Apple TV First Impressions

Well, I got my Apple TV on Friday so I figured I would lay out my impressions of it like most everybody else is doing.

So far I like the design of the device and the simplistic nature so far but the whole annoying as hell "Everything must be in iTunes" crap is really annoying as hell. I know the basic excuses as to the why of it but still, the fact you have to cram everything into the iTunes library.

So the first thing after making sure that it would boot up was to void the warranty and rip it apart to enable SSH on the device plus make a backup copy of the HD in pristine condition. After that was done it was a simple task to put everything back together and start loading all the plugins from all the various places. First was to make sure that I could play Xvid and Divx content from another location on the Apple TV so I pulled down those codecs plus the info for the ATV files plugin. That way I could have another option in finder called files that would be under the Movies folder that I could place other files such as Xvid and Divx files via SSH on the AppleTV and play them from there.

Also I enabled AFP on my old Media Center Mac, my Mac Mini so I could mount afp via my external HD and stream files over the network and so far it works like a champ. It does not play any of my .WMV files but it plays most everything else.

So final words on it is that its a great device but only if you worship iTunes totally, but otherwise hack the box and enable some more cool features on it so you can really use the box to its full potential.