Apple TV

sunshine_day_dreams · December 2010

Anyone have this? I'm getting sick and tired of giving my money to Comcast and have started looking for other options. Apple TV sounds good, but I'm curious - do you have to pay for/rent every single TV show and movie you want to watch? Or just for HD ones? Any other pros and cons you can share would be great.

bunnybean · December 2010

We have a first generation AppleTV. It's awesome. I really love it.

You do have to pay for everything you get from iTunes, but since you're paying just get what you want, it's not too bad. You can get season passes or buy a block of passes (like for The Soup, for example) which saves money. There are people who have found ways to download shows and movies from other sites for free, but they're not technically legal. If you're comfortable doing that, then the world is your oyster as far as free tv goes.

But keep in mind that the only real way that the AppleTV will save you money is if you are selective and only purchase the shows you really watch. If you want to watch a lot of random tv, it's not for you. H and I realized we were really sparse tv watchers who only liked a few shows, so it's been a great deal for us.

Julia_JJ · December 2010

We considered a first-gen AppleTV, but it was underpowered for what we wanted to do. Our current cable-less setup is a Mac Mini hooked up to the TV with an external firewire hard drive storing all our media. We pay for and download the things we really want or can't get somewhere else legally, and we use Hulu and Netflix for everything else.

sunshine_day_dreams · December 2010

Thanks for the feedback. I guess what I don't like about that is not getting the basic channels. I don't really want to have to pay to watch the news. H likes to watch a lot of mindless TV, but maybe switching to Apple will get him away from that bad habit! I think I'll start paying attention to how many shows/stations we watch and see how quickly the Apple TV would add up.

estherandgeoff2 · December 2010

You can still watch local channels if you get an HD antenna that you hook up to your TV. You just can't record anything from those channels directly.

MrsJetSet · January 2011

I would start a list of all the shows you seriously watch and would miss if you can't watch them and then look for free sources. We found that pretty much everything except some of the Food Network stuff I watched could be found for free on hulu or streamed off of network websites. We just bought a cable to plug our computer into our tv and watch everything as normal. The only drawback is that you often have to wait a week to watch a show but most of our friends have cancelled cable so they watch it late as well!

sunshine_day_dreams · January 2011

estherandgeoff2:
You can still watch local channels if you get an HD antenna that you hook up to your TV. You just can't record anything from those channels directly.

That's good to know. I thought after the whole digital switch over thing that you had to have a box to be able to get channels. Thanks.

Dyork · January 2011

MrsJetSet:
I would start a list of all the shows you seriously watch and would miss if you can't watch them and then look for free sources.

That would be a good way to tell if it would be worth it for you to get one. I love my apple TV, but I mostly use it to rent movies and d/l some HBO/Showtime shows. You can hack it to watch Hulu and other sites like that using the usb port in the back. Although I think they changed things around for the new generation apple tvs. Not 100% sure.

Either way, I hate comcast too...they seriously suck, but I keep their basic cable package because I watch a ton of tv.

ape · January 2011

I don't watch a ton of tv but love apple tv or the mac mini idea. That is what I am thinking about. We are thinking free channels, Hulu, Netfix and the Apple Tv.

Apple TV

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