The More You Know is an ongoing series of posts which highlight features of the Apple TV and how to use them. This is our first TMYK post about the Apple TV 2G.

With Apple TV (2nd generation), you can configure your Screen Saver to use your photos by enabling photo sharing in iTunes 10.0.1 or later, then pointing to iPhoto, Aperture, or a folder of your choice.

To use your photos with Apple TV (2nd generation) Screen Saver, first make sure your Home Sharing account is enabled with the same Apple ID on both your Apple TV and your computer. Then follow these steps:

1. Open iTunes 10.0.1 or later.
2. In iTunes, from the Advanced menu choose Choose Photos to Share….
3. Enable the option to Share Photos, and then select the iPhoto, Aperture, or a folder you would like the Apple TV (2nd generation) screensaver to use images from.
4. On your Apple TV (2nd generation) , go to Settings > Screen Saver > Photos
5. Select your computer.
6. Select the folder or Event that you want the Apple TV Screen Saver to use photos from.
7. To confirm: On your Apple TV, go back to the previous screen by pressing the menu button on your Apple remote, then select the Preview option to see which photos are being used.

If you are sharing your personal photos from iPhoto, Apple TV (2nd generation) may take some time before recognizing any changes made to your photos within iPhoto. To accelerate getting modified photos or Events to your Apple TV, quit iPhoto after completing your changes and then open it again. If you’ve created new Events in iPhoto, make sure that they are selected in iTunes in the “Photo Sharing Preference” window.

Now that the dust has settled and you’ve read everyone (Engadget, Gizmodo, Tech Crunch) and their mothers take on the new Apple TV, I thought I’d give my two cents for what its worth. Being an original day one Apple TV owner the news for me today was all about rentals and streaming. Whether it be from our iTunes library, or from Netflix, we’re going to be streaming or renting from here on out. Lets face it, unless Apple introduced a terabyte version of the Apple TV, no form of internal storage would have been enough space. Users would of found a way to fill it up. The content now stays where it most likely originated, on your desktop or laptop computer.
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Via Gizmodo and the N.Y. Times.

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In the Living Room, Hooked on Pay TV

These are confusing times in the living room. The proliferation of Internet video has led to much talk of “cord-cutting” — a term that has come to mean canceling traditional pay TV and replacing it with programming from a grab bag of online sources.

But so far Americans are not doing this in any meaningful numbers. “Nor is there any evidence of it emerging in the near future,” said Bruce Leichtman, the president of Leichtman Research Group, which studies consumer media habits.

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I’ve considered dumping my cable provider many times, in particular my crappy Cox service in San Diego, but sports is the hold up for me. Cox just happens to hold the exclusive right to all San Diego Padres games as well.

Add one more voice to the pool of Apple TV predictions, all though I might add why not include an embedded webcam for Facetime over TV.

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Why will this change everything?

• iOS TV Applications: Expect to see an iPhone/Pad like marketplace for television applications. Video sharing/streaming/recording apps, interactive news apps, and of course games.

•The iPad will turn into one big badass remote control: The iPad will be the preferred input device for the iTV. You’ll be able to editing videos, control games, and extend the interactive television experience. Imagine watching monday night football on the TV while viewing/exploring other camera angles on the iPad.

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Once we saw Cinemira take it’s first breath in more then a week we noticed a load of notifications go out. If you receive an outdated movie notification tonight we apologize, we don’t intend for this type of outage to happen again, but this is the web.

I want to thank everyone for their patience while we resuscitated our web app, with a special thanks to our genius in his dungeon Mr.Miles. Please enjoy Cinemira once again.

Dear Site Visitors,

To say this outage has been an embarrassment would be an understatement. Yes this is a beta service which we charge no fee to use, but it’s still a bothersome problem for all concerned non the less. Whats the point of offering a service when it’s not reliable. Chalk this up to one more learning experience for a small team.

In the mean time, until we can get Cinemira fully armed and operational again I will be posting updates old school until that is no longer needed.

Again sorry for the inconvenience.