AppleTV: Whats the point?

[TheCake]

http://www.apple.com/appletv/

I fail to see the point of this product unless I'm missing something quite important.

From their website:
Apple TV puts your iTunes Libraryhttp://www.apple.com/appletv/tour.html — movies, TV shows, music, and podcasts — plus movie trailers from Apple.com on your TV. And your digital photos from iPhoto on a Mac or Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Album on a Windows PC appear in high definition, so you can put on a stunning big-screen slideshow.

On my iPod (borrowed - thanks babe) I have some movies and some music. They have been lowered in quality to fit and still look good on the iPod. If I play these back on the AppleTV they will look crummy, yet if I use the much higher quality videos they'll never fit on the AppleTV unit as its only got a 40GB disk - which brings me onto another problem, I've got over 40GB of music. So what do I do???

Am I missing something here?

 

[Tom]

Not really its a streaming box with onboard storage cache.

Its got the best interface of all these products, and more features are planned.
TBH its more usefull in the us than it is here.

 

[Mells]

try smoking some crack and they you'll realise that Steve Jobs just wants your money!

Saying that I got a nano for my birthday and its wicked. Shame its let down by iTunes! Biggest bag of s**t I've used in ages. I'd go so far to say its as bad as the Sony .net walkman software of yester year imo.

 

[TheCake]

Here we are:

In addition to your single synchronized computer, you can designate up to five other computers as sources for your Apple TV. From these machines, you "stream" the content over your wireless or wired network, instead of actually transferring them, but the music and video shows up on the TV just as if it had been synchronized to the Apple TV's own hard disk.

 

[Daz]

It makes *no* sense.. until you start thinking really hard about it.

Me and my mate have done this for 3 days solid - even to the point of looking at Vista, Windows Mobile 6 etc..

If you start thinking and living like Apple think you should, it's truely awesome (TV, iPhone, Mac's, Airport, etc..). And, the scary thing is, if you think about it hard enough, it all makes sense.

We've spent hours, and hours, and hours comparing everything..

 

[Mike_182]

It's a great bit of kit. A Media Streaming device that doesn't require me to install a piece of software that 99% of people into this sort of thing won't already have...

iTunes is usually on EVERY home computer, including my grandparents. The D-Link box my dad bought isn't as fast, isn't as good looking and requires 3rd party software that isn't particularly well written...

 

[TheCake]

I'm liking it more now I know it can stream data. From what the apple site said it couldn't stream. Mmmm I like.

 

[jongsr4]

try smoking some crack and they you'll realise that Steve Jobs just wants your money!

Saying that I got a nano for my birthday and its wicked. Shame its let down by iTunes! Biggest bag of s**t I've used in ages. I'd go so far to say its as bad as the Sony .net walkman software of yester year imo.

Really?! I think itunes is a great program, what is there not to like about it?

 

[Daz]

I'm liking it more now I know it can stream data. From what the apple site said it couldn't stream. Mmmm I like.

See, we were the opposite - streaming is pretty silly without a proper sync!

 

[sneeks]

Some good hacks are available for AppleTV to allow it to support alot more media types.

http://www.appletvhacks.net/