Apple is now shipping their new, long-awaited Apple TV. Like many Apple products, they’re shipping individually via Fedex from China. Ours is supposed to arrive on Friday. With any luck I’ll write it up by early next week.

The “Apple TV” is a small box similar to a short Mac Mini which can connect to your network via wireless or ethernet, has a small hard drive in it and connects to your TV via HMI, DVI or component video. It plays video and presumably music purchased from the iTunes Store, and can automatically sync itself with one computer running iTunes or pull video and presumably music from up to five iTunes computers. There’s a lot that remains to be seen about the Apple TV until we get our greedy little hands on it later this week.

The biggest criticism it has received thus far is for its lack of codecs. Don’t expect to be playing any old video that you’ve downloaded from the Internet through it. It supports only a couple of video formats and is clearly targeted specifically for playing video purchased from the iTunes store. By doing so it can act as the missing link for people who want to download TV shows or movies and watch them on their TV and not their computer (or, like us, use their computer while they’re watching TV).

Apple TV is available from Apple and on Amazon.
[tags]apple, apple tv, tv, itunes[/tags]

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