Apple TV vs TiVo

Last night, I hooked connected an Apple TV box to my TV (a 50-inch Panasonic plasma, capable of a 1080p, full-HD picture), and tried downloading my first movie from iTunes.

I’ll keep you posted in the days and weeks ahead, but my initial impression is that it’s a cut above the Caspa movie download service that comes bundled with the TVNZ-backed TiVo (which I’m running in parallel).

I chose The Hangover from a slim selection of a half-dozen new releases. TiVo - and a third alternative, Microsoft’s movie download service for Xbox live - share an almost identically sparse selection.

I’m sure all - especially Apple, which constantly boasts about iTunes having a much, much wider music selection than any store - is embarrassed to offer a skimpy selection of movies that would be considered a joke if offered by a bricks-and-mortar video rental operation.

Setup
Although dubious - as with anything with wi-fi involved - I found I was able to set up the videocassette-sized Apple TV box, and have iTunes on my TV screen, within minutes. The Apple TV unit plugs into your television via an HDMI cable, and to your DSL/wi-fi modem via wi-fi.

While TiVo has a separate add-on aerial for wireless home networking, the tiny Apple TV’s wi-fi receiver is built in - yet it seems just as fast, if not faster.

Where Apple TV has the edge
TiVo gives you no choice of movie format; it has one, sub-DVD quality offering.

Apple TV and iTunes give you three download options for a number of A-list movies.

There’s a standard option of $6.99 (priced to match TiVo; resolution or file size is not revealed).

But you also get an HD option - albeit at the minimum HD spec of 720i - for $7.99. That’s better than DVD quality, and it looked it when I downloaded the HD version of The Hangover. The picture looked superb, and was backed by a Dolby soundtrack.

All HD titles, and some back-catalogue titles, are available in 5.1 surround sound.

You also get a third option (again not available on TiVo) to buy movies, for between $17 and $24 (if you rent then - like TiVo - a movie is zapped from the Apple TV’s hard drive two days after you first watch it. Why not a week, given all commercial download services are struggling to gain traction?).

While I’ve found TiVo patchy - sometimes I’ve been able to watch movies almost immediately (while the rest of the film streams in the background), twice I’ve had evenings wrecked by a movie taking more than an hour to begin playing - apple TV let me start viewing almost straight away. Both boxes were using the same Telecom connection, so it’s possible Apple TV will stumble in the future; I’ll keep you posted.

Where TiVo has the edge
TiVo - which beyond the ondemand internet movie downloads discussed here serves as a Freeview HD receiver and recorder, with many unique tricks in that sphere - does have one key advantage: it’s downloads are unmetered if you’re a Telecom customer (that is, they don’t count toward your monthly data cap, and the excess charges involved if you bust it).

Annoyingly, Apple TV doesn’t tell you the file size for an HD version of a movie - I guess because it’s used to operating in the US and other countries where all-you-can-eat data plans are standard.

TiVo’s movies are 1.2GB to 1.5GB, depending on the length of the film.

From internet forums, I gather Apple TV’s HD movies usually weigh in around 4GB - a still contribution to your monthly cap if, like most people, you’re in the 10GB or 20GB limit zone.

Apple TV costs $429 with a 160GB hard drive. See apple.com/nz/appletv for more.

READ ALSO:
Man vs TiVo, part 1 
No, you don't have to be a Telecom customer: a TiVo Q&A