The 2nd Gen Apple TV 2010 Edition

This 2010 Apple TV is one of those little stuff I bought during my trip to Japan last month (took me about a month to finally unbox it). Since iTunes Music (and Movie) Store are not available in the Philippines, Apple did not put this in their Philippine Online Store.

The 2nd generation Apple TV is definitely smaller and sleeker with that black matte finish. I also owned a 1st generation Apple TV which has a built-in 40GB HDD. The new model does not have any built-in storage and will rely on your home network (Home Sharing) for storage (it’s got an 8GB NAND Flash for caching).

They’ve also redesigned the Apple Remote — this time, it’s bigger, longer and made up of aluminum. Much easier to find if you drop it under the sofa unlike the smaller, older one.

With the small form factor, the ports at the back of the device have been reduced to the bare necessities with the micro-USB and HDMI port being the most important of them. The LAN port and WiFi 802.11b/g/n are still there.

The interface of the new generation is still similar to the old one with some minor revisions for AirPlay and internal playback of videos (a phased out feature). What’s still underwhelming is that the device still cannot play 1080p videos (just 720p or lower).

Apple also reduced the price of the Apple TV down to $99PHP 5,810INR 8,390EUR 94CNY 721 (got it for 8800 yen or about Php4,600USD 78INR 6,645EUR 75CNY 571). If you own the old Apple TV, there’s not much reason to upgrade to the new one. It’s cheaper (bought the old model for like Php12,500USD 213INR 18,058EUR 203CNY 1,551) but the removal of the internal HDD was the main reason for that.