Apple TV - should I or shoudn't I?

Only you know what you need from the device.

Here's what the ATV2 will do

Stream content from your iTunes library (depending on format)
Stream photos from your iMac to ATV
Stream Youtube, Netflix, and Podcasts natively
Internet radio
Stream rentals from the iTunes store (TV only in the US currently)
Stream from applicable apps on iPhone/iPod to ATV2 via airplay

You will not be able to stream video sites

There is great potential with airplay, and rumors have spread about an app store but it's all speculation at this point.

Do you have ATV or are you still contemplating.

Here are the accepted formats for ATV, if the movies are compatible then yes.

1. H.264 video up to 720p, 30 frames per second, Main Profile level 3.1 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps per channel, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

2. MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Simple Profile with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .mp4, and .mov file formats

3. Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps, 1280 by 720 pixels, 30 frames per second, audio in ulaw, PCM stereo audio in .avi file format

If they are in the correct format, yes

you get broadcast TV signals anyway I assume...... The $99 is worth it, and a big improvement over my 1st Gen ATV

If I had the chance to buy mine again, I wouldn't.

It would be slightly more helpful if you would tell us why.

It wouldn't fair to voice such an opinion if your reason was lets say that you haven't set your network up properly or because you bought it for a tv that it won't work with without reading the specifications.

In my particular case I know the network is set up properly, and it does work with my TV. I haven't yet had a run longer than 24 hours that didn't involve at least one pull-the-plug-and-force-a-reboot, countless erase-config-and-reset, and at least 3 wipe-and-restore-from-itunes restores thus far.

I probably wouldn't purchase it again, either. It just doesn't feel ready for prime time. Home entertainment devices should "just work", and this doesn't. When you want to watch a movie, you don't want to spend 20 minutes toying with the setup first.

Funny how mine does "just work" . There are many factors to consider when troubleshooting and it's not as easy as saying it's apple's apple.

(shrug)

I can only speak for myself and my own experience. No doubt others have other experiences. It's always annoying when making a comment to see the inevitable response that "well it works for me, so clearly you're doing something wrong".

In my particular case, the Apple TV doesn't always work when plugged into wired ethernet. To diagnose, I tried other equipment plugged into that same port. All of it worked, including multiple other Apple pieces of equipment. The Apple TV didn't. I ran an ethernet sniffer to that port and confirmed the Apple TV wasn't talking at all - no packets whatsoever. Reboot didn't cure it. Reset didn't cure it. Restore via iTunes did.

Clearly I was doing something wrong though.

Slithy wrote:
Clearly I was doing something wrong though.

clearly you have a faulty unit.
however if you had mentioned the specific fault you had previously then maybe you wouldn't have got the response you did.

Chenks wrote:
clearly you have a faulty unit.

Though oddly enough Apple themselves don't seem to think so. Since a restore from iTunes fixed it, they feel the hardware is okay and this was a software issue.

however if you had mentioned the specific fault you had previously then maybe you wouldn't have got the response you did.

I haven't had just this one specific fault. I just mentioned it as it was the one that I spent an hour on last night swapping cables around and running tcpdump. I've also had the subtitle problem that many people on these boards have had issues with, a bunch of general freeze-ups, the unauthorized HDMI connection problem once, downloads getting unexpectedly "stuck", losing connection with the iPhone remote app, etc.

The v2 is a new device running new code. There are going to be bugs, and no doubt they will be fixed. In fact, the update a few weeks ago fixed a lot of the problems I was having, but even now it's more flaky than I'd like. I can't even remember the last time my Tivo wedged up - it's been at least a year or two. That's an unfair comparison of course, as the Tivo has been around a lot longer and gone through umpteen rounds of bug fixes. No doubt as the software improves, the Apple TV will get better.

It's not better yet, though - hence my original post in this thread. The question was "should I or shouldn't I?" My answer was (essentially) "I'm not sure if I'd buy it again". Would I feel differently after a year of updates to smooth out some of the annoyances? Probably.