New Apple TV - installation and setup

As you're probably aware from my terribly geeky unboxing video, I've got my hands on one of the new 2nd-generation Apple TVs this week. I thought I'd go through what I've learnt from setting it up and using it, in case this can be of benefit to anyone else.

Firstly, hooking up the cables is incredibly easy: 1 power cable, 1 HDMI, 1 ethernet. You don't even have to use ethernet because the Apple TV has built-in wifi, but seeing as my router is six inches from the Apple TV and the wifi at LowFidelity Towers is a bit flaky (blame the Victorian architecture) I thought I'd settle for trusty CAT-5.

Once I'd plugged everything in, I immediately got a picture on my telly from the Apple TV, so no problems there. However, I couldn't find my iTunes library under the "Computers" menu. When I went to it, the Apple TV told me I'd need to enter my Apple ID username and password so that it could use the Home Sharing feature of iTunes. I dutifully entered those details, and... nothing. It told me that I'd need to activate Home Sharing on my Mac too. I was fairly certain it already was on, so I went and checked. Sure enough, yes, it was already enabled. So what gives?

I decided that the age-old IT remedy of "turn it off and on again" might help, so I went to iTunes "Advanced" menu and turned off Home Sharing. Then I reactivated it, re-entering my password. Hey presto, there's my iTunes library showing up on the Apple TV now. Don't know why this step was necessary, but it worked.

Next thing was to play back some media. I'm routing the HDMI through my Sony STR-DA2400ES home cinema receiver, so the theory went that this should carry both video and 5.1 audio signals. Music worked just fine and dandy, the sound coming through in stereo just as I'd expected. I then played one of my Handbraked m4v files. Picture was lovely, and the sound was coming through - but only in Pro-Logic, not Dolby Digital 5.1.

I went into the Apple TV's "Settings" menu, then into "Audio & Video" and found the option for "Dolby Digital Out". There are three settings: Off, On and Auto. I opted for "On" and tried the movie again, and this time got beautiful 5.1 straight away.

Next step was to get the Apple Remote app working on my iPod Touch. The app was already installed, so I then went into the "Settings" menu again, then "General", "Remotes" and finally to "Remote App" where it tells you to turn on Home Sharing in the app itself. Sure enough, on the Touch it was now asking for my Home Sharing username and password again. I typed them in, and immediately I had access to an "Apple TV" library from the main screen.

Finally, I wanted to set up my Logitech Harmony 555 universal remote to work with the Apple TV, rather than use the bundled Apple remote from the box. I went into the Logitech software on my Mac, and added a new device. I opted for "Media PC", then "Apple" as the manufacturer and typed the name in as (rather obviously) "Apple TV". I didn't get a lot of feedback as to whether this was correct or not from the software itself so I had no clue if it would work, or if the device even existed in Logitech's archives. I decided to take a chance that it was okay, and set up a new activity as "Watch Apple TV", which turned the TV on, the AV receiver on and set it to the correct input and then turned the Apple TV on. I updated the remote (still no clue whether this was right or not at this point) and once it had done its thing, I pointed it at the system and hit the button. Sure enough, everything worked seamlessly. Everything on, on the right inputs and all the buttons on the Harmony working correctly. Not only that, but because the Harmony has buttons for previous and next chapter as well as fast-forward and rewind, I could also skip chapters in my movie files - something that I couldn't work out how to do with the Apple Remote.

All in all, absolutely superb so far. I'm very impressed!

Controversial?

After getting my new HDTV just after Christmas, I decided that the DVD playback from my Sony DVD/HDD recorder (which I've had for five years, so it's practically prehistoric) wasn't really up to much on the new screen. The player had no option for any kind of upscaling and was plugged in via SCART so the picture really wasn't looking very clever.

I decided that an upgrade in the DVD department was in order and it came down to two choices. First - the expensive option - was to go down the Blu-Ray route. A decent "entry level" player currently stands at about the £175 mark. The DVD playback is supposed to be good as it handles SD upscaling pretty well, and then you have the brave new world of HD blu-ray movies to get into. However, BD discs are pretty expensive at the moment - in the region of £15-20 each so things would get pricey fairly quickly, even if I only got 2 or 3 discs to start with.

The thing that I had to consider was not only the cost. The TV I bought was not a particularly expensive one - in fact, really quite a bargain choice. It's not 1080p, and only 32" and I sit about 3.5 metres away from it. With that screen size at that distance on a 720p set I wasn't entirely convinced blu-ray was the way to go.

Option two therefore, was to go for the budget option - a DVD player with HDMI and upscaling. You can get these for anything between £50 and £100 and the results are supposed to be pretty good. I had heard good things about Toshiba's latest foray into DVD upscaling, called XDE, but their first XDE player - the XD-E500 - was supposed to be £120 so I discounted that as too expensive (almost into blu-ray terroitory really).

However, I'm a regular visitor over at AVForums.com and I spotted a post about the XDE player that said Comet were selling it in the January sales at half price. That's more like it, I thought, and promptly headed out to get one.

I have t0 say I'm extremely impressed. The picture quality, upscaled to 1080i via HDMI with the XDE trickery switched on, is fantastic - really crisp and sharp. Much, much better than what I had been getting on a five-year old player via SCART that's for certain!

My DVD collection is fairly sizeable (250 discs) and I'm pleased I can wring out some more enjoyment from it. I'm going back through favourite movies just to watch them in new and improved XDE-Vision! Another bonus is that the player came with a free 12 month subscription to LoveFilm so that's about £60 worth of rentals too.

The real icing on the cake though is the price of DVDs at the moment. I picked up a 2-disc special edition DVD of Mission Impossible at Sainsburys the other morning for £3. The equivalent blu-ray is £20. Case closed.

All Cabled Up

My 360 audio dongle arrived today, and I've just plumbed it in - HDMI and optical audio living side by side in perfect harmony! Wonderful.

I also indulged in a Nintendo component cable for the Wii, rather than using SCART. Although it produces a 480 line picture as opposed to SCART's 576 lines, it is progressive scan so looks lovely and crisp. The step up in quality from composite to RGB SCART was good, but this is a step further - pretty much as good as you're going to get from a humble standard def Wii.

So there you have it - all cables now in place, and raring and ready to go. I had a bit of a fight with my Harmony universal remote to make it work with all this new kit, but I've cracked it now.

With the exception of swapping out the HDMI lead that came in the box with the DVD player for something a bit better, I think that's it for cables and interconnects now. Good job.

Optical Illusion

I've just been on the mighty fleabay and got hold of an official Microsoft audio dongle so that I can use both HDMI and optical digital outputs of my Xbox 360. Bizarrely, Microsoft have opted to have the optical out built into the AV lead rather than the Xbox itself. There is an optical audio output built into the standard component hi-def lead which comes in the box, and there's even one on the SCART lead, but if you opt for HDMI then you're scuppered. Weird. Obviously it's not an issue if you're plugging the HDMI into an AV receiver that accepts audio over HDMI, but I'm not. I still need "old-fashioned" optical. And the other thing is Microsoft bundles the dongle with the top-of-the-range 360 Elite, but not with the lower models, meaning you have to shell out extra. Typical.

Anyway, it is bought now, so I'm looking forward to an HD picture and 5.1 Dolby Digital any day now.