Author: Michael

You’ve probably seen all of the buzz about the new AppleTV unit. This device shares many attributes with standalone TiVos: the ability to stream audio and pictures, and to transfer video. The integration works differently – the AppleTV syncs directly to your iTunes and holds local copies of files.

And there’s the issue: it holds local copies of, say, your massive iTunes library, or video of your kids, or 20,000 pictures of your vacations. So, naturally, the 40 GB drive in the unit won’t cut it.

So we’re introducing our AppleTV Upgrade Kits. For $199, you get a drive four times the size of the one that comes with the unit, formatted and ready to go (with the usual WeaKnees extras: tools, instructions with pictures, support, and a warranty). Now you can get all of your music and video to your stereo and TV all the time, no waiting.

For DirecTV TiVo users, or for cable DVR users, who’ve never had these types of features in a TiVo, they’re pretty amazing. No more searching for a CD – the data is live and ready at the press of a remote!

David Pogue, technology columnist for the New York Times, and basically a very knowledgeable and reasonable writer on the ins and outs of technology, has written a column on the newer features of TiVos. He covers most of the networking features of standalone Series 2 and later units. It’s a pretty good overview of what’s going on:

The article is here.

Whoops – didn’t catch this the first time. The basic info from the article is also contained in this video.

At WeaKnees, we’re the biggest TiVo fans on the planet. We’re also big fans of Apple products. Both companies focus on the customer experience with elegant, intuitive, and feature-rich software and amazing design. So now that Apple has launched the Apple TV, we decided to crack the case open and see what was inside.

See the rest of the internal Apple TV pictures on our forums.

Hopefully, you’re already aware of the best TiVo Tip yet. Here’s another one – not quite as over-the-top-amazing, but pretty handy.

It allows you to toggle your Now Playing list in two important ways: you can change the sort order and you can move the list into and out of folders, all with the press of one button each. More info here.

If you see the deal-of-the-day on our homepage, you’ll see that we posted a pretty good deal of the day today. Just remember, it’s Google Checkout only.