Apple TV Review

In a previous blog post, I provided an overview of the Apple TV. This blog post provides additional details of the Apple TV. The Apple TV does not play TV channels. It is not a cable box. However, the Apple TV interfaces with media content, like music and movies. The Apple TV is great for your home theater. I like how you can mirror your iPad 2 and iPhone 4S to your HDTV. To review, mirroring is officially called AirPlay Mirroring, and this refers to showing your iDevice screen on the TV. Note, the Apple TV does not mirror the iPad 1 or previous devices such as iPod Touch first generation. The video quality is very good. There is also a Music section on the Apple TV menu that allows you to select and listen to music stored in iCloud. To listen to music without having a device, you must pay for iTunes Match. iTunes Match scans your ripped library of music and finds the songs in the iTunes store and then downloads an iTunes drm-free copy. Otherwise, you stream your iTunes library from your computer or iDevice to the Apple TV. You can set up Home Sharing on the Apple TV. Home Sharing allows you to view other computers' libraries on your Wi-Fi network. If you have Macs in your home theater, you'll need to disable infrared. This is because I clicked on the remote that came with my Apple TV and it caused certain applications on my Apple laptop to open. Other things that Apple TV can run include Netflix movies, PhotoStream, Flickr and some TV shows. The Apple TV box is approximately 3x3x1" in size. I rate it 4 1/2 out of 5 stars.