WEEK 3: Apple TV
I held out on getting Apple TV for a long time. But then, after very little research, I realized it’s a one-time payment of $100 and five minutes of setup. Why did no one tell me that? That’s less than my monthly cable bill. And after I rationalized it by getting rid of Netflix DVDs (I am aware this does not add up in any way, but it made me feel better), it seemed like a sound investment. I was sold pretty quickly.
That said, I have to admit I prepared for this week thoroughly by making sure any show I do watch (“The Challenge,” “The Soup,” “Drunk History,” etc.) were being recorded because I am not missing those. So really, it’s not cable I can’t live without – it’s the DVR.
Live TV viewing is fine and I definitely channel surf, but I could certainly live without it. Surfing on Apple TV takes a bit more of a time commitment and searching, but it amounts to the same thing. Except instead of catching the tail end of an old episode of “Psych,” I can watch the entirety of a randomly chosen episode of “Psych.”
Anyway, Week 3 began on a nice note with me, only five years too late, starting “Breaking Bad.” I have all season to catch up on five seasons, so how hard could this be?
Hard. Apple TV, I found, is a much better tool for when you have loads of time to kill, when you can watch an entire movie, or catch up on a TV show like, say, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” But when you only have a few hours of down time per day, Apple TV sometimes just doesn’t seem worth it. It’s not for the faint of heart, or for those of us with only an hour until that yoga class we promised ourselves we’d go to this time. Apple TV’s version of channel surfing is a bit more personalized, which is helpful, but the system just doesn’t lend itself to channel surfing, so I end up spending more time scouring my options to pick something great to watch instead of just turning on the TV and landing on the first thing that catches my attention.
Another pro in the pro/con column is that I can keep TV series and movies in my queue forever, which I do. I’ve been meaning to watch “Cabin in the Woods” for months and finally got to it this weekend. I should note at this point that I’m starting to sound like a broken record about Joss Whedon’s works, but really, once you start on his library, how can you stop? “Cabin in the Woods” was fantastic, and even better, that’s staying in my queue so I can watch it again later.
I also got caught up on a lot of movie trailers I haven’t seen – an overlooked but entertaining, and not too time-sucking, feature on Apple TV is their trailers. I spent a few minutes here and there discovering new films to add to my list as well as showing friends YouTube videos they missed. Other features on the system are great but not as useful for me, as I don’t have HBO, so no HBO GO, and I don’t pay for Hulu Plus, so that’s out.
One timely addition this week was Netflix’s addition of multiple users, as my new roommate and I decided to try it out. All in all, this seems like a great option for families, roommates or significant others that never learned to share or don’t want Netflix recommendations based on contrary likes and dislikes. I get it – sometimes the guy wants to watch everything with Jason Statham when the girl only wants to see Keira Knightley’s latest period piece. Those Netflix algorithms would probably explode.
However, we used it for about a day before we realized we had identical queues anyway, and the user profiles simply split them up, making the experience more disjointed and less of a shared experience.
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Apple TV was actually a great week, if only that I got to catch up on forgotten or missed TV while still having the luxury of my DVR doing all the work for me in the background. I started “Breaking Bad,” kept on with “Buffy” and re-watched a few movies I like that have a permanent place on my Netflix queue. Mostly, I found that if Apple TV was only Netflix, I’d be fine with just that. That and all the shows my DVR is currently recording for me.
Let’s see how that tiny TV dongle making headlines, Google’s Chromecast, measures up next week.
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