Jim Holden Blog

Apple iTV

April 1st, 2007

I’ve seen one I’ve touched one I’ve played with one!

So what do I think? Not bad, small and descreet with typical Apple styling. They get hot, quickly, but overall I think they are a nice design and the plug and play straight into the HDMI of your nearest HDTV is quick and simple. I had a go on the 63″ Samsung Plasma (720p) and it was nice.

Connectivity to ethernet or wireless is easy (though the keyboard and nav stuff to enter passwords is… interesting . iTunes needs to be v7.1+ to work with iTV. I’ll play around more with it when I get the chance - so far the resultion of the media clips available via the web are.. poor when you consider that Apple is specifically aiming this product at the HDTV market where we expect HIGH resolution content.

Personally I’m going to wait and see. Ill only give this thing the slightest hint of my OWN money when there are reliable hacks for XviD, DivX, maybe H.264 and MPG. I have no interest in paying Apple a bean until the content I have plays without issue. Nice try, but eventually they WILL learn. It’s funny that Apple has no issue pushing out MP3 playback on it’s devices but denies XviD and such which are the most popular media codecs out there.

Ill post a pic when I get a chance.

Entry Filed under: Technology