The Amazing Apple TV

It's been about a year now....since we cancelled our Dish Network. We did this hoping that it would cut back on our TV watching and cut out the "background noise" of always having something going on the TV. And, since I've been home for the past 3 months, I've had quite a few people ask me if I'm missing the Dish or wishing we had cable, and to be honest, I don't miss it at all! Here's why: We have an HD antennae. This means that we get all of the local stations in high quality HD on both of our HDTV's. I know this doesn't seem like it would be sufficient for a family with kids- to only have the local stations....and, I think you're right! We ALSO have an Apple TV. Now, I've only met a handful of people that know what an Apple TV is or what it is capable of, so that's why I'm writing this post to the blog. I feel like I need to explain how the Riffel TV world works.

Again, the HD antennae gives us all of the local stations in HD- ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, 38 The Spot, Qubo, etc. So, we can watch those anytime in "real time."

But, here's what the amazing Apple TV can do (Brandon may correct me if I miss something!):

First let me clarify: the Apple TV is not actually a TV. It is a tiny (and I mean tiny) box that is a miniature computer for your TV. Here is the first amazing thing the Apple TV can do: With the Apple TV, we can put ALL of our DVD's on it- so, we don't have to switch out DVD's every time Parker (and Andrew) want to watch a different movie. They are all on the Apple TV, which means we just simply scroll through the "Movies" section on our TV screen to find the movie they want to watch and hit play! We don't even have a DVE player in the house anymore!

The second amazing thing the Apple TV does is it allows us to RECORD television off of the local stations we get through our HD antennae...so, we don't have to watch our shows in real time (who has time to watch shows when they are actually on?! That would be crazy!). In this way, the Apple TV does what our DVR did with our Dish Network. So, I'll never miss a Grey's Anatomy, The Bachelor, Oprah, or any of the other shows that I love to watch, but never have time to watch when they are actually on.

The third (and this is something that I just learned how to do) amazing thing the Apple TV allows us to do is to purchase movies and TV shows through iTunes!! This is amazing because it gives us the opportunity to buy TV shows that are not on the local stations that we get through our HD antennae. For example, the other day, Parker was at his friend Julian's house and they were watching a show that was on the Disney Channel, called Jake and the Neverland Pirates. Well, Parker thought that was the coolest show. So, I started to explore on the Apple TV and I found it! And, that show just happened to be FREE to download through iTunes. Now we have that show on the Apple TV and Parker can watch it anytime, for as long as we own the Apple TV! I also ended up purchasing a couple Little Einstein shows that Parker really liked and some shows off of Nickelodeon....all of those shows were $1.99 per episode.

Another fun thing about this (that we just put into place), is that any of these shows can be transferred to another Apple device. Here's what we did- we (by "we" I mean Brandon) put a few of our movies onto Brandon's iPhone and purchased a cord (for about $30) so that we can connect Brandon's phone to the DVD player in the car! This will eliminate the need to have all of Parker's favorite DVD's in the car...we can simply put a few of them on one of our iPhones (or you can put it on an iPod, iPad, etc.) and then scroll through and find the one he wants to watch and it will play! AMAZING!

If you can't tell, I am so happy with our choice to drop our Dish Network and go with the Apple TV! We actually have 3 Apple TV's (one for each of our television's and one for the projector in the play room) and we couldn't live without it at this point! It allows us to watch what we want to watch and it makes us really think about what we are watching and if it's really worth our time to have the TV on.

I know what you're all wondering - "How much does an Apple TV cost? It's probably really expensive (especially because it's make by Apple)!" Well...the newest Apple TV's are only $99 at Best Buy and the Apple Store. With our Dish Network we were spending almost $100 a month on that, so we are definitely saving some moo-laa by making this switch!! The best part is that we aren't missing out on anything- because he have the newest movies and TV shows right at our fingertips to purchase at any time! Plus, we always know that anything we can't watch on TV, we can watch on-line...like a few of the KU games that have been on ESPN.

So, for those of you that have asked if we miss having cable or the Dish, we DO NOT miss it and haven't missed it yet- around a year into the switch! I guess it doesn't hurt that I have a super smart husband around to make sure we have the newest technology available. I have to give him all of the credit for having this amazing Apple TV in our home. :) Now...for those of you with questions, I will give you Brandon's e-mail address!!