Apple TV with 160GB Hard Drive - MB189LL/A | 
 enlarge | Brand: Apple
Category: CE
List Price: $229.99
Buy New: $218.00
You Save: $11.99 (5%)
(as of 7/30/10 09:44 PDT - Details)
New (10) Used (10) Refurbished (1) from $169.99
Rating:  136 reviews
Sales Rank: 704
Format: CD
Platforms: Mac, Windows
Media: Electronics
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Operating System: Windows & Macintosh
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0
Dimensions (in): 0.1 x 0.1 x 0
MPN: MB189LL/A
Model: MB189LL/A
UPC: 885909179404
EAN: 0885909179404
ASIN: B000RQHAUA
Release Date: January 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Multimedia device connects to television for instant HD movie rentals, TV show purchases, and more | | • | Play iTunes music on your home theater speakers | | • | View all your photos in HD on your widescreen TV | | • | Built-in 160 GB hard drive for local content storage | | • | Measures 7.7 x 7.7 x 1.1 inches (WxDxH); backed by a one-year warranty |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
APPLE TV W/ 160GB
Amazon.com Product Description
Amazon.com Product Description With the Apple TV, you'll have instant access to a whole world of entertainment. Whether you want to rent HD movies, buy HD TV show, listen to your iTunes music collection, or show off your photos, Apple TV will bring all of it into your living room and onto your television without any computer required. 
Choose from the largest selection of on-demand HD movies. | Put more HD on your HDTV.
HD movies. HD TV shows. HD podcasts. With Apple TV, they’re all on demand. You get instant access to newly released Hollywood hits and popular classic and library titles, including the largest selection of on-demand HD movies. And now you can also purchase and watch your favorite TV shows in brilliant HD one day after they air. The largest selection of on-demand HD movies.
Apple TV gives you instant access to the largest selection of on-demand HD movies. Choose a movie, and in minutes, you’re watching the opening credits with theater-like Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. HD rentals start at $3.99, and you have 30 days to start watching. Hit Play, and it’s yours to watch as many times as you want in 24 hours. 
The elegant Apple TV lets you instantly access a world of entertainment. View larger. | 
Despite the small size, Apple TV has a full complement of outputs. View larger. | Rent or buy standard-definition movies.
Choose from the most popular Hollywood titles, from comedy to drama, romance to classics, independents to thrillers. Standard-definition movie rentals are $2.99 for library titles and $3.99 for new releases. Short films — including popular Pixar animated shorts — are only $1.99. And if you like the movie you just rented, you can make it a permanent part of your digital collection. Movie purchases start at $9.99, and most titles are available the day they’re released on DVD. Play your music through your home theater system.
With Apple TV, iTunes syncs wirelessly to your TV, so all the music you’ve collected can now be played on the best speakers in your house. The new Genius feature studies your iTunes library to automatically create a playlist of songs that go great together. You can also browse and buy music videos on the iTunes Store. And sync songs and videos purchased on Apple TV to your computer and iPod or iPhone. Now appearing on HDTV: Your photos. YouTube videos. And podcasts, too.
Your photos deserve a bigger stage. And Apple TV puts them on your widescreen TV, where everybody can see them in stunning high definition. Select My Photos to browse photos that are on your Mac or PC. You can also access your Flickr or MobileMe galleries. And you no longer have to gather around a computer screen to see YouTube videos and podcasts — Apple TV plays them big and bold on your TV’s spectacular screen. Lots of Features in a Small Package
The Apple TV features a 160GB hard drive for storing content locally, and has an HDMI port, component video, optical audio, analog RCA stereo audio, 10/100BASE-T Ethernet, USB 2.0, and 802.11n wireless networking. All this in an elegant box that measures just 7.7 by 7.7 x 1.1 inches (WxDxH). A remote control is included so you can navigate all your choices from the comfort of your couch. System Requirements
Apple TV requires a Mac (running Mac OS X 10.3.9 or 10.4.9 or later) or PC (running Windows XP Home or Professional (SP2) or Vista), iTunes 7.6 or later (iTunes 8.0.1 recommended), and either an Airport Extreme, Wi-Fi 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11n wireless network (wireless video streaming requires 802.11g or 802.11n) or 10/100BASE-T Ethernet network. Apple TV is backed by a one-year warranty. What's on the Box
Apple TV, remote, power cord, documentation.
Apple's legendary ease-of-use makes the Apple TV fun and easy to use. |
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 136
 It's Two Devices In One March 8, 2008
Mike from Michigan
107 out of 111 found this review helpful
Apple really needs to advertise and explain this thing better. It's an awesome device that does many things, but it's easier to understand it if you think of it really having only two distinct functions:
1) It's for renting HD movies. Give that new HD TV something to make it shine. Sure Blu-ray has won the format war, but what format war is next? Skip the wars and just stream the video. No clutter of DVDs and players to buy. Yes the selection is small now (it just started a month ago) but it will soon build up to include newer movies as they are released. Beware of old movies being released as HD. Renting "Blazing Saddles" in HD is not going to impress you. So, the only REAL new HD movies are the ones in theaters now and will soon be released for rental. We actually kept our Netflix account for renting the bulk of the older movies and TV shows we still like. Renting an HD movie for $5 is a cheap night of entertainment. I have a 6.0 Mbps internet connection and the HD movies are ready to play in about 1-2 minutes. You watch the movie as the rest of it downloads. I never had it stutter during playback.
2) It's an iPod for your TV. If you use iTunes and have photos, music, and home movies, this makes it easy to view them on your TV. I made my last vacation video in HD by using Final Cut Express and exporting it in the Apple TV format. Just drop that movie into iTunes and it will sync with the Apple TV. Viewing the still shots in HD is really amazing. Being like an iPod, Apple TV only shows content that you already have in iTunes. Don't think of it as some kind of backup drive for your music or movies.
Sure it does some other stuff like watching You Tube, but if the top two features are what you need, then this is for you. The simple "spouse friendly" remote is great too. My wife can now easily play our music collection without my computer being on.
ps: I bought the "take one" version of Apple TV. All I had to do was run the firmware updater and mine is now the same as the Take Two version (5.1 sound and all). The old and new Apple TV's have the same hardware.
One last thing - rentals are paid through the iTunes store so you can use iTunes gift cards to pay for movies!
Enjoy!
PS - one more reason - the $0.99 movie of the week. Apple has started offering a $0.99 movie rental each week. We've had Escape from Alcatraz, The ghost and the darkness, The Dead Zone and others. Not blockbusters, but certainly worth $0.99 and gets you used to the renting experience in an easy way.
A great box for your old home-made movies. November 3, 2007
Sahra Badou (Tokyo, Japan)
110 out of 125 found this review helpful
What a joy it is to have all my home made movies, originally shot in Super 8 (remember that format?), on my Apple TV.
I had tons of old Super 8 movies, some of them filmed by my dad some 60 years ago. Watching them now required setting up the old family projector, and pulling up the portable white screen. Some movies became dry, and tore in the projector, so watching one of the old movies became a process of stop, remove film, glue it back together, and continue watching.
My brother eventually gave all the movies to a specialized company that converted them all into mpeg format. Once in mpeg, they were transferred to iTunes, and then to the Apple TV via the home network.
What a pleasure it is now to watch my family's old home made movies on my TV screen. It is now a snap to switch between my movies, and by being so accessible, I can now show them to other family members and friends.
The Apple TV is really like an iPod. It is controlled by a very simple remote control with one menu button, a play/pause button, surrounded in a circle by the forward and rewind buttons, and the volume control (`+ and -` buttons also used for navigation). You are going to wish all remote controls were that simple.
Navigating the Apple TV is like navigating an iPod. You can store video, music, and photos. There is a slideshow feature for your pictures that will display your pictures on your TV with background music of your choice. The background music can be chosen at random from your music library.
Though as simple as an iPod to operate, the Apple TV is itself a stripped-down Mac mini, running a version of Mac OS X. When you plug in the Apple TV to your TV, you will not need to do any configuration. It's basically plug-and-play. Audio and video cables (not included) connect it to your TV. There is an HDMI output.
The Apple TV comes with a wireless feature allowing you to wirelessly connect to your home network. However, in order to sync your Apple TV with your iTunes, I would recommend you use an Ethernet cable to connect to your home network. The video, music, and photo transfer will be faster through an Ethernet cable. Once you sync your Apple TV for the first time, you may then disconnect the network cable and use the wireless feature in the Apple TV to update its content.
I also recommend you first start syncing at night. In this way, the syncing process will go on while you are sleeping. My Apple TV is 160 Gigabyte strong, and to put that much information on it might take the better part of a day! In most cases, depending on your hardware, connecting through the network Ethernet cable will make the transfer much faster than connecting wirelessly, particularly over 802.ub, 802.ug, and 802.un networks.
You can sync content from only one computer at a time, and you can't add content manually--for example, by dragging it from iTunes library to the Apple TV icon on iTunes' Source list, as you might do with an iPod. If you choose to sync with a different computer, all the data on the Apple TV will be replaced.
Another nice feature of the Apple TV is its ability to connect to the iTunes store, through your computer (either a Mac or PC), where you can download music and videos. Like the iPod, the Apple TV will neatly categorize your media for you, and automatically download the covers of the music albums and films.
One negative comment I have about the Apple TV is that you cannot transfer the media files on your Apple TV to your computer. It is only a one way process, with files moving from your iTunes to your Apple TV, and not vice versa. So if you want to send an Apple TV to a friend, loaded with your music and video library, your friend cannot connect it to his computer. If he does so, all the media on the Apple TV will be erased when it tries to sync with your friend's iTunes, replacing it with the media files on your friend's computer. This also applies to the iPod. There are software on the internet that claim to address this problem, but I have not tried any of them.
Be careful about earlier versions of Apple TV. Earlier versions don't support streaming videos. Newer versions shipped give you the option of navigating YouTube, and streaming their videos. I think that older versions can be updated to support streaming videos.
Apple TV also has limited support for video formats. This means that you will have to rely on tools like Techspanion's Visual-Hub to convert videos to Apple TV-ready formats. You can also use Apple QuickTime. You cannot directly burn a DVD into iTunes. DVDs also need to be converted in order to have them transferred to your Apple TV.
You can stream movies, however, you can't stream photos. Instead, on the computer synced with the Apple TV, iTunes formats the pictures you select and copies them to the Apple TV's hard drive. Once they're on the Apple TV, you can view a selected album or your entire photo library as a slide show. You can choose from a variety of transitions, as well as determine the display time for each picture.
Apple has chosen to say that generally, 5.1 audio is not supported.
The Apple TV does not offer true HD quality.
Apple Computer Inc. has changed its name to Apple Inc. With the name change, Apple is now promising us gadgetry other than computers. The iPhone is one example. There's more to come.
Now supports 1080p and 5.1 surround November 7, 2008
Prog Drummer (CT)
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
The content on the Apple iTunes store does not offer 1080p for purchase, but you can rent 1080p content or add it (if you can get it) from your computer. There are also 1080p video podcasts. 5.1 digital surround is now supported and you can rip your DVDs using 5.1 with Handbrake software (free download on the web). Handbrake works with Mac OS 10.5 or > and Windows (if you are unfortunate enough to not have a Mac).
Caveats: It does run hot. The video used to lag, but this seems much better with the latest releases of the OS. The GUI can stick and then jump - so you click 3 times with no effect and then it jumps the 3 positions, etc. The remote control is a pain when typing passwords or searching youtube, etc.
If you have an iPhone (I think iPod Touch also) you can use the Remote Application to control your Apple TV (or iTunes) from your iPhone. It's great and much better than the remote that comes with the Apple TV.
I highly recommend a direct 100 Mb ethernet connection or 802.11n. Do not use this product with 802.11g or slower.
Don't bother with the 40GB version. It's just too small. You'll wish you had the 160GB. The 40GB is only good if you don't buy content - only rent movies. But watch out - if you keep you music on it, you'll want more space.
The Apple TV is great even just as a music jukebox! Even if you don't use it for video. We use it all the time for music. It's easier than hooking up an iPod and having to pick up the iPod to change songs, etc. The GUI on the HDTV screen is so much better. I looked at similar MP3 components for audio only - this was cheaper and had a far superior GUI. It is so easy to use that my wife can do it (she is not technology savvy).
The other great thing is that software updates are free and come automatically over the internet. New features and fixes!
Bottom line: There is no other product like it on the market in terms of cost, intuitive interface, quality, and features.
An amazing product -- the WiFi streaming capability sets it apart July 10, 2009
Roger J. Buffington (Huntington Beach, CA United States)
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
I very respectfully submit that some of the otherwise excellent reviews here on Amazon have not emphasized what I believe to be the main point about the Apple TV accessory. That is the fact that the Apple TV can access movies, TV shows or other videos that are on the user's main computer hard disk without transferring the actual data file (e.g. an MP4 file of a movie) to the hard disk drive on the Apple TV unit. This is a very significant capability. It means that so long as the user has a desktop PC with lots of hard disk space together with a home WiFi network, the Apple TV unit has complete access to the user's video library regardless of the hard disk capacity of the Apple TV unit. To me, this is a very big deal, because I have a very large video library stored on my main desktop computer, which my Apple TV accesses via WiFi. (This capability takes advantage of the fact that hard disk space on one's desktop is very inexpensive these days.) The Apple TV effortlessly accesses and streams a movie video directly over WiFi without the need to download it to the Apple TV Hard Disk. Thus, you are limited only by the disk capacity of your desktop, not by that of the Apple TV. The Apple TV hard disk is vital, of course, if you use the Apple TV in a portable setting away from your main iTunes desktop and WiFi setup. Then you are playing the Apple TV as a direct source of video content from its Hard Disk to your TV. I do this in my boat.
To me, the ability to stream content directly from the desktop to one's widescreen TV via the Apple TV is what sets the Apple TV apart from other source devices such as DVD players. Further, being able to purchase content directly from the iTunes store, even in HD format, adds to the capability of this unit. I have "bought in" to the whole Apple music and video concept, and those of us who have done so will quickly see that the Apple TV is made for us. The Apple TV interface is a great way to browse the iTunes store for movies or whatnot; I personally prefer doing it that way as opposed to accessing the store on my desktop computer.
But even for those who eschew the iTunes store, the Apple TV is terrific if you have other videos such as legally ripped archival MP4 files of movies purchased on DVD, for example. I also enjoy watching History and Military Channel video podcasts, which can be downloaded for free from the iTunes store onto iTunes and then enjoyed on the big screen via the Apple TV unit.
It appears that I am more impressed with the Apple TV unit than many of the other reviewers. The unit is small, elegant, and attractive. Smaller than a DVD player, it does far more and it does it in a much more elegant manner, i.e. all of your content is accessible via the Apple TV menus without hassling with individual DVD disks. The cost is similar to a high-end DVD player. I frankly think that DVDs are rapidly becoming obsolete and that direct digital electronic downloads are the future, but I digress. The unit has wonderful screensaver capability, in sharp contrast to my two DVD players, and various other nice touches. It is great for a full-screen display of photographs. (I am an avid digital photographer, so I in particular appreciate this.) It is very pleasant (great ambiance for parties) to put on a slide show of one's digital photographs, and stream a music playlist to accompany the slide show. Very cool.
Installation was essentially effortless. The unit immediately recognized my wireless network, and accepted the WEP code. My main desktop computer immediately recognized the Apple TV and offered to synch. The Apple TV immediately offered to upgrade its internal operating software over the internet and did so. Even before synching, my entire video content was available on my widescreen TV through the Apple TV via WiFi streaming. I was watching a movie from my iTunes library within minutes. Incredible.
Like all Apple products, the Apple TV is beautifully made, and nicely packaged. I wish that more American companies focused on quality the way Apple does.
I agree with other reviewers that the remote for the Apple TV is kind of small and minimalist for what is destined to become the centerpiece of my video library. Strangely, the remote does not even include a volume control. (You can program many third-party remotes to control the Apple TV and I will probably end up going that route although I have not yet done so.) Hilariously, there is an iPhone app that allows one's iPhone to act as a substitute remote ("Remote") and it is not at all bad. And it is odd how the Apple TV does not even have an "off" switch. These issues are minor, keep the cost down, and perhaps even add to the simple elegance of the unit.
The wireless streaming is what really sets this unit apart, but there is much else to like about it as well. Apple seems to have a clear vision of the future of digital content, and the Apple TV seems to be ideally situated to capitalize on this vision.
Wow, this is awesome February 13, 2008
M. Kreg (USA)
22 out of 26 found this review helpful
They're calling it Apple TV Take 2. In other words, any review before February 12, 2008 is a review of the old model. A huge update--a complete revamp of the system was released as a free upgrade by Apple to make the Apple TV and entirely new device.
You watch the TV shows you want, the movies you want, when you want. We had Tivo and loved it, but Tivo can only record what the networks feed you. With Apple TV, if you want to sit down and watch one of those first episodes from Season 1 of MythBusters, you can search or simply navigate to The Discovery Channel, select MythBusters, Season 1, pick your episode, and begin watching it within a minute or so. All on your big flat-screen TV from the comfort of your couch, using your Apple remote. No computer needs to be turned on. You just need wireless Internet access. You can buy television episodes, movies, or now you can rent movies for about $3.
We cancelled our DirecTV when we bought the original Apple TV last year, but this new update makes live television obsolete. Add to that the ease of an Apple interface, and it's like having an iPod Touch for your TV. We're very, very impressed.
Apple iPod touch 16 GB without Software Updates
Showing reviews 1-5 of 136
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