The Apple TV
It seems that today people are watching more and more television, whether it be live TV, recorded TV, or DVDs. I have always been one that has never watched a lot of TV because I hate commercials. As a matter of fact that’s why I don’t listen to free radio either.
The amount of total commercial time has greatly increased over the years. An example is a 1-hour TV show in 1967 (Star Trek) had 9 minutes of non-show time. Today that same 1-hour TV show has 17 minutes of non-show time; and if you’re watching TNT or USA where they start a new show in a split window while the current show is ending, you’re even getting more commercials.
Because of my frustration with advertising in the media, I have made steps to avoid most of it. I first adopted the digital video recorder (DVR) back in the 1990s, which helped by allowing me to automatically record shows and fast-forward through the commercials.
This was a major step in the right direction. Then a DVR was created that automatically did not record commercials (ReplayTV). This DVR was immediately squashed by lawsuits and it disappeared. The DVRs that are used today are not drastically different then those a decade ago, which all have very small storage capability.
Along comes the Apple TV. I was a PC person until Vista and Office 2007 came out and persuaded me to try an Apple computer. Ever since then I have been an avid Apple user. When the buzz of the second version of Apple TV came out I went and bought one. I liked it so much that the next day I went and bought another one. So now I have one in my living room and one in my bedroom.
Having an Apple TV has allowed me to record my favorite movies and TV shows and watch them when I want, without commercials. Almost every show, movie, or television series can be recorded.
I have mastered the use of iTunes to store and deliver all my favorite movies and shows via WiFi to my HD TVs. Even though the programs commonly used to record from DVDs does not record in HD, the quality of these recordings is superb and has a better picture than my HD picture from my cable company.
I now use a Drobo (Data Storage Unit) to store my 4 TB iTunes library and am very glad this Drobo can expand up to 16 TB in size. I’m also very glad that there is now a universal format for Apple TVs, iPhones, and iPods so I just need one recording to play the recording on any Apple device.