With the Apple TV, while I listen to music, the screensaver kicks on and beautifully presents all the great memories I've captured with my digital camera. You can also create photo albums to view slideshows, but I typically prefer the random presentation of the screen saver.
Customer Review: Another Dominating Product By Apple
Summary: 5 Stars
The Apple TV is an exceptional device that can be used to stream or store your media. I have about 100 movies (2gb a piece) and 150 TV Shows (80GB all together) so I opted to stream all of my content from my main computer. Setup was a breeze and it works exceptionally seamlessly. I have not found a disadvantage to streaming yet, it loads enough of the movie in about 2 seconds so that you can begin watching immediately. There is no skipping or buffering at anytime through out the movie and that is pretty good considering I am using a Wireless G 54mbps network.
Another thing I really enjoy about the Apple TV is the nice interface. It is simple and elegant as is the Apple TV itself. It is easy to use, so easy that anybody can just pick it up and learn it instantly. I would recommend this to anyway who enjoys movies and would like an easy way to build a digital library of movies that they can simply stream to their tv.
Oh yeah, also the movies that apple sells on iTunes are equivalent to DVD quality so the picture is very nice, and if you load your own DVDs 2400kbps is a perfect bit rate to use, it uses about 1.5 to 2 gigs a movie and it is DVD quality.