One of the biggest reasons critics give for not recommending the Apple TV is that you can just hook a computer up to your TV. Well I've had a computer hooked up to the TV for a while now but I never end up using it because it's clunky. I don't have a wireless mouse and keyboard, my wifi bridge is flaky, and it's fan was really loud and distracting. Apart from having a web browser and IM the Apple TV effectively replaces the computer.
The essential reason why the Apple TV replaces a computer is by connecting to your other computers and online. So. What's the best way to get the Apple TV online? How do I connect it to my network? I currently use the Linksys WRT54G router that everyone seems to have. Connecting over Wifi works well. I've had to wait for a HD trailer to rebuffer while playing only twice now. Flickr pics loads straight away and Youtube videos start almost instantly.
Is my current router the best solution? The Linksys can support 802.11 b and g networks. All I had up till now were b and g devices. A g laptop and a b Tivo. I recently made sure the router was set to broadcast in 'mixed mode' whcih seemed to improve the general speed. I was previously under the impression that any slower b device would slow down all the faster g traffic to the slowest common denominator speed. I didn't find this. From a little research I found that modern routers have this mixed mode to try and compensate for this issue. I certainly found that it improved the speed to the Apple TV.
The Apple TV however can take advantage of the even faster n wireless standard. I seriously thought about going to an Apple n router, the Airport Extreme - $179, in order to get maximum performance out of the Apple TV. I read that the Airport Extreme is also a router that can support devices running on slower protocols, b and g without sacrificing all the speed when connecting to faster n devices. I'm dreading renting a HD movie and our rental period expiring purely because I couldn't move enough of the data over my slow network in time.
So, the n router it is then? Well, I'm still toying around with running cable from the router to the Apple TV directly. Cable is cheap and offer the fastest way to move video from one place to another. The router is in a room about thirty feet from where I need to get to. The kitchen and the family room are in my way so there's no chance that my wife even with the love she feels for the Apple TV will let me coil bight blue cables through our kitchen. I'm currently trying to summon up enough courage to take a work lamp, a cordless drill, and a spool of cat-5 cable under the pillar and post floor of my house. I have no idea what's living underneath my there. Particularly after all this rain we've been having. There could be a Noah's Arc of critters that are holding up in there.
So it seems that my decisions are based on my dislike of creepy crawlies verses my dislike of laying down another 180 dollars at my local Apple retailer. We'll see which one of my aversions wins out.
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