How I'm connecting my AppleTV to my network

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.

Apple TV Setup

How was the set up? Great. Easy.

There were only certain ways that the cables can be plugged in so it was pretty straight forward. My TV only has one HDMI port so I had to opt for the other option - component cables. While checking out the ports on the back of the unit I thought that I was going to have to make a special trip to the Apple store. I've got plenty of cables lying around but I was convinced that I needed propriatory "Apple" cables. The colors of the five component cable ports were a range of delightful pastel shades not the dark greens and blues tones that I was familiar with.

It turns out that this was purely a stylistic decision and regular component cables work fine. I still took the opportunity to cruise by the San Francisco Apple retail store during one of my lunch hours. Although there is a lot of debate on cable quality and how less expensive cables do exactly the same job as more expensive ones I opted for the Apple recommended ones. Why spend three times more than I had to? Wife insurance, mostly. If the quality of picture coming out of the Apple TV was anything less than pristine I didn't want my decision to cheap out on the cables to be an issue. And hey, like most Apple approved accessories they certainly do look good with the Apple TV even though you only see them when you're standing right over the device.

Software set up was a breeze. After doing two iTunes updates on the iMac to bring up my desktop software version to 7.6 I was good to go. During the set up I realized that the wifi in the Apple TV was certainly better than my other wireless devices. I ended up finding many more neighborhood networks that I usually do. I'm connecting to an 802.11 b/g network on a Linksys WRT54G. More on this later.

I decided to synch photos, TV shows and movies. Initially I decided that I'd synch music then opted not to so I could save on space. The remote decided that this was the moment that stopped responding and I had to restart to the machine by yanking the power. It booted up as normal afterwards.

Any other set up thoughts or concerns? It's weird that there's no hard power button. I could have used one. Can I use other remotes? I'll have to research that. Can I use multiple remotes at once? How long do I have to leave the unit until it goes into standby mode? Does it actually go into standby? I'll have to check on this. I can imagine it might draw quite a bit of power judging from how hot the top of the unit gets.

Next up - gonna' buy and download a TV show.