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When I mention that we have an AppleTV, people invariably ask “How do you like it?”

I figured I’d share some of our observations with you.

As you know we have three foster children. Rob and I decided to get an AppleTV to have more entertainment options for the kids {REALLY!}

When we started reviewing the AppleTV, we were surprised to find out that the AppleTV requires an HDTV.  It was for this reason that we went out and bought one this year {REALLY!}

After that rather expensive day of picking up an HDTV and the 160GB AppleTV, we hooked things up.  It was a _very simple_ hookup.  Just an HDMI cable and we were off.  After setting up our account information on the AppleTV, we began looking at our flickr pictures.

This is really one of the key benefits of the AppleTV.  When it’s idle, it will pull your photos and display them in beautiful color on your HDTV.  If you’ve got a decent set of pictures that you’ve either taken or marked as favorites, prepare to be pleasantly surprised at how beautiful they are on an HDTV as opposed to your computer monitor.

Back to the kids- another use of the AppleTV was to rent movies.  With AppleTV, you’re able to rent a pretty good selection of movies for less than the cost of pay per view on our Comcast cable.  Additionally, you don’t need a computer to sync content at all.  You can rent movies and listen to podcasts all from within the AppleTV.

Bear in mind the catch with AppleTV is that once you start viewing a movie, you have 24 hours to complete viewing.  If you’ve not started watching the movie, the rental will remain available to you for 30 days.

Almost everyone is familar with Apple’s Front Row interface. AppleTV is somewhat similar and handles your music library very well.  What it does is create a mirror of the main iTunes library in your home.  Once it’s synced, it will automatically sync any new content transparently.  You then navigate through your music library with the typical iTunes controls.

Podcasts can be done the same way as music but there’s also facility to search for podcasts, mark them favorites, and listen to them all from within the AppleTV.  This again is great as it makes podcasts a fill the room affair rather than a through the headphones experience.

The big surprise for me was Youtube.  I personally use Youtube sparingly as it’s not very interesting to me.  The kids on the other hand go bonkers when I offer to play some Youtube videos.  They all sit around watch and dance to the Youtube selections.  This was a real unexpected benefit of the AppleTV.  It turns Youtube watching into a family experience as everyone in the house sits and watches very excitedly.  I had no idea that the Youtube player on AppleTV would be the killer feature in our house.

So there you have it.  A mini review of our AppleTV.  We’d recommend it to folks who want to have more of a shared experience with media.  We’d also highly recommend it to photographers, both amateur and professional, who’d like to have their work viewed by people at home in eye catching color.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple TV, entertainment, Family, IPhone, ITunes, pay per view, podcasts, tivo, VOD