Gadgetory

no this is David with the Virgin this is the 2012 version of the Apple TV physically it's absolutely identical to the 2010 version it's really small 3.9 inches squared and just under an inch tall it's still black glossy on the sides and matte on the top it's really nice looking and should slot pretty easily and unnoticeably into your home theater stack it's hardware it's still super simple and basic you do pretty much everything using the HDMI port and there's also a micro USB port an optical audio port and an Ethernet port even the remote is the same as it used to be it's also really basic it has the five way directional pad plus menu and play pause buttons and it's great for navigation Apple designed everything to be really simple but for typing it's actually pretty hard cuz you end up going right right right down down to just a type a letter and fortunately there are companion apps for iOS that you can use easily with the Apple TV and those work much better mostly because they give you a full keyboard and some gesture support to get around but the remote is really good-looking and for the most part does the job fine inside the box there's one big upgrade the new a5 processor it's a single core version of the processor that was announced in the iPad and iPhone last year and it powers the biggest difference in the new Apple TV which is its ability to stream 1080p video setting it up as still as simple as always you just plug it in connect it to Wi-Fi or Ethernet login with your iTunes account and you're done and now you get access to iTunes Match which gives you all your music and iTunes in the cloud which gives you your movies and TV shows and for the first time you can actually see movies and TV shows that you've bought and actually streaming them from the Apple TV it's kind of odd that that wasn't there before but it is there now Apple's trying to make setup even simpler and and now lets you sign up for Netflix just using your itunes cran chills so it's just one tap to sign up for Netflix and start watching once you're logged in you see the other big difference in the new Apple TV which is the new interface it's really icon based and looks a lot like iOS it's it's nicer to look at than the previously text-heavy version but it's not necessarily easier to use or access you see all the icons at once whether you want to or not and you'll find yourself scrolling through apps that you don't care about just to get to the ones that you do most of the apps on the other hand still look the same as they always did they have the Cover Flow style icons on the left and text menus on the right it's still super simple to navigate but it's not quite as aesthetically pleasing as the new homescreen most of the content that you can stream from iTunes and Netflix looks really really great the 1080p is really impressive and actually doesn't need to buffer that much it's pretty fast and looks really fantastic it's really sharp it's not quite up to blu-ray quality mostly because of some compression artifact ting that you get from iTunes servers but it's really really good and is definitely a noticeable improvement over the previous Apple TV unfortunately apples content is still its biggest problem the apses channels idea is a smart one but it's having trouble making deals with companies like HBO and CBS and there are some apps that we've seen on other devices like the Roku that are still missing there's no Hulu or HBO Go or Spotify and all of those are available on other boxes you can still play your own content using home sharing and airplay both of which are pretty good but have their own limitations airplay still has some issues with stuttering as you play games and lag as you switch songs and home sharing is kind of clued you to set up and requires you to be logged into a single account and it's just not as intuitive as it could be other than the 1080p streaming the new Apple TV is mostly an iterative improvement even the new interface is available as a software update on the last generation Apple TV it's good it's certainly the best Apple TV we've seen yet but you're still choosing a superior user experience over the wider content offerings of a device like a Roku or a boxy or a WD TV device at $99 it's not a bad price for something that doesn't it flex in iTunes so well but if you want other content from Hulu and the like you might be better off picking a different price you