2:56 PM
Pure Water
Not quite brilliant,
By
Philoguy "David" (Mendocino County, CA United States)This review is from: Apple TV MC572LL/A (2010) (Electronics)
When Amazon offered a free Apple TV last month (October 2011) with purchase of a Yamaha receiver I was about to buy anyway, I was delighted. I'm a bit of an Apple freak. I will only buy Mac computers, I own three different types of iPods, and get most of my music from the iTunes store. So when this tiny, yet powerful unit arrived at the same time as my receiver, I couldn't wait to set it up. First, the good news. The interface is remarkably easy to use. The tiny black box (about 4" x 4") comes with a tiny aluminum remote that controls the content as easily as would an iPod and in the same general way. I got the remote control app for my iPod touch and was soon clicking away on Netflix and YouTube. The nice thing about this unit is that everything is as fast and smooth and elegant as you would expect from an Apple product. Especially compared to the slow, clunky interface on my Panasonic Blu-Ray player.
BUT the bad news is twofold: first, the streaming is all in only 720p for HD content, so you get those annoying color blocks of flattened, upscaled video; and second, there are only HDMI and optical outputs, so on the Yamaha at least, you can't listen to music from the Apple TV in Zone 2, thus I still have to do my wireless iTunes listening through my old AirPort Express.
BUT the bad news is twofold: first, the streaming is all in only 720p for HD content, so you get those annoying color blocks of flattened, upscaled video; and second, there are only HDMI and optical outputs, so on the Yamaha at least, you can't listen to music from the Apple TV in Zone 2, thus I still have to do my wireless iTunes listening through my old AirPort Express.
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