Apple Components

Apple TV is a digital media receiver designed, marketed and sold by Apple. It is a network device designed to play digital content originating from the iTunes Store or another computer onto an enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen television. more...

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Apple TV can store content on an internal hard drive or stream it across a network from another computer running iTunes on either Mac OS X or Windows.

History

Apple TV was first announced at a special press event in San Francisco, California on September 12, 2006, where Apple CEO Steve Jobs also announced enhanced fifth generation iPods, the addition of films to the iTunes Store and the release of version 7 of iTunes. The final product name was not announced at the event, but was instead referred to by its codename iTV. Jobs did another preview during his January 9 keynote speech at the 2007 Macworld Expo, where he announced that Apple would begin taking pre-orders for the device. Apple TV started shipping on March 21, 2007. A second version with a larger 160 GB hard disk started shipping on May 31, 2007.

On January 15, 2008, Steve Jobs announced a major software upgrade to the Apple TV system (dubbed 'Take Two') at the 2008 San Francisco Macworld Event. The free update removed the requirement for another computer running the iTunes software client to stream or load content to the device. The update adds the ability to rent and purchase movies and music from the iTunes Store directly from the device, as well as download podcasts and stream photos live from .Mac and Flickr.

Features

Apple TV connects to a television or other video equipment through either High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) or component video connections. The product does not come with any connecting cables in the box (other than an AC power cable), so the user must supply either an HDMI cable or component video/stereo audio cables.

Although Apple's website states that an enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen television is required, Apple confirmed to MacLife that the unit does work with standard definition TVs with component video connectors, but the picture may be vertically stretched if the TV does not support anamorphic widescreen, a video encoding technique used to optimize the vertical picture by aspect ratio. Audio is supported via digital optical and analog (RCA connector) audio ports. The device connects to other computers either through an Ethernet connection, or wirelessly through the standard IEEE 802.11b, g, and n wireless protocols. A USB port is also included on the device, but is reserved for service and diagnostics.

Read more at Wikipedia.org