I could not live without the Apple in my home theatre set up :
Setup was quick and easy. I used the ethernet connection since I have one in the cabinet. Synced to my computer no problem. Streams from my daughter’s computer as well. Familiar interface everyone in the family can navigate the system. My only complaint is the lack of lyrics. If Apple can do this on the iPod, they should be able to do it on Apple .
First off go get yourself a flickr account for $25 a year and pump it full of every photo you have ever taken. No need to synch photos from your home computer when they can stream effortlessly from the web. .Mac is a bit more of a hassle i think. More $$$ too. Flickr is the best and cheapest site for packing thousands of high rez photos. You can even use flickr for the screensaver. I swear without Flickr this machine would be half as cool. So thats the skinny on the photo aspect of this.
Once Apple partners with Netflix this will be the ultimate. It is nice to get the latest slop off this box for a few bucks but once I can get any film then i will be happy. I’m sure it’s in the works. if I am conceptualizing it in my basement i am sure there are businessmen riding the idea like a donkey. Even though I can not rip my own DVDs to this i do not care. Wild workarounds are not for me either. Once we can rip a DVD like a CD in a few minutes then perhaps I will want that feature. Still if i can access anything in the future for a few bucks or a monthly fee then i will never buy a DVD again. only the short sighted will think of the loss of the DVD market. They have 2 choices the way I see it. Either allow us to rip our own store bought films, or make it all available to us online. Anything less will just create a bottleneck and keep many folk from coming to the market at all.
So anyway. back to Apple . It should have a terabyte hard drive. 160 gigs today is peanuts. It will do me fine for a while. Hopefully they will allow a stackable USB drive to attach in the future. Hopefully.
Films download nice and fast. Fast enough to begin watching right away anyway. Youtube is amazing. Fast & funny. The podcast was never my thing but I took a look and it’s almost all free and very fast too. If you are into it you will be happy. the shows are more plentiful than the movies which is a bit backwards. Anyway, very nice. Could be a bit cheaper. shows should be no more than 99cents, especially old garbage.