The very day the Apple TV was available in Apple stores, I picked one up. I reviewed it, even made a video about it (which wound up on some big websites). I loved the Apple TV madly. There were a few flaws – like no on/off switch, heat problems and no native capability to watch AVI files – but those little flaws were overshadowed by the wonder and joy of having home videos, movies and TV shows streaming from my computer to my HDTV.
Fast forward a year or so, and you’d see me sitting at my computer, cursing the task of converting AVI files to Apple TV friendly format so I could watch important videos on my TV instead of my little MacBook Pro screen. Curses, wasted CPU time and wasted disk space from double files… that was the price I had to pay for the pleasure of watching AVI video content. Sometimes I would spend as much time converting a video as I would spend watching it. Bah.
A few days ago, I stopped by Best Buy (I’m slightly embarrassed admitting that I went to that store) and found a very nice Pioneer DV-410V DVD player with a little USB input on the front of it. The DVD player handles DVDs and DivX videos among other formats. It also has an HDMI port for connecting video and audio to my HDTV in one tiny cable.
I set up the DVD player and popped in a micro USB flash drive loaded with a few of my favorite AVI videos and voila! it played the video cleaner and better than the Apple TV ever did! Imagine my surprise! A weight was lifted off my shoulders – the world seemed bright and warm. No more wasted time converting files. No need to stream video. No need to keep my MacBook Pro turned on while I watch videos. Sure, I lost the ability to rent movies from the iTunes store directly from the Apple TV, but I had only done that a couple times in 18 months, so it’s hardly a sacrifice.
Now I can quickly load a dozen or more AVI files on a stamp-sized USB drive and watch amazing quality videos. Buh-bye Apple TV – hello HDTV sneaker net!
Some people may argue that the DVD USB option is lower tech and doesn’t really constitute an “upgrade”. In my opinion, anything that produces remarkably better video, faster prep time, fewer steps, less hassle, consumes less electricity and allows more free time for enjoying video… well, that is truly an upgrade; the best kind of upgrade.
If you’ve never tried one of those DVD players with an internal USB reader, you absolutely MUST. It’s awesome.
P.S. As for the $90 in my pocket, I promptly sold the Apple TV and had $90 left over after the cost of the new DVD/USB player. Nice.
P.P.S. The aforementioned $90 lasted about 12 minutes as I bought another cool gadget that I absolutely had to have. C’est la vie.
Jason, I hate my apple TV. I have ripped my whole movie and TV collection (1TB), using handbrake, to Apple TV format. The problem is my computer (which is a new imac, not the one i am replacing the hard drive on) keeps losing the connection. I try and make iTunes find it, which it shows it there, but on the main itunes screen on the left it won’t show up. The only way to make this thing work is to do a reset on the Apple TV back to factory settings, than the upgrades, than sync (which takes 24 hours), and than I can watch video for a few days. But than the Apple TV is loses the connection again and the process starts again. Well maybe not, i just watch my video on the imac now and gave up.
So, enough complaining, will the DVD player you mentioned play video in Apple TV format, or is it just AVI video.
Thanks in advance
Dave
Dave, dude that sucks. So sorry to hear about the AppleTV connection issue.
You may not need to scrap the whole AppleTV setup. Depending on the type of connection between the AppleTV and your iMac, it may be easy to determine the weak link.
If you’re using a LAN cable, then yes, you’re S.O.L. and need to dump the AppleTV setup, or at least get the AppleTV repaired/replaced.
If you’re using an AirportExtreme or AirportExpress and experiencing nasty connection trouble, then the AppleTV may need to get ditched, repaired, etc.
If you’re using another brand of wireless router (like Netgear, Linksys, D-Link or a generic wireless cable/DSL/FiOS modem provided by your ISP), that could be the weak link. I have seen countless routers just absolutely go psychotic when serving wireless to Apple devices, even when they say “Mac compatible” on the box. If you’ve got one of these routers, I would recommend getting an AirportExpress and create a nice 802.11n wireless network for your iMac and AppleTV.
If you go with one of the DivX-friendly DVD players like mine, then you’d need to convert your files to AVI (DivX codec). It’s not nearly as hard as it sounds. I just used the newest version of HandBrake to convert a 30 minute QuickTime movie to DivX AVI at 100% quality and it took about 5 minutes. I think it peaked at about 180fps, which is awesome. You could theoretically convert a full 90 minute movie in 15-20 mins. Quality stays the same.
What I like about the DVD option is the simplicity of moving TV shows and movies to a USB stick (or external USB hard drive) and never having to worry about wireless, etc. If you have more than one TV/DVD setup, then you can sneaker-net those shows in less than a minute.
Anyway, good luck troubleshooting the wireless. Otherwise, pick up one of those DVD players and test it out with a few converted files. You’ll probably like what you see. (Just don’t pay more than $50 for the player. Anything above that is crazy.)
Thanks Jason. I recently bought the newest Apple router with a TB for backup to solve the problem but did not work. I have completely given up on the Apple TV, i won’t spend another minute on it.
I think the solution for me is a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV, expensive but since i have put so much time and energy into my media files, I think it is worth it.
Jason,
I stumbled across this page, and having realised that my DVD player has a USB input decided to give it a try – I’m with you, this is an awesome (and incredibly simple) solution! I’ve been contemplating buying an Apple TV, but in the meantime have been connecting my Macbook pro to my HD tv via mini-displayport/DVI/audio jack cables and watching video thru Front Row (ie basically using cables instead of an Apple TV to stream my video from either my HDD or network storage.
This is just simpler, plus i don’t have to move my macbook pro around, plus i can actually surf the web while i watch downloaded video content!
Kinda scary to think that i was just about to outlay a few hundred bucks on an Apple TV when i had a free solution already sitting in my entertainment unit…
thanks again.
I have a hacked atv. using atv flash. it’s quite possibly the coolest tech device i’ve ever owned. i don’t know what you’re all bitching about. how bout this. buy something apple because it works, and it’s open source, then hack the hell out of it. i have a 350 GB hard drive internal, with a 1tb external drive attached to the usb port. it woks like a charm!
Ok, I have an Apple TV, and it is hacked with atv flash. However, it does not support streaming from a NAS which is where all my stuff is. Any ideas how to get it working over my network so I can play all my files over my Apple TV on my NAS. Email me at mlathem1998@yahoo.com thanks
Hi, I just found the patchstick.ca website and they have a cool prebuilt app to hack your ATV. Very cool and let’s you do heaps of stuff like stream from a NAS using XBMC (media centre). Check it out.