Mine is a Refurb
I bought my Apple TV from the Apple online store’s refurbished section. My experience so far is that the refurbished items from Apple are good quality. In my case it came in a new box completely sealed. The only thing indicating it was a refurb model was the sticker on the box (actual picture at the right). My experience was very positive and I would recommend people considering buying an Apple TV consider a refurbished model - the warranty is the same as new. The refurb 40GB model is $199 - that is a good deal in my opinion. Also, I recommend you stick with the 40GB model unless you really think you will be storing a lot of media locally on your Apple TV. You can stream everything from your PC or Mac so you don’t necessarily need to sync the Apple TV.
Some more pics of the un-boxing (yep admittedly very geeky) - no different than brand new:
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Comments
Refurbished Apple products tend to come in plain brown boxes, but mine also arrived in the retail box.
@M.A.S. - I have used the AppleCore ATV 3.2.2 hack - okay but I’m underwhelmed with the usability. I’m trying out Boxee on my Mac and I will get around to installing this soon (and posting about it).
@Galley - I ordered an refurb iPod from my son and it came in a white box that has “iPod” on it. Not the same as retail but good enough to gift wrap. So far, experience with refurb products from Apple has been very positive.
I’ve heard good things about refurb Mac’s too - take a look sometime the refurb price is close to the used price you see for the same product on eBay. With free shipping and full warranty, your better off going refurb than used.
So refurb is a mere $30 less than a new one? True you get savings but…. not much.
I second the 40 gig statement. I have one and simply can’t imagine needing more space. I have a good 10 films on it, plus my most recent music and never feel I have a lack of choices.
Question: I haven’t figured out how to stream movie content. I can stream music just fine, but how do you stream movie files on the Apple TV from your desktop computer?
@ gordon. in iTunes Summary Tab… click on “Custom Sync”
uncheck “show only synced items on my AppleTV”… this will make unsynced items show up on the appleTV menu… if they are not synced then they will stream when clicked on they act just as if they were actually synced
go to the movies tab and uncheck “Sync” (sync is off)
go to the music and photos tab and make sure “Sync” is checked (sync is on)turn syncing on or off as you require for TV Shows and Podcasts
Thanks @Moe.
@gordon - This was a “Take 2″ feature that made the disk size of the Apple TV obsolete to some extent. I didn’t mention it but I got the 160GB model thinking I needed the space but after getting it all set up, I realized I didn’t really need it. If, however, you used a laptop or prefer to put your Mac/PC to sleep when not in use, the local storage is needed.
Wow I had no idea! This is the problem when Apple refuses to use paper manuals (I know they’re online) I’m one of the people who actually reads them. I’m purchasing a 1 TB hard drive for my old G4 Desktop and can serve films from that. I suppose I can then fill my 40 gigs with podcasts and music…
I do suspect that if apps come to Apple TV (might even be inevitable with iPhone as the controller) that hard disk space will be useful.
So any plans to hack it and install Boxee or XMBC?