Apple TV is not only everything Apple promised it would be. It's even better.

Even before I set up the new wireless part-DVR part-video-iPod device, I was impressed with Apple TV's sleek appearance. Its compact and clean design distinctively and attractively stands out among my surrounding home theater components.

Apple TV is also a breeze to set up. You connect it to your television and you are just about done. There is no software to install. If you have the latest version of iTunes on your Mac, you are good to go. Everything else you need is already installed on Apple TV itself. On-screen prompts, on your television, walk you through the setup process. If you already have a working wireless network, you should have little or no trouble adding an Apple TV to it. I was watching a movie on my television, one that I had previously download from the iTunes Store, within minutes of taking Apple TV out of the box.

As you would expect, Apple TV's user interface is gorgeous. It is sort of a combination of Apple's Front Row and iPod software, with elegant touches every place you look (such as a cool screensaver mode that shows rotating cover art from all the albums in your Library).

While there are numerous troubleshooting issues that may arise with Apple TV (as already documented on Apple's Web site), most users will not see any of them. Even if a problem does crop up, it should be easily resolved. Apple has done a great job of making this version 1.0 product feel as solid as one that has gone through several revisions.

Watching video on your television may be the main attraction of Apple TV, but it only scratches the surface of what this great device can do. But let's pause here for a minute. I am familiar with the criticisms that have been launched against Apple TV. Chief among them are:

(1) You can't download video directly from the Internet to the Apple TV. You have to download it to your Mac first and then sync or stream it to Apple TV, via your wireless network, making the process too long and inconvenient.

(2) The only movies you can download that work with Apple TV are the ones in the iTunes Store, which has only a limited collection of movies and television shows.

(3) Apple TV only works with widescreen televisions that include component cable or HDMI ports. This leaves out many potential buyers who do not yet own such a television.

All of these criticisms have some truth. I agree that these may initially put a damper on the mass market appeal of Apple TV. It's not likely to take off as fast as the iPod. At the same time, these problems are not nearly as compelling as critics assert.

Yes, you have to download or import video programming to iTunes before you can watch it on Apple TV, but many many people are regularly doing this every day, contentedly watching these programs on their Macs or iPods. With Apple TV, these folks now have the added option of watching these programs (plus all the rest of the content in their iTunes and iPhoto libraries!) on their televisions -- with almost no additional effort. From this perspective, for iTunes users, Apple TV just made video watching more convenient, not less so.

In any case, I strongly suspect that direct Internet-to-Apple TV downloads are not too far off. Apple TV already offers a glimpse of what may be coming: you can select to directly stream 30-second previews of the top items in the iTunes Store. Even better, Apple TV can stream the movie trailers otherwise available via the iTunes Store (similar to how viewing trailers works with the Front Row software on a Mac). This is one of the most fun features of Apple TV. As you scroll through the list of trailers, a poster of each movie appears to the left. If you pause on that movie title for a couple of seconds, a summary of the movie plot and related details appear. Select the movie title and the preview plays.

Further, Apple TV is by no means limited to playing just what is available at the iTunes Store. Almost any video that you can get to run in iTunes, you can watch on Apple TV. This includes home videos (imported to iTunes from iMovie), shows recorded with Eye TV, QuickTime files downloaded from the Web, and even commercial DVDs (after ripping it with software such as HandBrake). My recent column at MacFixIt goes into more detail about this.

As for the widescreen TV limitation, this is where all televisions are headed. To me, this is akin to Apple dropping the floppy disk drive from the original iMac. It won't be long before the "limitation" is irrelevant. In any case, others have reported (although I have not personally confirmed this) that Apple TV will work with standard size televisions that have component inputs. I can confirm that Apple TV provides support for the 480i resolution typically used by standard-sized televisions.

Apple TV also has a few assets that most of its competitors lack. For starters, the interplay between the Mac and Apple TV provides a convenient method for virtually unlimited storage of video content. Need more storage space? Just add an external hard drive to your Mac. Storing movies on a TiVo works fine, but there is an obvious limit to how much you can permanently store on the device. With Series 2 (but not Series 3) TiVos, while you do have the option to transfer the video back to a Mac (using Toast 8 Titanium or TiVoDecode Manager), I still find Apple TV to be quicker and more convenient. With non-TiVo DVRs, such as the ones available with Comcast's cable boxes, you have virtually no transfer options at all.

Let's not forget that Apple TV is not limited to video. It can access your complete iTunes Library, including music and podcasts, as well as turning your iPhoto albums into slideshows. If you already have an AirPort Express Base Station and use AirTunes to play music through your audio or home theater system, you know how great this can be. Apple TV is even better (although admittedly more costly!). With Apple TV, you get to see the name of each item that is playing. You can also use the Apple TV remote to pause a song, skip or rewind, or select an entirely different playlist. You cannot do any of this with AirTunes. Third-party remote controls for AirTunes, such as the Keyspan Express Remote, can overcome some of these obstacles, but Apple TV still outshines any AirTunes alternative.

If you have a fast wireless network (ideally 802.11n), viewing streaming content on an Apple TV works just fine. My strong preference, however, is to sync the Mac with Apple TV and playback from the Apple TV's 40 GB hard drive. By doing so, playback on Apple TV becomes completely independent of the Mac. You can play movies or listen to music even if your Mac is shut down—and there is no chance that a dropped network connection will interrupt playback or that a slow network connection will result in choppy video. As a result, I already find myself using Apple TV, both for music and video, far more often than I used AirTunes.

[Note: There are two significant limitations regarding syncing vs. streaming: (1) Photos can only be viewed via syncing; there is no streaming option; (2) You can only sync from one Mac, but you can stream from up to 5 Macs.]

Despite all my enthusiasm, there are a few places where Apple TV could use some improvement. The biggest one is picture quality. Even on my smallish 32" LCD TV, watching a movie from the iTunes Store is distinctly inferior to watching a true HD version of the same movie. Even a standard DVD typically looks sharper than an iTunes movie. Although the Apple TV is capable of 5-channel audio, iTunes Store content does not yet use it. I expect that all of this will change over time, as broadband and wireless connections capable of streaming HD effectively become common in homes. But for now, this remains a serious limitation.

Second, and this is just a quibble, the only way to work the Apple TV is via its remote control. Actually, the remotes that come with iMacs and MacBooks are identical and will also work. Still, I would have preferred at least a few controls on the Apple TV box itself, if only as a backup if the remote fails (and yes, I have the same complaint about TiVo). I also would like to be able to control the playback volume of my television (or audio receiver) from the Apple TV remote, so I don't have to keep swapping remotes.

The Apple TV box itself gets quite warm (hot?) and stays that way, even in standby mode. I am a bit concerned that this may be a problem in the long term.

Bottom line: Apple TV needs to mature a bit before it becomes an essential component in my home theater system. But it is already a very enjoyable option. If you use (or have considered using) AirTunes for playing iTunes music on your home theater system, if you regularly download video from the iTunes Store or if you watch video from almost any source on your Mac, you should definitely consider Apple TV. It's an easy-to-use, fun-to-use device feature-packed device that frees the multimedia content on your Mac so that it can be enjoyed from any room in your house that has a television.

For answers to some common and not-so-common questions about Apple TV, check out my column at MacFixIt.

Ted Landau is the founder of MacFixIt, and the author of Take Control of Your iPhone and other Mac help books.