Give me a break. Its not like you can't pickup 720p TV sets. Even at Walmart you can pick up TVs that display 720p (or slightly better) for under $1000. I saw a 30" CRT 720p for under $500. Sure it's not as sophisticated as a flat screen but when you don't have a large cash flow - you take what you get. Not like it is any bulkier than my Hitachi 32" CRT 480i TV I had 5 years ago and it was $700. However, that $400 something 720p CRT Pawn that Hitachi in picture quality.

Seems to me that the $20 twenty foot Svid/3.5mm to three rca cable pretty much accomplishes the same thing.

That hollywood reporter article has this quote.
"Wouldn't it be nice to just scroll through a list of your movies and TV shows and just pick the one you want?"

Yeah it would. But its called a computer. I can scroll through whatever is on it and pick what I want to watch and it plays on my tv perfectly fine. Has been that way for a long time now.

I may be missing something but (at least for me) that Apple TV seems a bit redundant. For other people its just un-necessary.

There's a big difference between "it doesn't work" and "it doesn't work the way I want it to."

First it's called a "souped-up wireless router," which shows the author obviously doesn't understand that with an operating system and a hard drive it's much closer to being a stripped-down computer.

As for the hard drive's size, you're not meant to store your Apple TV content on it, but on your regular computer. The hard drive is only for buffering the content you're watching now.

And dinging the product because it only works with HD televisions seems like pettiness. That's where the market is going. The author sounds like those who criticized Steve Jobs back in the day when the first iMac came out without a floppy drive. Oh how they howled that Apple was ignoring backwards compatibility at its own peril. (You will note, too, that this was years before OS X came out.)

It sounds like this writer just has a case of sour grapes because he doesn't own an HD-TV yet.

The author's primary lament betrays the fallacy of the others. He bemoans the "radio silence" of the media about an Apple product that's "a dud."

[And just to address the obvious: being mentioned in the New York Times less often than the iPhone, and not working on antediluvian TV sets, does not constitute "a dud."]

So now it's good journalism to hate Apple, is it? It's pointing out the emperor has no clothes to say that Cupertino's put out a product with a price premium? Bravo!

Go back to J-school, Cronkite. For my $300 I get to watch my iTunes content on an HD set that I bought in 2003. And it will be done in the seamless, attractive manner that Apple brings to all its products.

By the way, I recall signing up for the SciFi newsletter because I like Battlestar Galactica. I didn't expect (recurring) features of sloppily-reasoned argurments against my favorite purveyor of kit. I'll be unsubscribing now.

Oh, dear... The author's writing style is about as annoying as the opinions of which he writes. ("At a time 'where'"...? try "when") If you're going to do pithy product reviews espousing critiques like this the style needs to be tightened up- a lot. And not so whiny, please.

Okay then, the substance: You're dinging a tech company for not being 100% backward compatible with a technology that is, BY LAW, already scheduled into obsolescence? This seems, as a previous post put it, petty.

And the upgrades the author is complaining about (to iTunes and OS X)? Well, last time I checked iTunes was free, as are the vast majority of Apple's OS X updates. Bad foundation for his arguments.

In fact, Apple SHOULD be dinged for the paltry hard drive allotment on the product, just as it should be nailed to the cross for failing to provide REAL HD capabilities---1080p or at the very least 1080i. Anything less is pointless--why go HD at all if you're not going to do it right?

Finally; I needed to pause a moment after reading this to think about why I found this article SO annoying and I think I've got it:

I read Sci Fi and other supposedly forward-looking web sites for just that--looking forward. It's just no fun reading a tech-oriented article on a tech-oriented site by a guy who resents the 'burden' of tech.

I would have to agree that the author seems a little bitter about not owning an HDtv, or maybe just being a little more on par with the technology world. I mean really, who writes an article on new technologies but fails to own an HDtv. Sounds a little suspect to me.

Also, is this the same author that beat down the iPhone in his last article because he didn't like the pricepoint? Wow...talk about having a vendetta.

Maybe he should focus on how he's written more about Apple products that try to make life easier, and less on the Microsoft products that continue to frustrate the average consumer to the point of buying a Mac.

I would jump at Apple TV if it were more of a DVR that does the things that it is promised to do.

Additions:

Bigger hard drive

Smart program recording like TIVO

and the stuff that Mr Jobs has promised out of it.

Then I would be the first one at the door for double the price!

ok so a Apple TV cost 300 bucks, you can pay around 300.00 dollars more for a ps3 which would come around 600.00 total for the top model, slap linux on that bad boy and its like your putting a austin martin next to a kia.

this round goes to ps3, apple tv dropped the marketing soap, better be glad its not in prison.

You could always upgrade the harddrive:

http://www.appletvhacks.net/2007/03/23/apple-tv-harddrive-upgrade-process/

The same site is also working on improving what the Apple TV software can do.

I have a Sony 36" TV that I purchased in 1999. It is not HD and it is not widescreen. It does, however, have component video.

I purchased the Apple TV knowing that it had supported component video. I set the Apple TV resolution to 480p and it works great with my non-HDTV, non-widescreen TV.

The statements that you have to buy a HDTV or widescreen TV is simply not true. As long as your TV supports component video at 480p, Apple TV will work great.