Apple TV

It took a fair while before Apple TV was released in Malaysia. It was partly due to the limitation of Malaysian App Store, which until only recently sold songs and movies. It was only purely applications prior to that, although it did not stop me from having both the US and UK app store accounts for my fix of movies and videos.

The Apple TV was surprisingly affordable at RM350, but compared to Western Digital media hubs and the like, it was pretty limited in terms of what it could do. But what ever it could do, typically of Apple, it did them well. It could stream. From iTunes. And that was it biggest selling point. And it streamed media directly from the iPads and Macs very well, although at a very noticeable latency.

The unit was much smaller than I expectedAnd it came with a slick remote unitTypical of Apple, it came in a nice tidy packageIt could also perform AirPlay, a way of turning the TV into a computer screen remotely, but the latency and lag were just too long. It was unusable at best. I also suffered from limited bandwidth as my router was located at my study, and I had to use a repeater to get signals onto the Apple TV. Streaming YouTube was effortless, but anything from the iTune Store took a while to download. I ended up downloading onto my MacBook, then streaming it onto the TV.

The situation maybe a little better if the wifi signal was stronger, something I would try on a later venture. At the moment, I was happy with the YouTube streaming, and media from my iPad. And another thing to be aware, the Apple TV unit did not come with an HDMI cable. You would need to purchase that separately.