Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Things are working out better with the Apple TV now that I've taken a hint and buy episodes on my computer through iTunes first. Also, the catalogue is bigger than I first thought - possibly because its grown over the last week or so, but more likely because the interface on the Apple TV is ridiculously crude and makes for laborious browsing.

Doing nothing but scrolling up and down lists or flicking through cover art might be cute on an iPhone, but it gets old pretty fast with a TV remote. iTunes is easier to browse through - a shame it's absolute resource hog on a PC.

So far my choice of viewing has been a fairly predictable run of satirical animated cartoons full of pop-culture references. But iTunes has embraced the classics as well and so I'm off for a little Mary time...

Authorise This

The experiment has gotten off to a rocky start. I upgraded the Apple TV's firmware to the recently released version (3.0) and prepared to browse through their growing catalogue of TV and movie content - only to be emailed and told to upgrade to the next version (3.0.1) right away otherwise my content could disappear.

Needless to say, the upgrade to 3.0.1 thoughtfully wiped all of my network settings including the WiFi password, which is a complete nuisance to enter with a five-button remote (imagine trying to send an SMS with half the buttons on your phone missing).

But finally I was browsing! The catalogue is currently small but respectable (by way of disclaimer, my office supplies TV content to iTunes). To ensure impartiality, I settled on an episode of American Dad that I hadn't seen before. I was immediately prompted for my iTunes Store password (which the upgrade had also wiped - more painful picking out of letters) but the download kicked off and within seconds I was told the episode was ready to play.

Clicking play only got me an error message: this Apple TV is not authorised to play this content. How rude.

It turns out that despite the "ready to play" message, you need to sync the Apple TV with iTunes (on your computer) before the download will play back on the Apple TV, which is a terrible tease. I used to be able to purchase and play back on the Apple TV without this problem (I still have episodes of our own content on the device that I'd purchased weeks earlier) so I suspect this issue is the result of the recent upgrade - either a bug, or a "security enhancement".

In Apple's defence, they got back to my message of complaint within a day but didn't tell me anything I hadn't already figured out. However, they certainly get the Oscar for most obsequious complaint response:

"I'm sorry to hear that the video "The One That Got Away" did not play successfully on the Apple TV it was purchased on. I sincerely apologize that this video has not met the standards you have come to expect from the iTunes Store. I can certianly [sic] appreciate how eager you must be to have the issue resolved. My name is Stephanie, and I will do everything I can to help solve the issue for you."

If nothing else, I found Stephanie's sincerity and her obvious sharing of my pain comforting.

Crazy like Foxtel

I've just moved house and finally sorted out most of the nuisance stuff that comes with a move: address changes, relocating utilities, that sort of thing.

I've moved a couple of suburbs closer to the CBD (in fact I'm now just a stroll away - wave if you see Trixie and I walk past) so you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that despite living in the centre of Australia's largest city, I can't get subscription TV. Some nonsense about strata titles, multi-dwelling complexes, Jupiter being in Mercury's quarter - that sort of thing.

What exactly made Foxtel think I'd be happy to jump through hoops for the privilege of giving them princely sums of money every month is quite beyond me.

So I saved myself the jumping of hoops by cancelling my subscription. Instead, I'm going to see if I can get my televisual requirements purely from FTA TV and from the Internet using such devices as come to hand (such as PVRs, extenders, gaming consoles, etc).

And I'm going to blog about it.

The experiment (I call it that to give it a more scientific air than it possibly deserves) will be strictly confined to full-episode content watched on my TV from a device that sits comfortably and quietly in the TV cabinet and can be used with my universal remote.

Here goes nothing...