The Kodak Theatre HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a mouse on a TV screen.

This week I tested the Kodak Theatre HD Player, the photo-centric company’s attempt to snag valuable real estate in the living room. This small, black box pulls photos and videos from computers around the house and displays them on an HDTV. It also enables the sending and receiving of photos via Kodak Gallery, and connects to Web-based photos stored on Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, .Mac and others. Podcasts, Internet Radio and updates from news feeds, weather forecasts and stock quotes are also accessible using the HD Player. And it has a terrifically simple motion-sensing remote that works like using a mouse on a TV screen.

But the HD Player isn’t all smiles. Its $299 price doesn’t include any built-in storage for keeping content directly on the device. It currently has no way of accessing HD movies or television shows, nor will it work with Macs. In comparison, Apple’s (AAPL) $229 Apple TV has 40 gigabytes of storage, can access HD television shows and movies via the iTunes Store, and works with Macs and Windows PCs. This is important because as budgets tighten in the current economy, gadgets have to prove their value and versatility more than ever.

After using the Kodak Theatre HD Player with Windows XP and Vista machines over the past week, I can conclude that this device’s interface shines in its simplicity and is a lot of fun to use. Kodak teamed with Hillcrest Labs to make the player’s motion-sensitive remote and corresponding software, which includes satisfying extra features like images that automatically magnify when the remote control’s cursor points at them and icons that make chirping sounds when selected. The remote itself is shaped to rest comfortably in a hand and has three simple buttons and a scroll wheel.

Quick-access memory-card slots for six types of memory cards appear on the box’s front, and two USB ports can connect to digital cameras or USB storage devices.

Currently, the player’s software works directly with Flickr, RadioTime (8,750 radio stations) and FrameChannel, which grants access to various “channels” like Facebook, .Mac, Picasa, People.com news and National Geographic. Kodak says it will incorporate YouTube access in January; I got a sneak peek at the interface for this and it looks well-organized.

Yet the HD Player’s smart combination of software and remote left me wishing it did a bit more. Photo sharing is enabled only via Kodak Gallery, so you can’t use another Web-based account to share photos directly from your TV. Likewise, a blue light on the box slowly blinks only when new Picture Mail (a message containing shared photos) is received on a Kodak Gallery account, not when new photos are added on other sources such as Flickr Photostreams or Facebook pages.

The Home screen of the HD Player shows four categories: Pictures & Videos, Kodak Gallery, Music and Entertainment. Subcategories are where you might guess they would be, for example podcasts are listed under Entertainment. And a tiny Home icon appears in the top right corner of every screen so you can always get Home with one click. The Pictures & Videos category holds photos and videos from a currently selected Windows PC.

An unlimited number of Windows PCs can wirelessly pair with the player as long as they have special Kodak software installed on them. But only one PC’s content can be accessed at a time. I toggled between two paired computers without a problem, but would’ve preferred accessing music and photos from both sources simultaneously.

The HD Player’s motion-sensing pointer remote works much like a Wii remote control. Wherever you move it, a tiny leaf-shaped cursor appears on-screen. A Hide button on the remote will hide the cursor while you watch slideshows. The remote’s Back button is helpful; when pressed, it backs you out of one screen using visual effects that make the screen shrink into the TV as if you were moving backward.

A play button appears on the first photo in a folder so users can select this icon to quickly start slideshows. Whenever the HD Player receives new Kodak Gallery Picture Mail, or a slideshow is created on a connected PC, yellow alert circles appear on the screen to notify users and a number in the middle of these yellow circles indicates how many new items are available for viewing.

Some content on my PCs took a little while to be recognized by the HD Player, including podcasts that I subscribe to on iTunes. When they did show up, both audio and video podcasts played without issue and on-screen playback buttons made them easy to control.

The HD Player uses your photos to create automatically generated slideshows, called Picture Chronicles, once a week. These Picture Chronicles use up to 50 photos from the same time of year in all of your folders, for instance grouping all Thanksgiving photos together from the past five years.

Kodak has plans to make its player Mac-compatible in the future and also hopes to add other partnerships with new types of content following its YouTube announcement early next year.

The Kodak Theatre HD Player does its job well, bringing photos and videos that might otherwise live only on your PC to your big screen HDTV. For the holidays, this device could be a real plus. But Kodak has some work to do to make this a more useful Web-connected tool.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email us at mossbergsolution@wsj.com. Find this and other columns and videos online free at the All Things Digital Web site: http://walt.allthingsd.com

A fondness for TiVo has encouraged users to refer to it with designated nicknames and/or genders. A teacher friend of mine was recently asked by a student if her husband’s name was TiVo after the child heard her say she would have to tell TiVo about a new TV show. But like any old friend — or spouse — who has been around for a while, TiVo has a few tricks up its sleeve that might surprise longtime users and new owners alike. This column includes just a handful of those tricks and highlights some features that may make TiVo more useful. These tips are for everyday users, not serious hackers, and many others exist.

Remote-Control Codes

Each of these codes is entered one time to enable an otherwise-hidden function, and three chimes signal the code is set. These functions can be disabled by entering the code a second time, or if TiVo is rebooted.

Clock: If you miss having a VCR nearby to tell you the time while you watch TV, TiVo can help. A digital clock can be programmed to show up in the lower right-hand corner of your television screen by pressing “SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-9-SELECT.”

While playing recorded shows, this clock displays the current time and the elapsed time of the program you’re watching. Personally, I check a show’s progress by pressing the remote’s Play button to see the progress bar, and the Info button shows the current time. But the on-screen clock might come in handy when you’re watching TV on a terrible date and you don’t want to get caught glancing at your watch.

30-second skip: One of the glorious functions of TiVo and other DVRs is their ability to fast-forward through commercials. But it takes practice to know when to press Play so as to completely miss commercials.

If you’re unsure about your fast-forwarding technique, TiVo can be permanently set to skip ahead in 30-second increments, by entering “SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-3-0-SELECT.” This code must be set while watching a recorded show. After that, the 30-second skipping works whenever you press the “Skip To Tick” button, which looks like an arrow pointing right to a straight line.

TiVo says this code won’t work for longer time increments, like 90 seconds, and I tried using various increments, to no avail. Still, pressing this button about five or seven times in a row (depending on the show) gets you through commercials with less guesswork.

Disappearing progress bar: TiVo’s progress bar, which shows how far along a program has progressed in terms of the entire show’s duration, appears at various moments, such as when you first play a recorded show or unpause. This indicator lingers on the screen for just about three seconds, but if this seems too long, you can enter “SELECT-PLAY-SELECT-PAUSE-SELECT” to set the progress bar to disappear after less than a second.

I tried this setting on my TiVo, but one second showed only a quick blink of the progress bar, not enough time to see anything.

Number Shortcuts

From the TiVo Central menu, pressing each number on the remote control’s numeric keypad skips directly to a different tool. Some of the more useful shortcuts include pressing “1″ to go to Season Pass Manager (a list of programs that are set to automatically record every episode), “4″ to go to Search Title and “8″ to go to TiVo Suggestions.

Viewing Tips

TiVo can display a programming guide in a TV-Guide-like grid, or as a two-columned TiVo Live Guide that can list future shows for hours or days out. The top of Live Guide gives a detailed description of each selected program, along with its duration and TV rating.

The Now Playing list shows content stored on a TiVo. By default, this list is organized in time sequential order with same-series TV shows grouped into folders. Remote-control shortcuts re-sort this list: pressing “1″ switches from sequential to alphabetical order and vice versa; pressing “2″ ungroups shows to display each title; shows are regrouped into folders when “2″ is pressed again.

Lesser-Known Features

Universal Swivel Search is a way of seeing how TiVo’s various shows and movies are related to one another. It lists details about each program, including actors, directors, tags associated with a show (like love, dating and addiction) and suggestions of similar content. Swivel Search is accessed through the Find Programs menu or More Options while looking at a recorded show.

By selecting a Swivel Search detail about a particular show, such as one of its actors, you can see what else he or she starred in and whether or not that show or movie is available through TiVo or Amazon.com’s Unbox. Unbox downloads movies directly to your TiVo ranging from $2 to $15 each depending on whether you rent or buy a movie.

Plenty of free Internet content can be downloaded from the Web to your TiVo. But TiVo confusingly places this content in two menus: Find Programs and Music, Photos, Products & More. Under Find Programs, a Download TV & Movies section offers Amazon Unbox movies and free TiVoCast content. The latter can be set to automatically download with Season Pass settings, such as The Onion’s weekly video or ExerciseTV’s twice weekly videos.

The Music, Photos, Products & More menu holds content like photos and unprotected MP3s from a nearby computer, podcasts, Rhapsody music, Yahoo! Weather and Traffic and on-screen games. You can even buy movie tickets through Fandango.

TiVo takes up valuable space in a home entertainment center, so it’s important for the company to make sure its content is varied and useful. The codes and shortcuts mentioned can change the way you use this valuable device every day.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

It seems that this last attribute — the ability to make and receive calls on a cellphone — is overlooked and underestimated by many manufacturers. But believe it or not, there are plenty of people out there who simply want to use their cellphones for calls, period.

These individuals range from college students who frequently damage or lose their phones to wary, first-time buyers to senior citizens whose kids or grandchildren insist they use a cellphone. About a year ago, GreatCall Inc. introduced its Jitterbug cellphones, which were aimed squarely at the senior set with large keys, a free operator service and the phone’s own number prominently displayed on a sticker.

It seems that GreatCall was on to something. Verizon Wireless recently followed the company’s lead by introducing its straightforward, no frills Coupe, a cellphone that offers many of the helpful traits found on Jitterbug phones, like large screen fonts, but without a lot of extras. Verizon simultaneously unveiled two calling plans designed specifically for seniors, and was followed a month later by AT&T and its own monthly plan for those 65 and over. AT&T also has an uncomplicated phone of its own in the works for 2008.

This week I tested Verizon’s $40 (with a two-year contract) Coupe (www.verizonwireless.com) against GreatCall’s $147 Jitterbug Dial (www.jitterbug.com) to see how the two stacked up. I found the Jitterbug more comfortable to use for longer phone calls because of its cushiony earpiece, which blocks out external sound and helps the phone rest easier between your shoulder and ear during conversations. And Jitterbug’s mantra of simplicity will appeal to cellphone newcomers.

But for those who have been using cellphones and are familiar with the way they work, Jitterbug’s nonconformist features — like Yes and No buttons in place of Send and End and the use of a dial tone whenever the clamshell-shaped phone is opened — can come across as too basic, to the point that they’re confusing. One example: many standard cellphones redial the last number called when the Send button is pressed twice, but redialing on the Jitterbug requires navigating through five screens to redial the last number.

The Coupe is the smaller of the two and blends in with other cellphones. It includes a few of the extra functions found in normal mobile phones, like an alarm clock, calculator and the capability to send and receive text messages; perhaps most people who buy the Coupe won’t use it for texting, but it’s nice to have the built-in option. (The Jitterbug doesn’t have any of these features.) Right now, this cellphone only comes in shiny black with a blue border around its outside display screen. An included charging cradle adds a touch of convenience.

The Coupe also has some fun features that give it a more personal touch, including a choice of 24 ringtones and 10 wallpaper designs for the main screen’s background. After seeing low-grade camera lenses on nearly every digital device that I’ve picked up recently, the Coupe looked a little naked without one.

Three red buttons labeled I, C and E (for In Case of Emergency) are positioned just below the phone’s screen and can be assigned names and numbers to work as shortcuts to those most often called. A specially marked “911″ button on the phone’s keypad is designated specifically for emergencies, though this must be held down to use and, even then, asks if the caller definitely intended to call 911.

A speaker button is also clearly labeled on the Coupe’s keypad, and pronounced volume adjustment keys line the phone’s side. On-screen fonts appear larger than those found on regular cellphones.

Verizon’s well-known network is sure to be a draw for potential buyers, especially because any plan used with the Coupe includes free calls to other Verizon Wireless users. Though any of this carrier’s plans work with this basic phone, the Nationwide 65 Plus plan made its debut with the Coupe in hopes of appealing to those ages 65 and up. A single-line plan allows 200 anytime minutes and 500 night and weekend minutes for $30 monthly; the two-line plan offers roughly double the minutes (to be shared) for double the price. These plans aren’t exclusively usable with the Coupe.

GreatCall’s Jitterbug comes in two $147 models: the Dial, with a numeric keypad and the OneTouch, with just three large buttons labeled Operator, Tow and 911. I’ve tested both in the past, but this time around I looked at the Dial because it’s most comparable to Verizon’s Coupe.

The Jitterbug Dial phone comes in black or white, and its buttons and all of its on-screen lettering appear considerably larger than the Verizon Coupe’s. Its number keys glow bright white and are encircled by yellow borders, while the Coupe’s digital keypad is black with glowing blue numbers — colors that aren’t as distinctive. Unlike the Coupe, Jitterbug doesn’t come with a charging cradle, though GreatCall has plans for adding cradles in 2008.

A free operator service can be reached from Jitterbug phones by pressing “0.” This operator greets users by name, places calls on the user’s phone (saving you the trouble of dialing) and can add numbers to a phone’s contact list if a user doesn’t want to or can’t do this.

The Jitterbug can be pre-programmed with names and numbers; I ordered mine with five pre-programmed numbers, a luxury that nervous new cellphone owners might find worthwhile. Things get difficult when you try to enter your contacts. Even though each number key has three or four letters assigned to its key as on all phones, adding a contact involves using Jitterbug’s clumsy system of choosing one letter at a time from the screen. You’re better off using the free operator service for this.

Jitterbug phones let users store only 50 contact names and numbers, while Verizon’s Coupe will store 500. Many first-time cellphone owners will be content with 50, but, again, options are good.

The Jitterbug and Coupe each have small screens on their outer shells that display the time, date and phone numbers of incoming calls. But the Coupe displays its remaining battery power both on this outer screen and inside on its main screen, while the Jitterbug only flashes battery status on the screen if the battery reaches a certain low level, or if you navigate to a special “Phone Info” screen.

Behind the scenes, GreatCall’s Jitterbug phones run using networks set up by other carriers; I never had any trouble dialing out or receiving calls. A variety of calling plans can be used with Jitterbug phones ranging from $10 monthly for pay-as-you-go at 35 cents a minute to $80 monthly for 800 minutes. Add-on packages of minutes and sharing plans are also available.

If you’re familiar with cellphones, the Jitterbug will be a confusing step back for you, even though its free operator service and comfortable earpiece are pluses. Some people will prefer the Jitterbug’s larger fonts and number keys to the Verizon Coupe’s smaller, more stylish build. Still, the Coupe is a good option for people who have at least some familiarity with technology and cellphones. Each in its own way does a good job of sticking to the basic task of handling phone calls.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com.

SanDisk’s Sansa TakeTV plugs into a PC to load videos, then into your TV to watch the videos.

Imagine a special device that not only plugged into your PC so you could drag and drop video files onto it, but also then hooked up to your TV to play back those videos. Rather than watching TV shows or movies on your laptop, you’d be doing so while comfortably relaxing on the couch, no high-tech networking required.

SanDisk Corp.’s Sansa TakeTV (www.take.tv) attempts to do just that, but is more complicated than it should be. This device, essentially a 4½-inch USB thumb drive with attachable accessories, costs $100 or $150 for four or eight gigabytes, respectively. By itself, it moves videos from a Mac or Windows PC to a TV, but only certain types of files are transferable.

Since TakeTV won’t work with videos downloaded from other online services, such as Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store, SanDisk created its own service, called Fanfare (www.fanfare.com), to work with TakeTV. Users plug TakeTV into a PC, download a movie or TV episode from Fanfare, unplug the device and attach it to a TV to watch the videos. Fanfare is still in its beta, or testing, stage and doesn’t currently offer much content. Its big-name networks include Showtime and CBS, but only certain episodes of some shows, like “Dexter,” “Survivor” and “CSI Miami,” are available.

SanDisk’s TakeTV and Fanfare are just getting started, and because of that have plenty of restrictions. On the upside, Fanfare is a visually attractive program — a real change for a company best known for selling flash storage. And the quality of the video playback was impressive. But for now, this device-and-service combination is frustratingly green.

Fanfare works only on Windows right now, and downloaded videos can’t be played back on the PC. Because of its current beta status, fees for movies and episodes of TV shows are being waived for a limited time. Content providers will eventually charge $1.99 per episode or nothing if they choose to use an ad-supported model.

SanDisk plans to keep improving Fanfare’s content, now limited to a total of 90 episodes from shows on six networks. But playing videos on a TV can be frustrating, lacking simple features like a visible progress bar when you’re rewinding or fast-forwarding. And if you need to stop a video halfway through watching it and happen to power off the TakeTV, your place is lost.

TakeTV gets points for its clever design. Its USB part tucks into a sleek holder that disguises the whole thing as a slender rectangle for porting around. On its own, the holder operates as a remote for controlling TakeTV when it’s connected to your TV. A separate television connector plugs into the TV using red, yellow, and white composite cables or just an S-video cable. This TV connector must also plug into a power outlet.

Not everyone will like the way TakeTV looks hooked up to a television, as its connector uses long, unsightly composite cables.

I started off slow, first just dragging and dropping video files from my computer into TakeTV. At first, I accidentally moved MP4 files, which aren’t compatible with TakeTV. Some types of video files that would transfer: DivX, XviD and MPEG-4 (AVI, MPG and MPEG files fall under this last category). Here’s the problem: Most people don’t know what format their videos are in, so finding the correct formats could be a real hassle.

One file I transferred was a short video of a trip to California. Its footage looked startlingly crisp and clear when played back on a standard definition television. SanDisk says videos will play in DVD quality, and I thought this was an accurate assessment.

Using the Fanfare service was rather straightforward. Upon plugging your TakeTV in for the first time, you’ll be prompted to download the Fanfare client, and to use the client you’ll need to register, creating a user name and password.

The Fanfare program is colorful and animated. It shows the available networks (CBS, Showtime, Smithsonian, The Weather Channel, Jaman and TV Guide) in a vertical list. Network names and titles of show episodes glow as you move your mouse over them; still shots from each movie or show illustrate just what you’ll be getting, including previews of certain videos.

With my TakeTV plugged into a PC at work, I selected a plus icon to download the pilot episode of Showtime’s twisted series, “Dexter.” This 53-minute episode took 30 minutes to download. I downloaded a 17-minute film called “Countdown,” which took just short of 20 minutes to download. But I couldn’t watch these videos until I was in front of my TV at home due to Fanfare’s no-PC-playback policy.

Once TakeTV was plugged into my TV, I chose videos from a list; a pre-created folder called “Fanfare Downloads” automatically holds everything you download from the service.

I was using the $100 four-gigabyte TakeTV, which SanDisk estimates will hold about five hours of video; the $150 eight-gigabyte should hold up to 10 hours. A useful illustration of my device’s capacity showed in Fanfare to indicate how much space was taken (mine was 46% full when I wrote this).

SanDisk knows it has a lot of improving to do, especially if it wants to challenge successful services like Apple’s iTunes. As is, TakeTV has the right idea, but forces users to jump through too many hoops. It plans to make Fanfare usable on Macs sometime in the future, and hopes to enable video playback on PCs before the end of the year. For now, it’s best to hold off on getting excited about this device or its service.

-Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

A “wiki” is a Web site or similar online resource that allows anyone to add and edit content collectively. But while the idea behind Wikipedia.com and other collaborative sites is a good one, the process of contributing content can be intimidating for nontechies. Instead, many people opt to publish their writing and digital media on personal blogs or Web sites. Yet these don’t do much to encourage online communities and interaction.

This week, I tested a free program from Wetpaint.com Inc. that helps regular users create wikis, which encourage interaction because they’re constantly changed by contributors. Wetpaint’s wikis ease the process of adding Web links, digital images, digital videos and additional text to sites made with Wetpaint. Likewise, your site can easily be adjusted and enhanced by anyone who views it. Compared with blogs or normal Web sites, my Wetpaint wiki felt much more alive and exciting.

Wetpaint has room for improvement. Nothing created on its site can be kept private from random viewers. Some of its functions — like adding content at the same time as someone else — can be a bit confusing. And it has advertisements because it’s free, but these aren’t overly intrusive. The Seattle-based company has plans for upgrades, including introducing more privacy options this summer. But most of its features are overwhelmingly simple to use, and built-in tutorial videos demonstrate steps.

In less than five minutes, my own wiki — a site devoted to discussing television programs, compiling digital photos and video clips from shows, all of which could be added to or deleted by anyone at any time — was up and running. I noticed other Wetpaint wikis for organizing sports teams, assisting with dog rescues and discussing favorite books. Setup was divided into three steps playfully termed The Easy Part, The Fun Part and The Other Part.

I named my wiki and its URL, and considered the options for who I wanted to contribute to it: everyone (even anonymously); anyone with a Wetpaint.com account; or only those whom I invited. I chose to allow everyone’s contributions in order to get the full feel of a wiki. Twenty-four style templates provide a starting point for the color and overall look.

I invited others to see my site so that they, too, could contribute their ruminations. When inviting others, you must designate how much authority you’ll give each invitee. Whoever creates the wiki is an administrator with the ability to change everything, including the template and permission settings. You can give others the same ranking, or you might opt to make them moderators, letting them move and delete pages but not change settings. The least amount of power is given to registered users; they can’t move or delete pages, but they, like everyone else, can still delete, change or add content on each page, by default.

Every change made to the site is tracked in detail, letting everyone see which page was altered and by whom, the time and date of the change and the scope of each adjustment. Special views can compare how a page looked before and after changes, so you know whether you liked the way you had it or the new version. These details are important in the world of wikis, where changes can be slight, frequent and barely noticeable.

The home page of your wiki allows space for explaining what you’d like to do. I used mine to say how much I like chatting about recent TV show episodes, and encouraged others to contribute anything relevant to the discussion, including write-in opinions, photos of show characters and clips from favorite scenes.

Each page has a section for navigation in the top left, showing which page is currently in view and how it relates to Home — as a subcategory of Home, or a subcategory within a category and so on. A toolbox on the far right offers one-click help for editing, adding attachments, inviting others and emailing a page. At the top of each page, an Easy Edit tool can be expanded to help you add digital photos from your PC or from specific URLs, hyperlinks or short video clips from sites like YouTube.com.

I never saw any confusing jargon while adding content to my wiki. I just followed suggested links, searched for the right content online or on my computer and pasted that information into the right spot.

Within a few hours, the friends I invited to my wiki caught on and added content to my pages or created pages of their own to be listed under my wiki. In addition to my pages for “Grey’s Anatomy,” “The Amazing Race” and “Friday Night Lights,” others added pages for “American Idol” and “Battlestar Galactica.” I even got into a fun back-and-forth battle with a friend as he and I each posted pictures of our favorite doctors on “Grey’s Anatomy.” Each of us had the ability to delete the other’s posting or to add our own.

I ran into some trouble when I tried to save a post and was told that someone else was simultaneously changing content on the same page. I chose to manually merge my content with the other person’s content, but couldn’t figure out how to do so and lost my entire post. This problem isn’t likely to crop up often, but it’s worth noting.

When I had questions about other sections, a help section walked me through the wiki-building steps. I also watched how-to videos that demonstrated the way certain aspects of Wetpaint worked.

If you’re tired of reading blogs that only let you post comments in an obscure section of the page, the interactive community aspect of Wetpaint’s wikis will appeal to you. Just be sure you’re aware that until later this summer, nothing on your wiki can be made private.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com.

The race to connect your TV to your computer and the Internet is about to kick into high gear this week when Apple Inc., the company many believe is best positioned to pull off this feat, introduces a slender, wireless set-top box called Apple TV.

This silvery little $299 gadget is designed to play and display on a widescreen family-room TV set all the music, video and photos stored on up to six computers around the house — even if they are far from the TV, and even if they are all Windows PCs rather than Apple’s own Macintosh models. It can also pull a very limited amount of music and video directly off the Internet onto the TV.

The $299 Apple TV device connects wirelessly to home computers and then with a cable to your widescreen TV.

Apple TV is tiny, just about eight inches square and an inch high, far smaller than a typical DVD player or cable or satellite box, even though it packs in a 40-gigabyte hard disk, an Intel processor and a modified version of the Mac operating system. And it has a carefully limited set of functions.

Yet, in our tests, it worked great, and we can easily recommend it for people who are yearning for a simple way to show on their big TVs all that stuff trapped on their computers. We tried it with various combinations of Windows and Mac computers, with movies, photos, TV shows, video clips and music. And we didn’t even use the fastest wireless network it can handle. It performed flawlessly. However, it won’t work with older TVs unless they can display widescreen-formatted content and accept some newer types of cables.

Like the iPod before it, Apple TV isn’t the first gadget in its category. Several other companies have made set-top boxes or even TV sets and game consoles that could link the TV to the digital content that people have on their computers. But none has found a mass audience for this functionality, mainly because they tend to be hard to set up and confusing to use. Apple is hoping that, just as the iPod trumped earlier, but geekier, rivals, Apple TV can do the same by making a complex task really simple.

Part of the secret of Apple TV is that, like most of Apple’s products, it doesn’t try to do everything and thus become a mess of complexity. It can’t receive or record cable or satellite TV, so it isn’t meant as a replacement for your cable or satellite box, or for a digital video recorder like a TiVo. It can’t play DVDs, so it doesn’t replace your DVD player. Its sole function is to bring to the TV digital content stored on your computer or drawn from the Internet. Like a DVD player, it uses its own separate input on your TV set, and you have to change inputs using your TV remote to use it.

Apple TV isn’t for that small slice of techies who buy a full-blown computer and plug it directly into a TV, or for gamers who prefer to do it all through a game console. And it’s not for people who are content to watch downloaded TV shows and movies directly on a computer screen. Instead, it’s for the much larger group of people who want to keep their home computers where they are and yet enjoy their downloaded media on their widescreen TVs.

Apple TV’s most formidable competitor is the Xbox 360 game console from Microsoft, which, in addition to playing games, can also play back content from Windows computers on a TV. And Xbox 360 can do something Apple TV can’t do, at least not yet, which is to directly purchase and download movies and TV shows from the Internet. But the comparable Xbox costs 50% more than Apple TV, is much larger and stores only half as much material.

We’ve been testing Apple TV for the past 10 days or so, and our verdict is that it’s a beautifully designed, easy-to-use product that should be very attractive to people with widescreen TV sets and lots of music, videos, and photos stored on computers. It has some notable limitations, but we really liked it. It is classic Apple: simple and elegant.

In our tests, Apple TV performed perfectly in Walt’s house over a standard Wi-Fi wireless network with a Pioneer plasma TV and six different computers — three Windows machines from Hewlett-Packard and Dell, and three Apple Macs. Setup was a breeze, the user interface was clean and handsome, and video and audio quality were quite good for anyone but picky audiophiles and videophiles. We never suffered any stuttering, buffering or hesitation while playing audio and video from distant computers.

The Apple TV menu points to content stored on your home computers.

Unlike any of its rivals, Apple TV can play the copy-protected music, TV shows and movies purchased from Apple’s iTunes online store, the most popular legal downloading service by far. (However, it cannot play copy-protected music in Microsoft’s formats, even from Windows computers.) It worked great with laptops and desktops alike, with Windows XP and the new Windows Vista operating system, and with newer Macs powered by Intel processors and an older Mac powered by an IBM-built G5 processor.

Apple TV’s most important limitation is that it can’t stream much video or audio directly from the Internet — yet. The capability to go directly to the Internet, bypassing the computers in your home, is built in, but is initially being used only to fetch feature film trailers and short preview clips of popular songs, TV shows and movies sold on the iTunes store. Apple TV also won’t allow you to buy media directly from the iTunes store. You must first download content from the Internet or iTunes on a computer, and then Apple TV will grab it from the computer and play it on the TV.

In its usual secretive fashion, Apple refuses to say if or when this direct-to-the-Internet capability will be expanded. But we fully expect Apple to add the capability to stream or download a variety of content directly from the Internet, and that this new capability will be available on current Apple TV boxes through software updates.

In our tests, Apple TV is a pleasure to use. Setup was stunningly simple. We just plugged the unit in and hooked it up to the TV with a single cable (not included). The unit found and connected with Walt’s Wi-Fi network almost instantly. To link to each computer, we just typed into iTunes on that computer a five-digit code number the Apple TV put up on the TV screen. This needs to be done only once.

You can select one computer to automatically synchronize with the Apple TV. Any song, TV episode, movie or photo you download or otherwise add to that one computer is automatically replicated on the Apple TV’s internal hard disk for playback on your TV. We tested this synchronization function with both a Mac laptop and a Windows Vista desktop, and it worked perfectly on both.

For instance, we imported 376 photos Katie had taken on a recent trip to France to a Mac laptop that was synchronized with the Apple TV. In short order, all of the photos were on the Apple TV and we watched them on the big plasma screen.

We also bought some TV shows, movies and songs from iTunes on our synchronized laptop, and they were automatically transferred to Apple TV, where we could watch them. It can, however, take hours to synchronize large files like movies over a slow wireless network.

In addition to your single synchronized computer, you can designate up to five other computers as sources for your Apple TV. From these machines, you “stream” the content over your wireless or wired network, instead of actually transferring them, but the music and video shows up on the TV just as if it had been synchronized to the Apple TV’s own hard disk.

All of these functions are controlled through iTunes on your Windows and Mac computers, just as you would control an iPod through iTunes. (The latest version of iTunes is required.)

In our tests, streaming worked just as well as playing content from the Apple TV’s own hard disk. Even though Walt’s Wi-Fi network is of the older “G” variety, and the Apple TV can handle newer, faster “N” variety networks, every single movie, TV show and song streamed without interruption from both Windows and Mac computers. That even included older or slower computers. This was an impressive feat.

The only downside of streaming as compared to syncing is that you can’t stream photos. These can appear only through synchronization. Apple plans to enable photo streaming later.

On the TV screen, Apple TV presents a simple, handsome list of content for each computer you choose to view. Media is divided into Movies, TV Shows, Music, Podcasts and Photos. You can change among your various computers using a menu called Sources.

There are some drawbacks to Apple TV. It won’t work with most older TV sets, the square kind that aren’t capable of handling widescreen programming. And it works only with TVs that have the newer types of connectors, such as “component” jacks, and the new HDMI cables being used on most high-definition TVs. It works best with high-definition TVs, and it puts out video in high-definition resolutions. But it will also work with “enhanced definition” widescreen sets.

Also, the tiny, simple Apple remote control can’t control the volume on either Apple TV or your TV set or audio receiver, so you have to keep reaching for the TV or audio receiver remote. And you can’t plug in an extra hard disk to add storage capacity, even though there’s a USB port on the back and the built-in 40-gigabyte drive is too small to hold many TV shows or movies.

But, all in all, Apple TV is a very well-designed product that easily brings the computer and the TV together.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

MobiTV, from MobiTV Inc., www.mobitv.com, gives people a way to watch television on their cellphones.

For lovers of portable video, the arguments in favor of TV on phones are speed and convenience. Rather than waiting to download movies, video podcasts and TV shows to a computer and then to transfer them to a portable player like an iPod, some would rather see current, live content streamed onto the device they already carry — their cellphone — whenever they want, wherever they are.

Live TV on cellphones isn’t new. We first tested it in 2004. But it was awful then, choppy and almost unviewable, because the cellular networks were too slow and the phones were too wimpy. So I decided to try it again.

Many cellphones are capable of displaying streamed television using built-in services, but few people are aware of these capabilities and not every phone will work as well as the next. The best results are delivered on devices with good quality screens that can retrieve and display the content using high-speed networks.

I used a mobile content-streaming service called MobiTV on three phones serviced by two carriers, Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc.’s Cingular Wireless, watching a variety of shows on screens smaller than the palm of my hand. Monthly usage for watching cellphone TV with these two carriers costs about $25 and $30, respectively, on top of your voice plan. MobiTV is compatible with more than 150 handsets, offering roughly 40 channels — about half of which show live content like that found on your home TV.

All in all, MobiTV offers a fun and simple solution for people seeking TV on the run. High-quality images appeared on screen just moments after I opened the MobiTV application and an on-screen guide labeled each channel. TLC, ESPN, The Discovery Channel, The Oxygen Network and major news channels are entertaining enough. And though my eyes hurt after 30 minutes of watching such a small screen, I only ran into a few other snafus: on-screen images disappearing while audio continued, certain channels cutting out and lips moving out of sync with audio. In more cases than not, these instances were rare or corrected themselves in seconds.

Other carriers offer video clips that might easily be confused with MobiTV Inc.’s technology. Verizon Wireless, for example, offers its V Cast service. But V Cast requires that you download clips onto your device. Sprint and Cingular also offer video-on-demand options. But the MobiTV service streams content onto your phone, showing it just about a minute later than the same content on live TV.

If you don’t use Sprint or Cingular and you’d like to download MobiTV to your standard cellphone, or to your Palm or Windows Mobile smart phone, you can do so through third-party vendors like Handango.com; these options can be found on www.mobitv.com. Vendors charge about $10 a month on top of any data charges that you might owe your carrier.

MobiTV’s service includes a channel guide.

Sprint and Cingular encourage you to buy an unlimited monthly data plan in addition to your voice plan if you’ll be watching TV on your cellphone. Sprint calls its live-TV service Sprint TV Live — though it’s really MobiTV beneath the covers — and offers TV-inclusive data plans for $15, $20 or $25. These return 8, 13 and 25 channels respectively. Sprint’s exclusive content includes the NFL network. To further confuse matters, you can also buy stand-alone Sprint TV Live on top of those three data plans; it costs about $10 monthly. Cingular charges users about $20 for its unlimited data plan plus $10 for MobiTV usage. This carrier keeps the MobiTV name.

MobiTV worked relatively the same way on all three handsets with both carriers: two Windows Mobile devices, the Sprint PPC-6700 and Cingular 8525, and a basic cellphone, Samsung Electronics Co.’s SGH-A707 with Cingular’s 3G network. In my tests, MobiTV came pre-loaded on the devices, letting me simply select it from a list to start watching streaming content.

On the Cingular 8525, a smart phone running the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system, I browsed through a guide until I found The Oxygen Network. The Isaac Mizrahi Show, not a favorite of mine, was just ending. It was followed by a quirky game show called “Can You Tell?”

MobiTV streams two types of programs: Live and Made for Mobile. Live shows are like those on your regular TV though slightly delayed and with different commercials in the local ad slots. I watched MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews” using MobiTV and my regular TV, and an interview with Mia Farrow started about a minute earlier on my TV than it did on my mobile device.

Made for Mobile channels include special MobiTV content, such as music-video channels, or content for certain channels that MobiTV stitches together to show in a better format for mobile. The latter is the case with ESPN; in 15 minutes, I watched clips about football, Nascar, baseball, boxing and basketball with only a few quick commercials. In these snippets, however, lips weren’t synched with the audio.

I often opted to view content in full-screen mode, which, in 10 seconds, alters the image to take over the whole screen in horizontal view. A few times, while watching full-screen view, my on-screen content froze and had to restart in the regular view.

MobiTV says that using its service to watch programs saps battery at a rate equal to that of voice calls.

People who use digital video recorders at home to pause or rewind live TV will be disappointed to find you can’t do that with MobiTV. The company is hoping to offer these capabilities in the future. But because of the smaller screen, you probably won’t want to watch your mobile screen for as long as you would a regular TV, reducing the need to pause and rewind.

MobiTV’s services will never replace your home-entertainment center experience. But the ability to watch TV on your phone is a great way to stay plugged into news and entertainment. Just be sure that you’re using a fast network and a generously sized screen.

– Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

Gadgets that connect iPods to home entertainment centers aren’t new. The booming iPod accessory industry has long offered docks and cables that allow music stored on an iPod to be played through a home audio system, and remote controls to manage the playback.

But, with the advent last fall of the video-capable iPod, a new type of product is emerging: connectors and docks that allow iPods to play video through a TV, as well as playing audio through home receivers and speakers. In addition, there are finally some iPod docks that place a menu of options, similar to the iPod’s own menu, on a TV screen.

$99 Apple iPod AV Connection Kit, www.apple.com/ipod/accessories.html

If you own a video iPod and happen to miss Sunday’s episode of “Desperate Housewives,” you can easily log on to Apple’s iTunes Music Store, pay a couple of bucks to download the episode and copy the video onto the iPod for watching on the go.

But watching movies or TV shows on your home entertainment center will always be more enjoyable than watching on a comparatively tiny 2.5″ iPod screen while listening through earbuds.

This week we reviewed two of these new iPod video connectors: the $99 iPod AV Connection Kit from Apple Computer Inc. itself and the $150 HomeDock Deluxe by Digital Lifestyle Outfitters, or DLO, as the smaller company calls itself.

When it comes to watching videos or digital photo slide shows, these two docks are about the same. Because of limitations in the iPod itself, video and slide-show menus can’t be projected on the TV screen, so selecting them requires manipulating menus on the iPod. But for listening to the iPod’s music through your speakers, the DLO HomeDock Deluxe pulls ahead. It offers a special mode that lists music on your television screen, not just on your iPod screen like the Apple kit, so you can see song details clear across the room. And overall, the DLO remote is much easier to use than Apple’s.

Griffin Technology, another popular maker of iPod accessories, has plans for its own iPod video connector that it will call the TuneCenter. This product — like the DLO HomeDock Deluxe — will offer music navigation through a TV screen menu. It should be available starting in June.

For our tests, we used a $299 30-gigabyte iPod, and made sure to copy two videos onto it from our iTunes library: rock band Coldplay’s music video of its song, “Fix You,” and the latest episode of the Bravo channel’s TV series “Top Chef.”

We started with Apple’s iPod AV Connection Kit, which includes a simple white dock, tiny white remote, white AC connection cable (red, white and yellow plugs at one end) and power adapter to charge the iPod while it docks.

We used one of four small adapters to fit our iPod into the dock. A power adapter cable and AC connection cable plug into the dock’s back side, and a small circular infrared receiver for the remote decorates the front. The other end of the AC cable fit into our TV’s red, yellow and white plugs, just like attaching a DVD player to a TV. We also made sure to turn on the iPod’s “TV Out” setting, so videos could be transmitted out rather than just playing on the iPod itself.

We picked up the iPod dock’s tiny remote, and pressed play, hearing music from our TV’s speakers, but seeing nothing on our TV screen. You can use the remote to skip through songs and turn the volume up or down, but that’s where its functionality ends. You can’t use the remote’s Menu button (nothing happens), nor can you use it to select other settings like listening to a play-list of music or turning on the iPod’s useful Shuffle Songs setting.

As if this weren’t maddening enough, we got even more frustrated when trying to use the remote to watch videos or photo slide shows on the iPod AV Connection Kit — it works only if you’ve already selected a video or slide show using the iPod buttons, not the remote.

If you’re tired of this remote limiting you to one list of songs and you want to suddenly start watching a video or slide show, you’ll have to get up, walk over to the iPod, pick it up (it’s easier to operate when holding) and start playing the video or slide show. Only then can you use the remote to navigate within that media. Apple says you wouldn’t be able to see the screen to use the remote anyway, but we’d rather have the option.

$149.99 DLO HomeDock Deluxe, www.dlo.com

After dealing with the tiny remote’s big hassle, we did watch videos and slide shows through the iPod on the TV screen. While watching the episode of “Top Chef,” we easily paused with the remote to get a show-inspired snack.

Using the DLO HomeDock Deluxe was liberating compared with working with the limited Apple device. It’s a little bigger and is black, rather than white, with slots that hold its 18-button remote and the iPod. It uses the same cables and jacks, powering up from a wall plug and hooking into the TV with an AC cord.

But because the HomeDock Deluxe uses two modes — one that displays a useful user interface on the TV screen while playing music (On-Screen Navigation Mode) and another that operates videos and slide shows, as well as music (iPod Mode) — a special button on the remote must be pressed to switch between the two modes. This gets a little clumsy, stopping the iPod in midsong, for example, to swap over to the new mode.

In iPod Mode, where all data only show up on the iPod screen like on Apple’s iPod AV Connection Kit, you can listen to music, watch videos or watch photo slideshows. But the remote doesn’t limit you to one list of songs, as Apple’s does. Rather, you can skip through the iPod’s menus selecting various options with the remote, even going from videos to slide shows to music. We did have to stand closer to the HomeDock Deluxe to read some smaller print, but we never had to pick up the iPod in frustration.

We watched the Coldplay video, rewinding and fast-forwarding easily to find a favorite moment when the group’s lead singer, Chris Martin, bursts onto a stage surrounded by fans after running through the streets of London.

A small button in the HomeDock Deluxe remote’s top left corner switches to On-Screen Navigation Mode. This mode shows a brightly colored welcome screen on your TV that lists Music, Shuffle Songs, Playlists and HomeDock Settings. The Music section showed Playlists, Artists, Albums, Songs, Genres, Composers and Audiobooks — a familiar iPod-like format that was easy to navigate.

Each song’s information — minus album art — showed on the screen as it played, and the bigger screen allowed us to move far away and just glance to the TV to see the upcoming song or what artist was singing. DLO hopes to add the album art to this screen in the future.

A few times, while using the HomeDock Deluxe remote, our iPod’s backlight went off, which was annoying. The company says it is working on this bug, but a special button on the remote turns it on again for now.

Overall, the DLO HomeDock Deluxe is more satisfying to use than Apple’s iPod AV Connection Kit, though it still has to work out a few kinks. Its remote is more functional than Apple’s, and it just works more easily. We’re looking forward to the day when a dock like this one can offer a TV-screen navigational mode for videos and slide shows, as well as music, so users can see all of the iPod’s data in a big-screen view.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com.