{"id":5383,"date":"2016-01-20T00:34:42","date_gmt":"2016-01-20T00:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/\/?p=5383"},"modified":"2016-01-18T01:54:22","modified_gmt":"2016-01-18T01:54:22","slug":"technology-the-fourth-generation-appletv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adamchandler.me\/blog\/2016\/01\/20\/technology-the-fourth-generation-appletv\/","title":{"rendered":"Technology: The Fourth Generation AppleTV"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AppleTV<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve owned every AppleTV that has been released. I believe generation one I purchased a year after release and it had a 40GB physical hard drive and you could sync content to it via iTunes over the network or you could stream content to it via the network. The sync functionality was a bit awkward. The AppleTV pretty much acted like a big iPod. It had a 40GB and 160GB version and was basically Apple\u2019s Front Row software in a device that had Component \/ HDMI ports. AppleTV required an HDTV which really just meant a 16:9 aspect ratio 720P set. These weren\u2019t hard to come by but they were certainly pricier than we have today. I can\u2019t think of anyone that synced movies to their AppleTV and then unplugged the box to take it with them on a trip. The probability of the AppleTV wasn\u2019t really a big draw. I mostly enjoyed the ability to watch content that I had in iTunes on my television set.<\/p>\n

The second generation AppleTV was smaller due to the lack of a hard drive and it moved to a streaming from iTunes model over watching content stored on the AppleTV itself. it also gained the ability for customers to rent films or buy content from the AppleTV but it was limited to 720P content probably due to processing power.<\/p>\n

I bought a 3rd Generation AppleTV to replace my 2nd generation which was a painful period because the main selling point of the 3rd generation wasn\u2019t the change to the UI but instead the ability for it to play 1080P content. I had to re-rip all of my Blu-Ray disks to AppleTV 3 format in Handbrake which took months because I had about 500 movies in iTunes at the time. Now, my entire library is 1080P except for a few indie films that I bought that were never made available in 1080P and I\u2019m not going to up convert from 720P to 1080P as that\u2019s just a huge waste of time.<\/p>\n

The 3rd Generation AppleTV is almost 4 years old at this point. I\u2019ve actually bought 3 of them in total because I have given 2 of them as gifts. I think the ATV3 was really awesome. Apple slowly added new apps to the interface but they were opt-out meaning they\u2019d just magically show up and all of them except YouTube and Radio were just hidden from my home screen. I saw no use for them because almost every app required I authenticate with a cable provider which i didn\u2019t have.<\/p>\n

One of the other big selling points for me was AirPlay. This technology allowed me to mirror content from any Mac \/ iOS device to AppleTV. Today, I have over 50 complete television series and almost 1,000 films stored on a Synology NAS in my basement. My biggest complaint with AppleTV is if you\u2019re not streaming from the iTunes store, you absolutely need a Macintosh in your house running iTunes to watch locally stored content. I wanted to find a way around this and AppleTV 4 released in 2015 has become my savior.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

The 4th Gen AppleTV has a lot of new features. There\u2019s an App Store so I can finally opt-in to the applications I want and not have things like Disney Channel Kids cluttering my TV screen. One of the biggest realizations for me was that Apple has given us the ability to put iTunes Movies \/ iTunes TV Shows \/ Photos \/ Search and Settings at the bottom of the app list. I can demote them completely out of the default view upon waking the AppleTV from sleep mode. This is great! My AppleTV has<\/p>\n