By Dennie Chong
Photo Editor

You might have heard that Apple Inc. introduced the Apple TV to its line of products a couple of weeks ago. If you’re like me, you aren’t totally sure what the Apple TV is all about. A friend of mine purchased one, and I was able to check it out this past weekend. Without getting too technical, I’ll try to give you an idea of what it is, and how it works.

What Apple is trying to do with the Apple TV is bring the entertainment experience further into your household. If you download or rip DVDs to your computer and iPod, you can now watch them on most televisions with the help of the Apple TV.

Think of the Apple TV as an iPod for your television. Although I own an iPod that is video capable, I’ve never watched a video on it because I find the screen too small for it to be comfortable or worthy of my time. However, I occasionally download TV shows because I missed them when they originally aired, or because they’re on a cable channel I don’t subscribe to.

I know that there are a lot of students that download television shows to watch on their computer because it’s easier and more convenient for them. The problem with watching downloaded videos is that I would still much rather watch them on a real television in my living room than on a computer or my small iPod.

You can hook your computer up to a TV, but you’re still dealing with a computer interface. The Apple TV has a software interface that is very similar to the iPod, and is easy to use. It doesn’t seem like you’re navigating through a bunch of “windows,” or a program menu on a computer when you want to play a file.

Physically, the Apple TV is a sleek, small, almost 8-inch square by 1-inch tall box that contains a computer with a 40 GB hard drive. Like all of the Apple tech products, it is very stylishly designed with the outside box, and on the inside with the software. It currently retails for $299, and seems to be readily available at retailers that carry the Apple product line.

Although the Apple TV uses a slightly modified version of Apple’s Mac OS X software, like their iPods it is compatible with computers that use the Mac or Windows operating systems. The Apple TV also comes with a small remote that features six buttons arranged like the iPod’s click wheel.
Unfortunately, one of the few drawbacks of the Apple TV is that you must have a television that is compatible. The Apple TV connects to the television through a high-definition multimedia interface (HDMI), or component video cables that you must purchase separately. Component and optical audio outputs deliver sound to a TV or stereo system.

Like an iPod, the Apple TV synchronizes to the content that you have in your iTunes library on your computer. This content is not only video, but audio, and your photo album as well. To connect your Apple TV to your computer you can use standard 802.11 wireless technologies or an Ethernet cable. However, the coolest thing about the Apple TV is that you can also stream video and audio that you have on other computers.

For example, let’s say that you have a laptop and a home office computer in your network. You’ve synced your Apple TV to your iTunes on your laptop, but have a video you downloaded on your home office computer that you want to watch on your Apple TV. You can easily stream the audio or video from your home office computer through the Apple TV. It’s as easy as clicking and selecting a song on your iPod.

Whether the Apple TV is worth your student budget will be up to you to decide. At $299 retail, it isn’t unreasonably expensive, especially compared to Apple’s $499 iPhone.

I think Apple has come up with a very cool and beautiful product to enhance our home entertainment life. The main drawbacks I see are the relatively small hard drive, and the compatibility with a limited number of television types.

Future versions of the Apple TV will only get better, like a lot of technology and hardware. I feel a large part your decision to buy an Apple TV depends on how often you watch downloaded movies and how much you prefer to watch them on your computer or TV.