Apple TV geek out

I picked up an Apple TV on the weekend, and can't resist a geeky post to fill you in on my setup!

I heard a lot of good things about it and had a play with one in an Apple store, which together were enough to convince me to go ahead and get one. As I was buying it I had a chat with the guy queuing for the till next to me and it turned out that he (and a lot of people) had come in to get another one for the bedroom because he loved his one in the lounge so much! Of course, bedroom TVs are de rigeur over here...

The way it works is that it loads content onto its own hard drive from one other computer that it's paired with. It can stream stuff off other computers too. I've got an old iMac in the spare room, so I've loaded all our music on to that (and soon it will have all our pics too) and made it the one to pair with. But because I prefer not to be hidden upstairs when Diana and I are at home, I've found a handy bit of freeware that allows me to connect to the iMac from my laptop and click around on stuff. I've seen tech support people do it at work before but never thought there would be free software to do it. The other cool part is that I've got it downloading video podcasts from the BBC, CNN, G4, Gametrailers.com and several other sources. Video podcasts have really started to take off and so far I've spent the most time watching those on my Apple TV.

So there you go, I couldn't resist sharing! So far it has been a pure pleasure.