I’ve been using the Apple troika (iMac, iPod and Apple TV) for a few weeks now and I have to say I am not really impressed by the new toy: Apple TV. I am not bothered by the low quality or a small hard disk. The former is the result of limited bitrate and the latter will probably increase with the next version.
What really doesn’t work for me is the extension of personal music management (iTunes/iPod) to the home entertainment. What I am missing is some form of video/music back-end. Here is why:
At this moment I can either stream videos to Apple TV from multiple computers or sync it with one of our iTunes libraries. But streaming requires to log-in into a computer and run iTunes. It is not really convenient since nobody else can be using that computer. And syncing is not good either. I have a large NAS in our basement and I don’t want to keep copy of the music and video library in the living room.
In the ideal world I would be able to point Apple TV to my NAS and access the files directly. Or there would be a server side component (something like SlimServer) that would stream files to the Apple TV. Unfortunately SlimServer was acquired by Logitech recently. That’s too bad since Apple buing SlimDevices would get very close to an ideal world for me…
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Ideal world with mythtv:
http://www.mythtvtalk.com/forum/archive/o_t/t_1170/mythtv_and_quotfrontend_and_quot_vs_and_quotbackend_and_quot.html
That doesn’t sound like much fun. One of the many things I love about having the Logitech Revue with Google TV from DISH Network is that there are music apps for it. I don’t generally watch TV very much but I’m almost constantly listening to music and Google TV helps me do that even more. I can use the Pandora or Napster apps and even surf the net with Google Chrome. I work for DISH and knew a lot about the Revue but had no idea I would use it for music so much. The Revue with Google TV has definitely exceeded my expectations.