During the last week end, I happened to buy an Apple TV. It started from just wanting an in car FM broacaster system to transmit all my music from my iPod with the FM signal to my car radio reception. And since my daugther has her new iPod nano, this system should be easily sharable. Belkin has this little gadget that comes with the car cigarett lighter plugin iPod holder with FM transmitter. So I bought one at 4,000 Baht. It didn't work. I can only hear a very thin voice on my radio.So I just brought back the unit to the iStudio Mac shop for a trade in with other products. There was nothing else that was a close substitue to what I wished for. So I decide to switch with an Apple TV, which I long had an eye on. I ended up paying 11,000 Baht extra. This is silly, isn't it?
Anyhow, what I did was I configured the Apple TV to connect to my unbroadcast wireless network. I just typed in the SSID of my WiFi Access Point and key in the WPA key manually. It was so easy. It obtained the IP address from my existing DHCP pool.
Apple TV works in 2 modes, the Sync mode and the Streaming mode. The Sync mode allow only 
1 PC/Mac to connect to Apple TV, while the streaming mode allow upto 5 machines to stream the movie from. I sync my Windows XP PC with my 40 GB apple TV. I bought the 40GB model because I wish to store all my movie, songs, etc. files on my drives on the network and will only sync/stream when only I wanted to. With technic like this, I won't need the large disk space on the Apple TV. Another added advantage is that I can store and index all my converted entertainment in the digital media format which can be easily search.
1 PC/Mac to connect to Apple TV, while the streaming mode allow upto 5 machines to stream the movie from. I sync my Windows XP PC with my 40 GB apple TV. I bought the 40GB model because I wish to store all my movie, songs, etc. files on my drives on the network and will only sync/stream when only I wanted to. With technic like this, I won't need the large disk space on the Apple TV. Another added advantage is that I can store and index all my converted entertainment in the digital media format which can be easily search. I used component cable (RGB) with Optical Cable for sound. I hooked it up to my home theatre system. The sound and picture quality is great. If you have older system that support the composit video only, Apple TV is not right for you yet.
Apple TV can load movie trailers and the Top Ten DVD teaser direct from iTune Store. It's very nifty. So I had a great time playing around with it. I think this is the pre-hiostoric version of the Internet TV. Next thing that I wish to try is the viewing of contents from YouTube. I'll let you know how things goes.
