30 Days of AppleTV – Part 2

Posted by: Michael on Mar 27, 2007

First off…do you guys prefer AppleTV or TV? I kind of like TV…I mean, we’re all Mac Users here aren’t we? Just let me know…whatever the popular choice is, is what I’ll be using from now on…today though, it’s TV.

So, last night I’m looking at the sparse amount of content we have in the old TV, and i decided to go shopping. I ended up getting the first season of The Office for myself, and then later we downloaded an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse for our daughter.

What’s interesting about that is two things…

1) The quality of these downloads. The Office looks really good…but Mickey Mouse looks GREAT! Seriously, this episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is the best looking thing I’ve downloaded yet.

2) Download Time. It took less time to download 3 episodes of The Office than it did to download 1 episode of Mickey Mouse. The file sizes for the episodes is about the same, so it’s just the server it’s being downloaded from (I assume)…but the inconsistency in download time is another thing that I think needs to be pointed out.

Having said that, I was really impressed with how quickly I was watching The Office. I think it took about 20 minutes from starting the download to watching the show on the TV (and I let it sync…I didn’t stream it).

I also discovered something interesting that some of you may already know. If you check out the Top TV Shows or Top Movies sections on your TV, you can get the same 30 second preview that you get in iTunes of that show. This is really, REALLY helpful in checking out the video quality of a show before you download it.

So far, I’m very pleased with the system overall. I know I may have been focusing more on the critical aspects of the experience, but I am happy to be keeping this content, and I’m very satisfied with the majority of what I’ve downloaded…