Apple TV

As I mentioned before, I got a hand of Apple TV few weeks back. Honestly, I've not used any paid function so far. i.e. I've not bought or rented any movie from iTunes yet. However, based on the free functions that I've used, I really like this piece of Apple gadget. 

First of all, the UI is clean and very intuitive. I already ditched the remote that came with the device. Instead, I downloaded the 'Remote' app and got that on both my iPhone and iPad. It is much easier to use them as remote, particularly taking advantage of the touch screen to scroll up and down, back and forth, and the search function which is a must for me in my mostly used function - YouTube! I just love using the YouTube on my Apple TV, to see the HD content on my 42" LED TV is really nice. 

Besides that, I also like to use it to view Trailers and the Vimeo which has a large collection of 'odd' video clips. I don't know if those clips are also found in YouTube or not, but somehow they just selected a bunch of interesting clips and put them under Vimeo. I've not used it much, but it looks interesting. 

 I tested out the Airplay function to access my music/photo library in iTunes on TV, it is nice, but I doubt that would be something I would use often. I also tried to airplay games from my iPhone/iPad on TV, it looks just OK, but I don't see that I would use it often neither, cuz my games are mostly simple boardgames, not some HD action games which would look nice on TV. Also, I don't really see the need to show games on TV in general. But, at least I tested it out that it works. 

I learned that I can use the Apple TV to view videos from some video streaming apps. However, I've not tried them yet. I would love to use it, but the only problem that I've encountered so far discouraged me to use that function. It is the slow download speed that I've experienced while streaming those HD videos on YouTube. It took minutes to download a music video. I don't know if it is because of my modem speed or ISP provider's speed that made the damned thing so slow. Besides that, I'm happy with this new addition to my Apple gadget collection. I think as I'm getting deeper and deeper into the Apple ecosystem. I just don't see leaving it for the Android camp in foreseeable future. But the most important thing is that I'm happy with what Apple is providing to me so far. Looking forward to Sep 12, 2012.