March 17th, 2008

Apple TV

Posted by Church Video Ideas under Church Media, Church video, Churches, Communication, Holidays, Ideas, Media ministry, Podcasts, Products

Apple TV
Lately, I’ve been considering getting Apple TV for our church. I have several ideas of how to use it and am sure there are others that I haven’t even thought about. If you’re interested or curious in how Apple TV can be used in a ministry setting, you can read more about it HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Are you using Apple TV? If so, please comment and tell us how you’re using it.

EXTRA:

Today begins “Tech Week” at Bent Tree. We have rehearsal every night this week, 2 Good Friday services, dress rehearsal on Saturday and 3 Easter services.

7 Responses to “Apple TV”

  1. Bruce Says:

    We are considering a second location or video venue. I don’t know much about the utilization of I-tunes for video but my understanding is that you can “broadcast” HD. My only hesitation in using such a device for an offsite location would be the quality level. Have you seen the quality and is it good enough for a second location video venue large screen projection? If it works, it would save us a boat load of money.

  2. Bill Lunsford Says:

    Hey Gang! I am intrigued by this post. How do you plan to use this in your churches? Are you connecting the monitors via LAN, WAN or something else altogether?

  3. doug Says:

    We are considering AppleTV as a low cost digital signage device. With our graphics department generating graphics, we are thinking that a photo album would serve as playlist. We don’t need remote capabilities or scheduling so this may be a perfect low cost solution until we move to a more robust solution like a oneboxHD.

  4. Bill Lunsford Says:

    After looking at Apple’s demo and information about Apple TV, I fail to see how this is cheaper (at $300 per box) then running the program for digital signage on a single computer (or whatever) and routing the output through a switcher/scaler. From the information that I read, you would need a box(reciever) for each monitor you plan to use. Going the other route, you already have the computer, the other investment would only be in a single switcher/scaler that does what you need (in the final analysis about the same total cost for a high quality device) and possibly a video amp depending on the distance of distribution. Now at home…that’s a different story!

  5. doug Says:

    Bill, We already have a switcher/scaler in place. One appleTV added to our control room would allow us to push the content to our lobby displays and/or our sanctuary for running announcements, videos, etc. We certainly would not be purchasing on per display.

  6. Bill Lunsford Says:

    Thanks for explaing that Doug! So Apple TV would more or less replace the computer for origination and allow you to schedule multiple media?

  7. doug Says:

    Exactly. We already have a AV player that we are not happy with. (It does not display native 16:9 content) so we would just be replacing it with the AppleTV. We are looking for something simple with a easy to use interface so that the learning curve for volunteers would be less steep.

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