So I am a slacker. I pre-ordered the Apple TV as soon as I could, and I was one of the first to get one shipped, but we’ve been so busy that it sat in it’s shrink wrap until this morning. I finally pulled it out and hooked it up.
It’s the first HD content we’ve ever seen on the Sony WEGA KV-40XBR800 we’ve had since 2002. 1080i looks good, real good; though I still insist that standard NTSC looks awesome when they pay attention to detail the way beer commercial makers do routinely.
The main reason we have this AppleTV is to view content we cannot get from Satellite, Cable, or off the air. We want the fantastic content that comes from the internet, but we want it on the big screen TV rather than on our computer screens. This is kind of the opposite of slingbox, which brings your PVR/DVR content to any computer you want to watch it on.
Terra; The Nature of our World is one example of the fantastic programming you can only get online. I am hoping we can hack the AppleTV to pull from my Democracy Player (soon to become Miro) feed as well as from iTunes and YouTube. There is a lot of fascinating programming on Democracy Player as well. By the way, if you don’t know what I am talking about, download Democracy Player for your Mac, Linux, or Windows computer for free and check it out for yourself. There is of course of lot of silly stuff, but there is also some amazing quality.
Low-Resolution videos saved to iTunes show up and play just fine, but the images are a little fuzzy from being blown up to fill the big Sony screen. High Definition theatrical trailers are stunning (as you’d expect any advertisement to be). Mark Day’s “For Parody Purposes Only” looks great, and of course Terra makes the purchase worthwhile all by itself!
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