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Apple have so many fingers in so many pies (Apple pies, ha ha HA!) it was only a matter of time before they started making televisions. Wait. Apple TV isn’t a television? What is it then? A simple, user-friendly media server, you say? Oh, right.
As with all things Apple makes, the Apple TV box is subtle, sexy and slim, and packs in a 160GB hard drive – enough for 200 hours of video. Plug it in and it can stream media from a networked Windows PC or Mac, synching up to iTunes and whizzing tunes around at super-speeds thanks to the blisteringly fast draft-N Wi-Fi link.
Simplicity is key once again. And via the ever-recognisable Apple menus and Apple remote, you’ll be streaming TV shows and HD movies direct from the iTunes Store as if you’d been doing it your whole life. You can even watch the latest videos of kids headbutting dads in the unmentionables or cats surfing in the bath on Flickr and YouTube. If you want.
Apple TV, unfortunately, isn’t one of Apple’s premium products. And the reason for this is compatibility – it doesn’t play nice with others. It can’t show DivX, XviD or WMV files natively. And while you can rent HD flicks to watch on your HDTV, the 720p files aren’t exactly going to match the full-HD Blu-rays we’ve become used to. Good then, but not great.
