Apples and Oranges Hands-On: Apple TV vs. TiVo Series3 HD

-From Gizmodo
there are a lot of pictures at the end but I’ll put the link for the slide show HERE

Maybe you’ve had a snootful of Apple TV, but here’s a comparison with a twist: We’re going to compare Apples and oranges, pitting Apple TV against the TiVo Series3 HD Digital Media Recorder. From the outset, realize that the Apple TV is not a personal video recorder, and can hardly compete against the mighty TiVo Series3 HD on that playing field. For instance, you’re going to have an awfully difficult time watching something like the Super Bowl in HD on the Apple TV.

But there are some things both systems can do, and that’s where we’ll compare Apple TV versus TiVo. For example, how well does the TiVo Series3 display photos compared to the Apple TV? How about playing music, or displaying downloaded content from iTunes compared to TiVo’s downloaded content from its latest partnership with Amazon and its Unbox service?

Downloaded Content
It’s now possible to download TV shows and movies with TiVo, using Amazon’s Unbox service. Both Unbox and the iTunes Store don’t have enough movie and TV show content for our taste, and both can’t deliver HDTV movies or TV shows. So in our mind, for now, they both suck. In fact, the content from both is hardly even DVD quality. We downloaded this season’s first episode of 24 from both Amazon Unbox on the TiVo (pictured above, at left) and the iTunes Store (both were $1.99). Take a look at one versus the other, and you might agree that both are just fugly. TiVo has a slight quality edge, where its widescreen picture isn’t scaled all the way out to the edges of the screen, but had decidedly better color saturation. The Apple iTunes TV show we downloaded looked washed out by comparison. Advantage: TiVo

User Interface
But when I looked at their attendant software and user interface, Apple sucks less. It has better-looking graphics and a pleasing subtlety that’s missing on the TiVo user interface. For instance, when you push the Play button, Apple TV dissolves to the program, and then dissolves out the position indicator bar after a few seconds. Not so with the TiVo, which merely takes the shot from one source to the other, and pops out the superimposed titles. Advantage: Apple TV

Remote Control
What about the remote? Apple has made a valiant effort with its tiny pack-of-gum-sized remote, but it doesn’t come close to that of the TiVo, with its famed ergonomics and lightning-quick response. Apple TV’s remote responds quickly, but it’s about a half-second behind TiVo’s remote. However, both remotes are exceedingly powerful, not requiring you to point them directly at the box in order to control it. Still, TiVo wins in the battle for the remote. Advantage: TiVo

Photo Display
Displaying photos is a clear win for Apple TV. Where TiVo lets you team up with its TiVo desktop software and import pictures (and a beta version will soon let you import HDTV-rez pictures), Apple has this photo display thing down pat. TiVo’s interface just feels downright clunky next to Apple’s smooth and artful photo display routine. You can pick a music playlist as accompaniment, and then Apple TV will show you a beautiful Ken Burns effect with each of your photos in a slide show that’s extensively configurable. Plus, your photos show up in a beautiful montage screensaver effect throughout the Apple TV interface. It’s gorgeous, and slam-dunks TiVo. Advantage: Apple TV

Playing Music
Here’s another win for Apple TV, where music is easier to get to with Apple’s ergonomic sliding-style interface, with better graphics and easier classifications. Even when you don’t have any album art, the Apple TV looks better than the bare-bones TiVo music interface, if you could even call it that. However, it’s clumsy to get to large music libraries on either the TiVo or Apple TV, and add to that TiVo’s disadvantage of not being able to play back any songs you bought on the iTunes music store. Advantage: Apple TV

HD, DivX and XviD Files
We’re not crazy about the fact that neither can handle XviD or DivX files right out of the box (yeah, you can hack them, but that’s not easy to do), and both are locked up tighter than a drum with DRM. Apple TV files download faster from iTunes than the Amazon Unbox ones do (notice the “Can’t Play Now” label on the TiVo screen above). That said, both seem to be taking baby steps toward bringing online content to the living room, and both are shying away from HDTV downloaded content now, which is almost a deal breaker in our book. Both are full of potential, but are relatively lame so far, compared with what they someday will be able to do. Advantage: Neither (Xbox 360)

Verdict: Which is Better?
Playing music, displaying photos, and playing video files via a network seems to be an afterthought for the TiVo, and Apple TV bested it in each of these categories. However, TiVo completely outclasses Apple TV when it comes to having two CableCards on board, being able to record HDTV and play it back perfectly. TiVo Series3 is a PVR, and is a far more versatile machine, as its $800 price tag reflects, versus the $300 price tag of Apple TV. Advantage: Not Comparable

Which to Buy?
Apple TV and TiVo can coexist in a home theater system, and it’s not a zero-sum game. If you’re interested in watching downloaded video from iTunes, seeing photos and music in your home theater, and don’t care about HDTV, Apple TV would be a great addition to your playback arsenal.

But if you care about HDTV, TiVo Series3 would be your best choice now, and maybe its comparatively plain user interface will serve your needs as far as Internet television, photos, and music are concerned. Apple TV just feels like an unfinished box that’s full of potential, and as soon as it’s able to download and play back HDTV, all it’ll need is a couple of CableCards inside to seriously challenge TiVo’s Series3.

Until then, we’re thinking the ultimate solution is to have both these set-top boxes sitting side by side in your home theater. Advantage: You Need Both. – Charlie White

Check out this gallery with enlarged views of the user interfaces and more comments and captions:

Apple TV vs. Xbox 360: Media Center Showdown

-from Gizmodo
Apple TV vs. Xbox 360: Media Center Showdown

Walt Mossburg said in his review that “Apple TV’s most formidable competitor is the Xbox 360 game console from Microsoft, which, in addition to playing games, can also play back content from Windows computers on a TV.” The Times’ techmeister David Pogue also calls up the 360 Media Extender in his review, as well some other gadgets.

In our head-to-head, we took Vista Ultimate and used a 360 as a Windows Media Extender. With this setup, we came to the conclusion that the hulking white box ekes out the slimmer, shorter Apple TV—unless you have a standard XP computer with Media Center, or copious amounts of Apple iTunes DRM’d content. Why?

Setup
Both are easy as pie, quite frankly. Turned on the 360, my Vista Media Center found it instantly. Same for iTunes/Apple TV. One catch here, however, is that if you want to wirelessly stream to your 360, you’re going to need a dongle than runs $100 for the official one, which is quite frankly, obscene. Apple TV’s lack of cables isn’t much better. Both the 360 and Apple TV provide a code for you to punch into your Media Center and iTunes to authenticate, not long after which you can start moving content. Woohoo. The 360 warns you if you’re moving content wirelessly on both ends, however, recommending that at least your computer be hardwired to the network.

Interface
Both have attractive interfaces, obviously. Apple TV looks simply fabulous in HD, with crystal clear text and vivid icons. Granted, this is a downside if your album art sucks, as mentioned before. Media Center’s no slouch either, with a heavy emphasis on live previews. Text-wise, I prefer Apple TV, simply because I find white text on a black background easier to read than light blue and white on dark blue, which dominates the interface.

Apple TV is also much snappier—Media Center felt sluggish both on my laptop and on the TV itself. When that sluggishness is paired with scrolling in four directions, I found it to be a bit awkward to get where I want to go. That said, both use a modified “folder metaphor” as its major schematic, and I’m not overly fond of it. It takes too long to access content. God forbid you ever have to the onscreen keyboard to get anywhere with either of them. (You don’t really, as of yet.) I don’t know what the solution is, but surely there’s a better way to make content and options more quickly and easily accessible. Live previews are excellent, I do know that.

Moving Content
Media Center lets you customize which folders you want it to “watch” to import into your library. That content you can then stream to your “Media Extender,” the 360. If for some reason the 360 won’t play a video in your library, it won’t give you a thumbnail preview, which is a nice way to let you know. Apple TV, because it syncs (ports content to its hard drive) from your main computer rather than simply streams, thankfully it has a fairly customizable set of syncing options. It still annoys me that you can’t manually delete or add content, though. Be warned, just because iTunes will play a video doesn’t mean that Apple TV will, as you can see in the screenshot below.

Apple TV plays H.264 and protected H.264, iTunes Store purchased video and MPEG-4, whereas Media Center handles MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and all WMV. Not being able to grab content straight from the iTunes store is a bummer, especially since it pulls trailers from the intertubes directly, so the 360 one-ups it here with its built-in direct access store. So both use proprietary formats in some manner. Bleh. But Media Center gives you more options than Apple TV does, so a check for the 360 setup.

Apple TV also does not stream photos—meaning you can only store them on the drive, you can only pull pictures from your main computer. Media Center, since it only streams, obviously streams photos, but I prefer the way it presents them, actually. No problems loading up my music library, which is comprised entirely of MP3s, and the corresponding album art, on either system.

Playing Content
I find the Apple TV remote to be a little crummy. Sometimes fast-forwarding and rewinding was a little wonky, getting ahead of itself. Using the Xbox 360 controller (not remote) wasn’t better, largely because there’s no dedicated pause button, though I appreciated using the triggers as FF and RW. Weirdly, when you go back to the menu in Media Center, a live thumbnail preview keeps playing, and there’s no easy way to shut it off, which was kind of frustrating when I wanted a video to stop playing.

Otherwise, both played beautifully (if they were able to play the content), with no hiccups when streaming with either, despite using wireless G networks in both tests. (If you’d like to donate to the Giz wireless N fund, let us know.)

Conclusion
If you use iTunes as your primary media software and want to get your content on your widescreen TV, it’s not a bad way to do it, but that’s all it does (for now). If you already have a 360 and don’t mind Media Center, I see little point in blowing $300 on Apple TV if all that concerns you is bringing content stuck on your PC to your TV. You already have a $400 machine that does more than port media, it plays games. Great ones. And soon it’ll be an IPTV box to boot.

Apple TV is a bit more elegant in its presentation, I think, and it’s slightly easier to get to content with it, but it could do better. More importantly, it doesn’t do what it does so much better than the 360/Media Center setup that it warrants a separate purchase if you already have a 360, or even plan on getting one. Value-wise, the 360 is the winner here, at least for now.

But there are better convergence solutions on the horizon, so if you don’t need one of these now sit tight, because things are only going to get better. – Matt Buchanan

Apple TV [Gizmodo]