Apple TV

February 1, 2008

Last week I was asked to install Apple TV into a home cinema system. I’d never used one of these boxes before, and thought it was just another Apple gimmick – how wrong was I?
The technical specs for the box are impressive – built-in 802.11g/n wifi, HDMI and composite AV interconnects, and left and right audio channels. Interestingly there are no cables provided to connect to your AV source, and I think this is a good decision as you’re not going to be paying for cables you never use.
For this installation I had to connect it to an Arcam AV350 amplifier, which was acting as an AV aggregator and sending to a Pioneer plasma TV. While all three devices (TV, AV amp and Apple TV) have HDMI capabilities, this was not being used due to existing cable runs. That said, even on composite video and standard audio, the picture and sound were astonishing.
On power up Apple TV looked for available wireless networks and asked for the key. Inputting was a little fiddly, but considering all you have is the Apple mini remote, it’s not bad for a one-time experience. After connecting to the wireless network, it then downloaded and applied an update. This took a while, even on a 24Mb BeBox connection, and then the box rebooted.
Once up again, it provided a code for iTunes. I turned on my laptop, fired up iTunes and could see the Apple TV listed in the devices section. iTunes asked for the code and I punched it in. It went through a few more options and then started synching my iTunes library onto the unbuilt 40Gb disk.
Now I have a lot more media than 40Gb and I was wondering how it would deal with that. Apple have come up with common sense here – it will synchronise movies and videos first, then music, podcasts and photos. This makes sure that video content will take priority.
It also has this other great feature of letting upto 5 other iTunes libraries connect to it wirelessly, allowing these other computers to stream content wirelessly to the TV.
With Steve Jobs announcing Apple TV take 2 at the recent MacWorld event in San Francisco, it’s clear that Apple want movie rentals to become as big a revenue stream as music sales are. And it makes sense too. I have about 200 DVD’s and most of those I’ve only watched once or twice. They’re taking up space on my bookshelves and generally just a reminder of how much money I’ve wasted.
All in all, this is a great solution for getting iTunes media onto your TV, and with the forthcoming update to allow video rentals I can see this flying out of the Apple stores.

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Posted by Noel

Internet connectivity and resiliency measures

November 7, 2007


A client in central London has been waiting for several weeks for BT to install a fibre cable into his building. The original request was for a 30Mb circuit on a 100Mb bearer with a 2Mb SDSL backup connection. Thus far only the 2Mb SDSL connection is live, and the client still doesn’t have a date for the main circuit installation.

Aside from these business circuits, the client has also had 2 be* lines installed. Until recently, I was unaware of be* but their circuits offer upto 24Mb download and 2Mb upload for the Be pro service. They provide a rebadged Thompson SpeedTouch 585 ADSL2+ wireless router with a 4 port 100Mb switch, which has been marketed as a ‘bebox’.

The original intention for these be* circuits was for them to be used by non-core business activities, therefore not impacting the 30Mb internet circuit. However, when I received a call yesterday telling me that the 2Mb SDSL circuit had failed, it was these be ADSL lines that were to provide a quick solution.

I gave the bebox the same IP address as the network default gateway, and connected it to the network. I disconnected the business circuit routers so there would be no IP address conflicts. Within seconds, the users had internet connectivity through the bebox.

The only service that has been compromised by this is VPN access to the network. Therefore as a permanent solution, it’s not well suited for organisations reliant on VPN connections.

In short, the be* circuits provided a good backup to the failed BT circuit, and I’ll probably keep one as a standby line for the future.

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Posted by Noel