In my experience, the desktop solution sucks. I built a Win7 HTPC for about $350, and of course it does way more than the AppleTV does. But I thought WMC would work out of the box, and it does not. Turns out Windows can play very FEW media formats until you download codec packs from the various sketchy foreign sites with more malware than content. Also, every time my generic remote can't do something, I find myself powering up the wireless keyboard and using a not-made-for-the-living-room UI to do everything. The other day my video started stuttering for no reason and I spent about an hour troubleshooting, upgrading video drivers, etc. I've never had to do this with an AppleTV or WDTV or FireTV stick, or any other appliance. Then a week later, the sound stopped working through my TV. I went into audio drivers, and I saw a RealTEK driver. Is this what I want? I don't know. Why did it work before? It doesn't work now. After a few reboots, magically I saw "Samsung TV". Well, okay, I DEFINITELY want that. And it worked!
Different devices for different markets.
That said, $150 for an AppleTV is a bit more dear than the old $99 pricepoint. It's a harder sell than it used to be.
I like my AppleTV4, but it doesn't really do much that my 3 didn't do. I tried using the Plex app, hoping it would replace the HTPC that I finally junked and replaced with a TiVo. Sadly, my NAS is not powerful enough to transcode, so I'm back at square one.. except, with the TiVo, now I have 6 devices and only 5 HDMI ports on my receiver.. back to square one.
> I tried using the Plex app, hoping it would replace the HTPC that I finally junked and replaced with a TiVo. Sadly, my NAS is not powerful enough to transcode, so I'm back at square one
Instead of running something on the computer or NAS to transcode, you could try using the free VLC app on the Apple TV to access your NAS (although it currently doesn't support AC3 audio and will in a later release). You could also buy the Infuse Pro app on the store, which plays all video and audio formats (including licensed ones) from any available network share. In both these cases, the decoding/transcoding happens on the Apple TV.
I've got both Plex and Infuse Pro. Infuse will play anything, without transcoding, and not complain about AC3 or DTS like VLC does. Plex has a better UI though, so I use it whenever I know that it works with the content I want, like certain series.
Its by far the best media streamer experience I've had so far.
Thanks, I was not aware of Infuse, and forgot about the VLC option. I actually don't love Plex's UI, it's a little too flashy for me. I really just like simple lists of content, so I'll give these a try.
Different devices for different markets.
That said, $150 for an AppleTV is a bit more dear than the old $99 pricepoint. It's a harder sell than it used to be.
I like my AppleTV4, but it doesn't really do much that my 3 didn't do. I tried using the Plex app, hoping it would replace the HTPC that I finally junked and replaced with a TiVo. Sadly, my NAS is not powerful enough to transcode, so I'm back at square one.. except, with the TiVo, now I have 6 devices and only 5 HDMI ports on my receiver.. back to square one.