Apple TV...good and bad

In the past, I had resisted the urge to buy all things Apple. While I have a lot of the Apple product line, I never bought into Apple TV. It seemed expensive for what I was getting, and I didn't watch much digital content.

However, when Steve Jobs introduced the latest version of Apple TV the timing was perfect. The week prior to Apple TV being announced, I got a horrible cold. I ended up at home for about 5 days and was just miserable. Luckily, I had my trusty iPad and had just read about Netflix app. I used to use Netflix, but has dropped it a few years ago. I just didn't get through the DVDs fast enough, so I cancelled it. However, now that they were going to deliver content to my iPad, Laptop, or iPhone, I figured I would give their one-month free trail a test. After all, I was sick at home and daytime TV is not my thing. So I gave it a try and was blown away with the quality and speed of how quickly the movie or TV shows starts.

Then Apple TV comes out, and now that I have Netflix again it just seemed like a great idea. So I ordered one. Once it arrived, it took about 10 minutes to get set up. Typical Apple approach to things, keep it simple!

Overall, I'm very happy with Apple TV. We've watched a couple of movies and they worked well. They looked good on our 46" LCD screen, the sound was great coming out of the surround sound system, and I was even able to easily program my Harmony Remote to work with my Apple TV.

This is a perfect experience though. Apple TV did have to buffer and stalled out. After a minute or so, the movie started back up. That was a little disappointing. The other big issue is that no TV shows in Netflix will play. They buffer for a while, begin playing, and then stop after about 5 seconds and return to the main show page in Netflix. From what I've tested, this is an issue with Apple TV. I can watch movies and TV shows on my iPad and laptop with now buffering issues or pauses. Everything is coming over the same network, so it's not a network issue either. I've found a few support thread on the Apple site, but no solutions have come up. The software is up-to-date, so that's not it either. If anyone has any ideas, please share.