Nanci / Apple TV owners

What are the benefits of Apple TV over some of the other devices out there? Does Apple have more free content?

I don't know the answer to that, really, because I haven't used any of the others. My choice is based on:

Being able to access all my Apple content- music, videos, movies- purchased from iTunes. If I look at anything like that on my phone (ipad, Macbook)- there's an icon right there to send it to the Apple TV.

I have a smart (Sony) TV, which has a Netflix channel, but it buffers a lot more, and has errors a lot more. Even though my TV has it built in, the ATV handles Netflix better.

I like Apple products track record for reliability. I think my ATV is the second generation- it works flawlessly, still. Plus, Apple products are minimalistic, cleanly designed, and pretty to look at, in my opinion.

I guess I could be using my TV as a monitor for my macbook, via the ATV- but I've never felt the need to.

You know what else is cool- if I go to anyone else's house with wifi and an ATV, and want to play a song or show them a video or whatever- my device (iphone, usually) finds their ATV without me even asking, and offers that as an option.

Pretty much all I do with mine is listen to music I have already purchased, which is stored on my devices. Watch Netflix. Listen to iTunes Radio. And be able to do the same at Rich's house. I have my Netflix account logged into Rich's ATV at his house- so that's always available up there. I _think_ I may have rented a movie from iTunes once or twice, but they are so cheap I generally just buy them.

A good forum to read about ATV (or any Apple rpoducts) is imore.com

Thanks Nanci. I have Netflix and plan to try Hulu+. Right now I use the kids old Wii which really doesn't work well IMHO (remote mainly). I started looking at other dedicated devices (ATV, Roku, Chromecast, etc.). I too like Apple products. Does ATV block any web content from other than Apple approved sources?

Anyone else have other devices throw out some pros and cons.

I freaking hate it. I would use a few more colourful words here but I can't.
I'm sorry but I really, really do. Ours gives us nothing but issues - and it's not even broken. It needs restarting constantly, and then brings us to a screen we ca't get out of. Googling it doesn't give us any real answers.
I personally like my LG Blu Ray player (in our bedroom) MUCH better, and it does almost as many things (including internet, YouTube, Netflix, whatever else APP-style things you want). The only reason we use the Apple TV in the living room is because my partner has a Mac, and can download things on there and wirelessly transport them to watch via the TV.
Just my opinion on the product.

Originally Posted by NH93

I freaking hate it. I would use a few more colourful words here but I can't.
I'm sorry but I really, really do. Ours gives us nothing but issues - and it's not even broken. It needs restarting constantly, and then brings us to a screen we ca't get out of. Googling it doesn't give us any real answers.
I personally like my LG Blu Ray player (in our bedroom) MUCH better, and it does almost as many things (including internet, YouTube, Netflix, whatever else APP-style things you want). The only reason we use the Apple TV in the living room is because my partner has a Mac, and can download things on there and wirelessly transport them to watch via the TV.
Just my opinion on the product.

What generation do you use?

I had a second generation (or it might have been third) Apple tv for about a year in use, finally sold it several months ago after not using it for near on a year. I'm completely non techie and know nothing about the guts of this stuff. I can say that it was a decent device and is very helpful if you already have a ton of other Apple devices, I had just gotten my iPad at the time we bought it. It did tend to need to be set back to factory and rebooted fairly often, sometimes two and three or more times a month, other times it would be fine for several months. I never used anything but Netflix, iTunes and YouTube with it and used the Airplay feature to stream stuff from my iPad to the tv with it a fair amount.

However, my husband is decidedly not an Apple fan and doesn't own any other Apple devices, which leads to one of my big complaints about Apple, their various stuff meshes-syncs, wonderfully for the most part but Apple stuff generally doesn't play well with others! Once I married him and was the only one with the Apple devices that didn't get along with his various other gadgets, the Apple tv got put into storage because his non Apple gadgets all worked together but not with it.

If you have limited other Apple devices you want to be able to stream through it, the Roku is every bit as wonderful and considerably cheaper. We personally use a PS3 for our streaming but I just bought my Grandparents two Roku boxes a few months ago and have been very pleased with them. I have also heard wonderful things from a few of my relatives about Chromecast.
I never really went looking deeply for content on the Apple tv, so I could be wrong, but I was very impressed with the available content on the Roku, it seemed to have a lot more than the Apple tv did.

Originally Posted by tsst

What generation do you use?

3rd? I don't know. The newest one, it's about a year old. Maybe not even.

If I ever have a problem with mine, 99% of the time just unplugging it and plugging it back in fixes it.

Originally Posted by Tavia

I had a second generation (or it might have been third) Apple tv for about a year in use, finally sold it several months ago after not using it for near on a year. I'm completely non techie and know nothing about the guts of this stuff. I can say that it was a decent device and is very helpful if you already have a ton of other Apple devices, I had just gotten my iPad at the time we bought it. It did tend to need to be set back to factory and rebooted fairly often, sometimes two and three or more times a month, other times it would be fine for several months. I never used anything but Netflix, iTunes and YouTube with it and used the Airplay feature to stream stuff from my iPad to the tv with it a fair amount.

However, my husband is decidedly not an Apple fan and doesn't own any other Apple devices, which leads to one of my big complaints about Apple, their various stuff meshes-syncs, wonderfully for the most part but Apple stuff generally doesn't play well with others! Once I married him and was the only one with the Apple devices that didn't get along with his various other gadgets, the Apple tv got put into storage because his non Apple gadgets all worked together but not with it.

If you have limited other Apple devices you want to be able to stream through it, the Roku is every bit as wonderful and considerably cheaper. We personally use a PS3 for our streaming but I just bought my Grandparents two Roku boxes a few months ago and have been very pleased with them. I have also heard wonderful things from a few of my relatives about Chromecast.
I never really went looking deeply for content on the Apple tv, so I could be wrong, but I was very impressed with the available content on the Roku, it seemed to have a lot more than the Apple tv did.

I have an iMac, four iPhones, two iPads and an AirBook. I like the Apple clean interface. Daughter has a Chromecast and I have played with it some but not much. She has complained about sometimes the casting doesn't work from iDevices. How is the Roku interface?

I haven't tried to interface any other kind of device with the Roku, so I'm not sure how it compares there. That wasn't a concern for my Grandparents, so I didn't even look into it when choosing what to get them.