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Laptop publishes a review today for the Apple TV giving it a near 5 out of 5 stars. Steward Wolpin writes, "...as long as you're content living and playing in an iTunes world, Apple TV more than lives up to its hype. It's the most elegant digital media adapter yet, and one that we assume will only get better with age."

Of course, all of our Apple TV movies here at appletvmoviesdownload.com are completely compatible with iTunes and the Apple TV.

In related news, though DivX (and its variant, Xvid) encoded videos have not been playable in QuickTime in the past, Apple has added Divx and Xvid to its supported codecs on its QuickTime components page, even though an OS X version of the codec is not listed on the Xvid downloads page. Could it be that Apple is incorporating Xvid into QuickTime in order that the Apple TV can play the vast number of privately encoded Xvid videos existing on users' computers?

Apple TV
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According to Gizmodo, the Apple TV "Buy Me" page shows a "Select Your Apple TV" option. Although it is not selectable currently, this is normally a button to select additional options.

While this could be a mistake on the web page, it seems more likely that the page is being prepped for additional options to upgrade the Apple TV. The question is, at this point, what are the options going to be?

It is interesting to read the User Comments on Gizmodo's page. Here are some of the suggestions:

Upgraded hard drive
Web access
A slot loading internal DVD drive (eliminating a component off the user's shelf)
A DVD-R
A TV tuner
A version in black

Of course, one user pointed out that all of Apple's product pages have the same header.

In the Wall Street Journal, Walter S. Mossberg and Katherine Boehret write for subscribers only, "Apple TV is tiny, just about eight inches square and an inch high, far smaller than a typical DVD player or cable or satellite box, even though it packs in a 40-gigabyte hard disk, an Intel processor and a modified version of the Mac operating system. And it has a carefully limited set of functions."

"Yet, in our tests, it worked great, and we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers. We tried it with various combinations of Windows and Mac computers, with movies, photos, TV shows, video clips and music. And we didn't even use the fastest wireless network it can handle. It performed flawlessly. "

Mossberg and Boehret continue, "Apple TV isn't for that small slice of techies who buy a full-blown computer and plug it directly into a TV, or for gamers who prefer to do it all through a game console. And it's not for people who are content to watch downloaded TV shows and movies directly on a computer screen. Instead, it's for the much larger group of people who want to keep their home computers where they are and yet enjoy their downloaded media on their widescreen TVs."

Regarding their tests over a basic wireless network with multiple computers, they write, "In our tests, Apple TV performed perfectly in Walt's house over a standard Wi-Fi wireless network with a Pioneer plasma TV and six different computers -- three Windows machines from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, and three Apple Macs. Setup was a breeze, the user interface was clean and handsome, and video and audio quality were quite good for anyone but picky audiophiles and videophiles. We never suffered any stuttering, buffering or hesitation while playing audio and video from distant computers."

Mossberg and Boehret summarize the Apple TV writing, "We've been testing Apple TV for the past 10 days or so, and our verdict is that it's a beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers. It has some notable limitations, but we really liked it. It is classic Apple: simple and elegant."

All in all a great review from the Wall Street Journal of the Apple TV. Note the limitations have to do with playing back video encoded by codecs -- largely used for encoding pirated films -- that don't adhere to legal video standards and that are difficult for Apple to support due to licensing issues as well as not following certain video standards. More about this issue in much more depth in this somewhat technical but excellent reading article Apple TV: Using DVDs and other Video Sources.

The other limitations have to do not with the Apple TV but with the limited offerings right now on the iTunes Store regarding high-definition movies and 5.1 surround audio. This will surely change soon, but note that the Apple TV does play high definition movies and 5.1 surround audio. Read much more on this in Myth #1 which takes up the entire first part of the two-part article Ten Myths of the Apple TV: 5.1 Audio.

As Edward N. Albro states in his PC World article Review: Apple TV Just Plain Works, the Apple TV is "the first media streaming device I could imagine recommending to a non-geek. And I wouldn't be surprised if it evolves into something even more powerful."

Don't be surprised at all. It will be more powerful. And it will change the way we use our TVs.