• The New York Times, Thursday, March 22, 2007 12 PM

After many delays, Apple TV went on sale yesterday for $300. Basically, it's an iPod for your TV, copying the iTunes library (music, podcasts, TV shows, movies) from one Mac or Windows PC on your wired or wireless home network to its 40-gigabyte hard drive, keeping the copy updated.

Apple is not the only company trying to solve the "last 50 feet" problem. A couple of prominent examples: Microsoft's Xbox 360 ($400) performs a similar PC-to-TV bridging function and even has its own online movie store. Netgear's week-old EVA8000 ($350) also joins PC and TV, but adds an Internet connection for viewing YouTube videos and listening to Internet radio.

Apple TV is a gorgeous, one-inch-tall, round-cornered square slab that slips silently--and almost invisibly--into your entertainment setup. The Xbox, in comparison, is huge and too noisy for a bedroom, and the Netgear machine is as ugly as Apple is pretty. The catch for millions, however, is that Apple TV requires a widescreen TV--preferably an HDTV. It doesn't work with the square, traditional TVs many people still have.

Read the whole story at The New York Times »