Apple TV is a digital media player, or receiver, for internet streaming of video and audio media, as well as local area network playback. Basically the same as Roku, or several other of the media players now built into most Blu-Ray DVD players and internet connected televisions. Quite frankly, it has never been known as one of Apple's more successful products. Media players require two prerequisites to be successful: ability to provide high quality display of various files and streaming formats, and access to content and service providers of program material that people really want to watch.

We did this a year ago, before Apple updated their Apple t.v., so we used an Airport Express, but it's the same process (we now have added apple t.v.'s to 2 other rooms, and they work essentially the same way except that we don't need Airfoil to run them)-- here's dh's description from a previous pos after we finished a year ago -- if you have more questions contact me via e-mail and I'll put you in touch with him. Kris found some Cambridge Soundworks Ambience 80 speakers, which install in the ceiling. We ordered four of them (2 in the kitchen and 2 in the living room) and got permission from our contractor to run some speaker wire while the ceiling was torn off, and I ran wiring from where we wanted to speakers installed over to the location of our pantry, where we planned to install the sound equipment. We also had the electrician install an electrical outlet inside the cabinet. After the kitchen was finished, we cut holes in the ceiling to install and wire up the speakers. Inside the pantry, we ran the other end of the speaker wires into an electrical box with speaker terminals. For sound equipment, we got an Airport Express, which has a mode that allows it to stream music from iTunes. The hardest part was finding an amplifier that would fit inside the pantry and not generate too much heat. We ended up buying two small PylePCA3 amplitiers - one each for the kitchen and living room speakers. We put these in the pantry, along with the Airport Express and connected the audio out jack on the airport into the amplifiers (we had to use an RCA jack splitter to connect to both amps). We keep the amplifiers on, and can stream music from our laptops anywhere in the house. We also use a third party software program called Airfoil (for Macs only) that allows us to stream music from *any* application, not just iTunes.

We have a Roku ... the company I work for has a wireless chip inside so a number of us at the office were given the Roku as a Christmas present a couple years ago. The Roku is very, very easy to use. Setup probably took all of five minutes. When Netflix was not charging to stream videos, it was a very good deal but now they charge $8 for mail order DVDs and $8 for streaming. Old movies aren't all that hard to find in regular programming with the cable service we have but I love watching documentaries, which are harder to come by, so streaming is good for that. Otherwise, I wouldn't bother. Jodi-

Sorry-- this was supposed to be a follow up to htracey's music post.