There's a nice in-depth review of AppleTV over at Ars Technica: http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/appletv.ars/1

Have been watching the modding process all weekend, Boyd. There's a thread at a site called SomethingAweful that has been a hotbed of getting the AppleTV hacked to do all sorts of things. The main attempt is to get the device to the point where you can have it recognize and use network attached storage, and use different software codecs for content playback as you would on your regular computer.

Replacing the hard drive with a larger unit took less than a day to figure out.

-gb-

I just got mine last night..... works well...... I'm excited about going dvd-less and mail-less.....

It seems to bring my router to it's knees when hooked up via cat5..... but works fine wirelessly. hmmm?

Image quality looks great on my 720p projector ( 10' wide screen )

The "300" movie trailer looks really good!

I've exported a few of mt z1 footage files thru appletv setting in qt..... looks great!

I'm a little scared I'll loose the remote..... also..... if my macbooks open, the remote works frontrow... so they must be the same

Yeah they're the same to not have that problem you've gotta pair each remote to each device.

cool.... I'll try "pairing" them. I'm alergic to to instruction manuals.... something genetic.... so thanks for the info.

oh.... and man does this thing get hot! I think I'll use it to pre-warm my espresso cups!

Hej min does surround
 

I have seen reports that the ATV is a stereo device. But a HD-trailer downloaded and iTuned from the quicktime site played in glorious 5.1 through my surround reciever. :)

This is a great and simple device. I am converting a old pc to serve our 90+ Gig music collection using WiFi. Finally - Music at your fingertips!

A few of you said the image looks great on a HD TV. By great do you mean HD quality? The reason I ask is I too bought an Apple TV, loaded some 720p and 1080i footage onto it and was not impressed. The picture is soft and not HD quality at all. I've viewing is on a new Samsung 40" LCD HD.

Please tell me I'm doing something wrong because there is a $30 fee to return the Apple TV to the Apple store if the box has been opened.

Thanks,
Joe

hmmm.... things to make sure are done

apple tv....
make sure 720p tv is checked

files....
1080i footage will only display at 540 size.
make sure your compression is not to extreme.
make sure 720 footage is 24p and not interlaced.

Something is wrong. The footage I put on there is anything but soft. It's excellent.

Are you sure you're plugged component into one of the HD channel ins? Many TV's like my Sony Rear Screen LCD, have 5 component in's, but only 2 are HD compatible.

Check that. It also could be that you're blowing up an HD clip from a smaller file already. I have been amazed at the quality...it is not soft at all.

KW

I checked out apple TV today at the Apple Store and it didn't look like the movies/ TV shoes that were playing for display were HD. I would have to see it again when they have HD clips from itunes and running in the store. But the device it self is very cool to use.

This reviewer was not impressed....

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070404/tech_...e_tv.html?.v=6