Interested in Apple TV, have questions... :)

Question

Hello Apple folks,
My wife and I are looking at either getting an Apple TV or a Bluray player, and wanted to know some things about the Apple TV.
I've done some reading on the Apple.com website and saw that there are some compelling things about the Apple TV, however, I am confused about....
a) ...using two seperate iTunes accounts on the ATV. For instance, my wife has bought stuff under her iTunes account (movies, TV shows, etc.) and so have I under my account. I know that you can 'stream' from a separate computer, so we would inevitably use our desktop iMac in the other room. However, can we not 'sync' the account w/ the most movies to the ATV, and stream from the other? _What is the best solution for us?_
b) ...also, we have heard a mixed bag of details about Bluray. We currently subscribe to Blockbuster and have our DVDs sent to us through the mail, or exchange in store; my wife loves this, so I doubt that we would be canceling anytime soon; moreover, we are able to rent Blueray discs for the same cost through Blockbuster, so there is one compelling reason to go w/ Bluray. However, I have heard that Blurays are 'finicky' and it's all about "...buying the right player." I'm also afraid it will turn into another Betamax, so sticking w/ DVD is not a bad option either. I've heard ATV has good quality for HD videos, but I wonder how they compare to Blueray, and what has been your experience? Please advise.
c) We currently have Charter as our ISP (10Mbps/1Mbps) and their bandwidth can fluctuate during peak times all the way down to 4-5Mbps. When buying/renting a movie in ATV, how 'good' should I expect the quality of a HD movie to be if we are watching it as it is downloading?
d) Last question.. When buying a movie on ATV, can we back it up on our desktop?
Thank you (in advance) for all your help.
El Oso

Answer 1

Welcome to the forum.
AppleTV can playback media from up to 5 computers/iTunes libraries.
Only one can sync (keep a mirror of all or selected content from the library depending on library sizevs AppleTV space) but the other can be shared computers which stream to AppleTV on demand. In fact the sync computer also streams on demand any material not synced to AppleTV (eithernot selected to sync or due to lack of space).
So you could certainly sync the account with most movies and stream the other.
One thing I found is that you cannot have two users logged i at the same time on the same computer and have both libraries connected, so 2 machines might be needed unless your happy to swap users for different content.
With iTunes plus music no longer protected you could probably add all music to the same itunes library if you wanted to with no issues. It is also possible in iTunes to log in with multiple user names to play content bought by different users or the same user who's changed an AppleID and has effectively items bought under different names - I'm not quite sure if this would allow AppleTv to play 2 users content from a single library but it might. AppleTV itself can only accept a single username for direct purchaes not multiple accounts.
With regard to Blu Ray the content is generally superior in quality to AppleTV and for newer multi-channel sound formats it beats it hands down as AppleTV only supports 5.1 DD or stereo. Whereas standard def movies on AppleTV vary from near DVD quality to clearly worse, the HD movies I've rented have generally been very good - Blu Ray would be better but it's law of diminishing returns with the quality IMO as I feel the actual content of a movie is more important than overall resolution after a certain point, others will disagree.
Blu Ray players are in their infancy and some first generation purchasers have been caught out, but they'll be quite cheap in a couple of years. I can't see us having many (any?) future optical discs formats after BluRay as i suspect most stuff will be delivered over the net.