<p>Reading the Christmas gift thread reminded me we were given one of these a couple of years ago. It just sits in the box and my normally pretty tech-savvy dh seems unmotivated to hook it up.</p>
<p>Can someone tell me what Apple TV does or what it provides? Our cable bill is ridiculously high–would we be able to reduce some of the services received by using Apple TV?</p>
<p>The other thing that makes this daunting is that our main TV, a flat screen, and the one hooked up to Comcast’s main box/DVR has wiring through the house as the box is located in a closet not near the actual TV. We had to hire two guys to install it all–not a small endeavor. If we could consider setting up the Apple TV with one of our other TVs it would be much easier but would we have whatever benefit it provides on all our TVs or just that one?</p>
<p>I am researching this right now for my Mom.</p>
<p>I think AppleTV is only good for one TV. It allows you to connect your TV to the internet via apps, not websites. Depending which apps are offered, Pandora, NetFlix, Hulu, etc., you can stream radio (Pandora) and/or video Netflix/Hulu.</p>
<p>I think you just need to plug in the box, connect it to your TV and your wireless router, then see what it offers.</p>
<p>The other top box seems to be Roku2, but AppleTV is sweet for Apple users as it syncs with iTunes & iPad/iPhone apps.</p>
<p>You can also buy a Blu-Ray player that includes the ability to stream all of the services and nowadays some TVs are including this capability to stream content built-in as well. You better hurry up and hook up the Apple TV device before it’s obsolete!</p>
<p>You may be able to reduce some of your cable services by streaming content via the Apple TV unit but it really depends on what you like to watch. Premium networks like Showtime, HBO, etc. aren’t going to give their content away for free so if you’re stuck on some of the current series on those premium providers you probably won’t be able to stream it without still paying them somehow (and I don’t know if they have a mechanism for subscribing outside of cable). You should re-evaluate your cable package to see what you really care about and maybe pare it down. they usually like to hook people into subscribing to the ‘big package’ with up front special deals that last a few months or so and then quietly expire at which point your cable bill suddenly increases.</p>
<p>You could even play a game with the cable company and subscribe to a premium channel for their ‘special for 1 year’ (or whatever) price and then when it expires call them up to cancel at which point they’ll likely offer you another special price for a year on another premium network.</p>
<p>It is a wireless link for your tv, that connects it to your internet connection (youtube, netflix, etc.) and also to your computer (assuming that your computer is connected to your wireless network). </p>
<p>It only costs $99, so it falls into or near the category of “you can’t go wrong”. I would guess it has the greatest appeal to people who regularly view entertainment on their laptop or desktop, and would like to see the same stuff on a bigger screen in a different room.</p>
<p>That isn’t a bad price, but a lot of blue ray players these days costing even less then that offer wireless internet connectivity with apps to do hulu, netflix, etc…I agree with others, Appletv is likely not going to save you money on your cable bill because the real costly elements of your cable bill prob don’t stream, and if they did they would charge you for it (HBO has HBOGO, for example, but that only works for current subscibers to it on cable), same with other premium networks. </p>
<p>One way to lower your cable bill might be to see if there are competing services in your area, like Verizon FIOS or dish tv or whatever, and use that to try and get a better deal. A lot of them are offering so called triple play deals with phone, internet and cable tv for 80 something a month in my area, and even if you add some premium channels to that might be cheaper. My big wish is someday stream everything over the internet and pay for channels I actually watch, but not likely to happen anytime soon, and if that happens the cable companies will simply jack up the price of internet access to make up for lost revenue from the cable tv side.</p>
<p>dadx, so it’s a matter of connecting the apple tv to our wireless network? How does it connect to the TV? Is it correct that it can only work with one TV (so, if you want to watch netflix via apple tv, you can only watch it on the one TV connected to it)? Also, what is it that ‘only costs $99’?</p>
<p>gladgraddad, thanks for the suggestions but we do have the best package with comcast for our needs due to a desire for certain premium channels, etc. and, we have been able to achieve mildly reduced rates for 6-12 months at a time when we we’ve able to sign up for a special–definitely feel stuck with our high cable bill :{</p>
<p>(its in the ipod category under the apple store)</p>
<p>You just plug it in, and connect it to your tv with an hdmi cable. If you don’t have an hdmi input to the tv, you’d have to buy and adapter (don’t know how that would work out).</p>
<p>It essentially works as a wireless adapter for your tv, with its own built-in software menu, so yes, you can only use it on one tv at a time. Its quite small (think hockey puck), and could easily be moved, although you wouldn’t want to do that a lot. </p>
<p>The $99 price gets you the hockey puck apple tv unit, the power cord, and a remote. You have to provide your own hdmi cable, but I buy those from amazon or some other cheap place. No need to pay $30 for cables. I bought it without really knowing what it did to give me a “stocking stuffer” for someone. </p>
<p>It is a bit of a novelty. The remote is a little slow, but I do think that its decent if you watch entertainment on a computer screen and would like a more user friendly alternative.</p>
<p>I love my Apple TV that plays all tv programs I want to watch from my podcasts on my apple computer. It does more than that. It plays programs from my computer like the beep!</p>
<p>We just installed ours last week, and it’s already worth it for this particular feature: It can mirror anything you can watch on your iPad or iPhone using your home wireless connection. If you have a group of people you want to torture with a slide show, you simply select “Apple TV” from the airplay menu on your iPad and you see your slide show on the big screen TV. This also works with movies or other shows available from iTunes; so if you have access to ethernet somewhere you can download a movie in a few minutes to your iPad, then watch it at home using Airplay. Do this to get to the Airplay menu:
Press your on/off button twice on the iPad. Ap icons will appear across the bottom of the screen.
Swipe your finger from left to right across the bottom to see the airplay controls. Touch the button to the left of the sound volume control, and select Apple TV. </p>
<p>We discovered our home internet connection is WAY too slow to watch streamed movies, so I need to contact AT&T to find out about getting a better connection. It’s frustrating, because on their web site it looks like we’ll have to pay for a wireless router if we want to upgrade and we already use the Airport Extreme. I suspect we’ll just stick with Netflix DVDs and iPad loaded movies for now.</p>
<p>We have it on a TV in our basement. My daughter and a friend installed it one day when I was at work. I have no idea how it works. I think we had to pay some small fee for the service in addition to the $99 for the device. </p>
<p>Collage1, thanks for starting the thread. I was wondering the same thing. And justforthis, thanks for responding to my question about whether the computer needs to be a Mac.</p>
<p>Possibly, but another likely scenario is that you’d just wind up spending more on iTunes movie rentals, purchases, and streaming services like Netflix or Hulu Plus. It all depends on your viewing habits. iTunes is a la carte (check prices per movie/show). Netflix streaming is prix fixe ($7.99/mo. for unlimited streaming, with fair-to- good movie selection). Some major league sports are available at per-season rates. Compare these rates to what you’re paying for premium cable; ask yourself if you’d be willing to wait 6 months or more for the next season of Homeland, Downton Abbey, or whatever you watch. </p>
<p>I have AppleTV connected to a 32" flat screen in our bedroom via HDMI cable. It receives our household wireless internet service. The wireless “base station” (router) is one floor down, with a wire connection (ethernet) to the household cable modem. A splitter sends another cable trunk to a TV in our living room - which I rarely watch anymore except for a bit of news in the evening. Two laptops also access the wireless service.</p>
<p>We have basic cable TV service (no HBO, Showtime, etc) and high-speed internet. Virtually all the movies we watch are through AppleTV, usually through Netflix streaming or iTunes (YouTube movies are another possibility but I’ve only seen one or two of these). I’m happy with this set up (although I wish the Netflix streaming movie selection were a little better). </p>
<p>If you set the AppleTV to the highest HD resolution, you may experience slow downloads or annoying pauses in the streaming. With a smaller TV (< 40" or so) you should be able to set AppleTV to a lower resolution/bandwidth without noticing much difference in display quality (in which cases you’ll get faster downloads with fewer, or no, interruptions).</p>
<p>An advantage to streaming from your computer is the interface for selecting what you want to watch is better than from a DVD player or an app on a smart TV. </p>
<p>But you might need to buy Hulu Plus & Netflix and spend time going through websites of networks to figure out what you want to watch. The time spent doing work to watch TV is annoying. It feels more annoying because TV is just there - turn it on, watch - and now you’re expected to spend effort to manage TV. I think a big appeal of netflix, etc. is that people spend this management time at work; they go through their playlist or queue at work so they feel at home like they’re reaping a reward from work.</p>