Apple TV (2nd generation)
A quarter the size, no hard drive, streaming only, and $99. AirPlay arrived here and is still the feature most people use.
Released September 28, 2010 · Discontinued March 7, 2012 · From $99
Apple threw out the hard drive and started again. The second Apple TV is a quarter the size, streams everything rather than syncing it, runs an A4 from the iPhone 4, and costs $99 instead of $229. Dropping local storage was the whole insight: once broadband was good enough, keeping a copy on the box was pointless. Netflix was there at launch. AirPlay let you throw video from an iPhone or iPad to the television, which is still the feature non-technical people find most useful. It also became the most jailbroken device Apple made for a while, since the A4 ran iOS and the community wanted XBMC on it.
Reviews & Reception
Reviewers liked the price, the size and the interface, and kept returning to what it would not play. Streaming from your own machines and from iTunes worked well; most of the rest of the internet's video did not appear at all.
Overall, Apple TV is a reasonably priced, well-designed device.
But it doesn't deliver most Internet video sources, or even all online network programs.