Apple Just Makes my Life Better

I got my AppleTV setup up and running over the weekend and it couldn’t have been easier. Setup consists of unboxing it, plugging it in and turning on ‘home sharing’ in iTunes. That’s it.

AppleTV basically offers three major services to users. First and foremost, Apple wants to push their movie and TV rentals so this box does just that. But the second major service this little box delivers, Netflix integration, pretty much negates any chance of me paying Apple to rent anything. But seeing as how both my Xbox 360 and PS3 (and even my Wii) has Netflix streaming, this is not a new service in our house. But because the AppleTV lives in our bedroom and the gaming systems reside in the living room and because my wife needs as few steps as necessary to access Netflix, having this feature available on our bedroom TV at the click of a button made the AppleTV a pretty easy sell with her.

The third and final major service the little, black box provides, is access to my iTunes library. While I let Netflix have all my rental business, I’m eager to see if Apple will begin stealing my entertainment purchases away from Amazon. Having the ability to buy a new movie from iTunes at half the price of a Blu-ray from Amazon was my main reason for picking up the AppleTV.

I was eager to put this to the test. I wanted to pick up ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ from Amazon on Blu-ray for $23 with free shipping (I have an Amazon Prime account). Seeing as how this is not a movie that I would want to delve deeper into with all the special features and such, I could settle for stripping that all away and download it from iTunes for $15, saving $8.

Now while I will not be switching to iTunes for bigger releases like ‘Avatar the Director’s Cut’ and ‘Inception’, smaller movies are ideal for saving me some cash and shelf space which both went a long way with my wife too. As far as filling up my iTunes library with content, that was already taken care of by all the DVDs and Blu-rays that have included digital copies that I’ve been slowly stock-piling over the past year or so. I’ve already got a digital library of about 20 movies that I’ve never watched.

And while the tiny, aluminum remote is nice, the coolest way to control the AppleTV is with the free Remote app for the iPad. Simply tap the app, turn on home sharing and you’re ready to swipe through your library and control playback right from your iPad and yes, the Remote app is available on the iPhone too. So if ever lose that tiny, silver remote, I won’t even bother looking for it.