For IPTV to really take off, more solutions are needed for distributing downloaded content to displays other than a computer screen.

Does Apple's leap from the bedroom into the living room mark a significant moment in this fusion of home entertainment and computing?

The Apple TV is a media streamer that's designed to show content from your computer on an HD Ready screen in the front room, with the added benefit of a hard disk that can store MP3s, digital photos, podcasts, TV shows and movie downloads.

The Fujitsu HDD is a measly 40GB, which is probably sufficient for storing media such as JPEGs and MP3s, but it's poor value when you take into account the low cost of storage.

A fruitless task

There are cheaper and more versatile streaming solutions out there, so why would anyone consider buying the Apple TV?

Certainly, Apple Mac and iTunes fans will enjoy the tidiness and ease with which they can watch slideshows and listen to music in the living room but, for the money, you really expect the TV and movie part of the deal to be significant.

Trouble is, there's virtually nothing worth watching on iTunes at the moment, and format restrictions prevent you from bringing other sourced content into play.

By the end of this year Apple will be offering TV shows on its UK service, but whether or not it will be stuff that you want to pay for is another matter, especially since the resolution of video on iTunes is less than UK standard-definition, 640 x 480.

What might save the day is when HD content is provided, but again there are format restrictions that will make anybody think twice about taking a bite out of this particular AV fruit.

There is no support for 1080i or 1080p. 720p is the best resolution on offer, which must be in H.264 format at a maximum of 5Mbps. There's no MPEG-2, no DivX and no XviD.

You'll need an 802.11g or Wi-Fi connection to stream video content wirelessly. Audio on iTunes videos is in Dolby Pro-Logic II while songs can be 320kbps AAC or MP3, plus Apple Lossless, AIFF and WAV files.

One of the main selling points of the Apple TV is that it's easy to set up and operate. Indeed it is a pleasure to use, with a slick GUI and some rather nifty floating screen art that uses your photos or album covers to create dynamic screensavers.

However, setting up computer peripherals can be a trying process. In my case the Apple TV lost its ability to find my wireless network and I resorted to using an Ethernet cable to connect to a BT HomeHub. Here on in, I had no trouble transferring a bundle of content from my Mac, by selecting the Apple TV as a device in iTunes and syncing in similar fashion to loading up my iPod.

Despite the absence of any HD content, I wanted to see how well it worked with hi-def, so I downloaded a clip of Walk The Line and some BBC wildlife footage from the Apple QuickTime site.

More hassle - QuickTime files are incompatible with iTunes and have to be converted to H.264 format. I used QuickTime Pro (an annoying £20 upgrade) and discovered copy restrictions are in place to prevent exporting of movie trailers, so I left Johnny Cash languishing on the desktop and proceeded to convert the BBC's footage of lions and elephants to 1280 x 720 using the Export to Apple TV menu selection.