Why Apple TV can be a winner

Stephen Withers
Tuesday, 20 March 2007 14:15

Your IT - Home IT

US market analysts think Apple TV will be a success, and I reckon they're right.

Apple TV was announced last year and is due to ship any day now, but I didn't initially "get" the Apple TV concept, and I couldn't see why it should succeed where other devices such as the media players from D-Link and other companies failed to have a major impact impact.

Then, with a bit of help from various colleagues, it clicked: Apple TV is an iPod for your TV.

People are now familiar with the iPod model of managing media on their computers and transferring it to another device for playback while they're away from the keyboard.

And that's exactly what Apple TV does. You manage your video, audio and photo library on a Mac or PC, then sync the content you want to the Apple TV and play it at leisure.

Sure, the Apple TV's hard drive is relatively small - but it only acts as a staging area. Doesn't it make more sense to have your main storage accessible to your computer, either internally, externally via USB or FireWire, or better still hanging off your home network so it is also available to other computers and devices?

The idea of buffering the content on a drive inside the Apple TV also means that playback isn't going to be disturbed during bursts of heavy traffic on a wired network or when interference slows the throughput of a wireless network.

But why might you want an Apple TV rather than a PVR? A good question, and one I'll try to answer.