Angry Robot

Apple TV

I can’t say I’m super-jazzed about this thing. I understand it’s the early stages and it’s primarily intended to give iTunes show-downloaders a way to watch their stories on their couch. But iTunes shows are standard def. And the Apple TV only works with “widescreen” televisions. Unless the thing is targeted at people who were tricked into buying EDTV sets a couple years back, that means HDTVs. And what do current HDTV owners tell you? That their gorgeous displays are great for what little HD content there is, but it sucks watching SD on them. Ouch for Apple TV!

Of course, in the future everything will be awesome, and I’m sure the Apple TV will follow suit. Once you can download HD content from iTunes these problems vanish. But no matter what, it’s unlike Apple to ship a shitty 1.0 product, so I can’t view this box as anything but a misstep.