Apple TV proves useful for watching video podcasts

By Jason Hiner March 26, 2007, 1:22 AM PDT

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Apple TV proves useful for watching video podcasts

by Jason Hiner

Setting up the Apple TV was as simple as expected. I connected the HDMI cable to my LCD TV and plugged in the power cord. The Apple TV logo quickly showed up while the unit booted.

by Jason Hiner

Once the device had booted, it went through a slick little animation that tried to demonstrate the large library of content available to the Apple TV via iTunes.

by Jason Hiner

After entering the SSID and password for my WPA-enabled wireless access point, the Apple TV was ready to load and view content.

by Jason Hiner

I connected the Apple TV to my laptop, where I had downloaded some video podcasts from kentuckyderby.com into iTunes. Then I went into the Podcasts section of the Apple TV. I did not sync (download) the podcasts to the Apple TV hard drive. Instead, I simply streamed them from the laptop via WiFi.

by Jason Hiner

I actually downloaded video from two different sets of Podcasts from kentuckyderby.com. The first contained the videos of the various prep races leading up to the Kentucky Derby. The second set of podcasts involve commentators talking about the current developments on the Kentucky Derby trail. This screen shows how to select between the two sets.

by Jason Hiner

Once I selected the set of podcasts on the prep races for the Kentucky Derby, then I was able to choose the video for each of the individual races.

by Jason Hiner

Here is the video from one of the prep races. As you can see, the quality is not very crisp since this was optimized for computer viewing in a small window. Neverthless, it was great to be able to watch it on my TV and to be able to easily flip through and play the videos of these races.

by Jason Hiner

Here’s another clip that shows a video in action. Again, you can see that the quality is not superb. However, the audio quality was clear and there were no hiccups or buffering problems with the video even though it was streaming over a wireless connection. That impressed me, but these were small files. I’d like to see if the Apple TV can stream this well with bigger files.

by Jason Hiner

After I watched the videos of the prep races, I went back to the Podcast menu and selected the set of podcasts that feature commentators talking about the progress of the horses on the Kentucky Derby trail. As you can see on the right side, there were two episodes available (I only downloaded two of them to my laptop).

by Jason Hiner

One of the two podcasts that I downloaded from “The Kentucky Derby Trail” series was this one from John Asher, a veteran horse racing journalist. The quality looked better on this one and the audio quality was solid – no sync problems with the video.

By Jason Hiner

Jason Hiner is Editorial Director of CNET and former Editor in Chief of TechRepublic. He's co-author of the book, Follow the Geeks.

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