Apple, Netflix and My Backside

While we were in Fraser, I got word that my AppleTV was shipping from China. I fully expected it to arrive in St. Louis after me, but somehow, it blazed a path from China, cleared customs, and made an attempted delivery within about two days time. FedEx rocks. After a call to FedEx to hold the package, I finally got home to pick it up from the local FedEx office today.

When I unpacked the thing, I was really taken by the physical size of the thing — slightly bigger than a hockey puck, with only a power cable (no power brick or wallwart) coming with it. I’d stopped at MicroCenter to pick up an HDMI cable — that’s all the little device has a video output — so with my cable bridging the gap between my AppleTV and the Sony, I cranked it up. Set up was dirt easy, just like so many other setups I’d gone through with Apple gear. It found my wireless network easily, and after a couple of short miscues, I had it streaming my iTunes library from the iMac. Even sending the stream wirelessly, the video and audio quality were terrific.

@braddog had been extolling the virtues of Netflix for quite a while, and I’d just happened to get a free trial offer before we left on vacation. With the AppleTV supporting the Netflix streaming model, I felt like there was nothing to lose by giving the trial a try. Big mistake.

I started surfing through the AppleTV the pretty dang big storehouse of streaming treasures at Netflix, and began watching one thing after another. Cartoons to regular TV to movies… I was being pummeled by a tidal wave of video gooeyness. Manohmanohmanohman…

I’m fairly confident that my backside might never leave the comfort of my La-Z-Boy again. But if it does, I can watch Netflix on my iPad, MacBook Pro, iMac, probably even my phone. It’s so doggone ubiquitous and platform agnostic, and it’s all you can eat for only $9/mo. I just can’t imagine how Netflix is pulling that off for that price, but I’m certainly sold. If it gets quiet around here, you’ll know why!

Next week, the last element of my reversion to a cave-dweller arrives — our UVerse installation! I may never see the light of day again. 🙂