Apple TV: Not Ready for Prime Time

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Listening to digital music wasn't quite music to my ears, either. I connected Apple TV to a Pioneer VSX-917 receiver. The somewhat flat rendering of Maroon 5's latest CD through this mid-priced receiver highlighted the technical deficiencies of MP3 and AAC-formatted compressed music in which subtle sounds are removed. Most people won't mind or notice, but discerning listeners with a nice receiver and a great set of speakers will.

In Sync with Consumers?

The good news is the box does support Apple's uncompressed "lossless" music format. The bad news is the built-in 40-gigabyte hard drive will fill up pretty fast if you've got a lot of music stored this way. To compensate, Apple fetches only what it considers the most relevant content on your host PC or Mac and stores it on the hard drive. Since streaming can be a very uneven experience for consumers, that's a smart choice.

Apple TV's sync function is worth additional examination since it gets to the heart of Apple's ambition to build a consumer electronics empire. Again, with only 40GB of storage, you may run out of room if you've got a big iTunes library of movies, TV shows, music, photos, podcasts, and digital books. The software prioritizes downloads in that same order, replacing the oldest content with new stuff added to the host computer.

One cool feature is that the software is smart enough to synchronize content from your iPod—and, presumably, the upcoming iPhone. Say you're watching Battlestar Galactica on the train home from work. If you don't finish it, all you do when you get home is connect the iPod to your Mac. Apple TV can then automatically pick up the TV show right where you left off.

Computer-Less Future

Apple TV also takes the less-is-more approach elsewhere. Though a deal announced May 30 will bring YouTube videos to Apple TV, you cannot download content from other popular Web destinations. Nor can you order downloads directly from the iTunes Store; you've got to download it first to a computer, then Apple TV neatly syncs that latest content.

Despite these faults, it's hard not to like Apple TV. What it does—taking content off your PC or Mac and delivering it to your TV—it does fairly well.

Still, I get the sense that this is just an interim step for Apple. I envision the day when you won't necessarily need that PC or Mac to fuel your entertainment needs. TiVo (TIVO), for instance, lets you download content from Amazon's (AMZN) Unbox movie service and other selected Web content. With other companies racing to deliver similar capabilities, Apple may be forced to respond sooner rather than later.

Until then, Apple TV is a good choice for the growing legions of people who already use iTunes to buy and manage their content.

Edwards is a correspondent in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau.