In fact, for many people – especially the sort of design-focussed people who’ve gone to the trouble of mounting their TV on a wall – the best Apple TV is one they can’t see.
Cue the cool new TotalMount Pro mount. Hitting Apple stores and apple.com on an exclusive basis this week, the ultra low-profile TotalMount Pro neatly allows you to attach your Apple TV box to the back of your television, meaning you no longer have to look at it or worry about where to put it.
Here's what the Apple TV looks like safely gripped in the TotalMount Pro's ventilated holder.
Here’s what the Apple TV looks like safely gripped in the TotalMount Pro’s ventilated holder.
In fact, you don’t even have to worry about hiding away the Apple TV’s HDMI and power cables, as the TotalMount Pro ships with two cable management units to make sure neither cable becomes visible from behind your TV.
The fact that you’re mounting your Apple TV directly onto your TV’s rear also means that people with wall-hung TVs don’t have to worry about tunnelling the HDMI cable through their walls, as the Apple TV will end up sited close (and with direct access) to your TV’s HDMI ports.
While there’s no doubt this all sounds seriously preferable to just shoving the Apple TV on a mantelpiece and having to suffer with cable spaghetti, there does seem to be one small problem: the remote control.
While the new Apple TV remote is much more attractive and slim than the main Apple TV box, most people also attach it from time to time to the Apple TV to recharge its batteries – something you’re probably thinking won’t be easy to do when the Apple TV is stuck to the back of your TV.
The Apple TV and remote are mounted to the back of a television and the USB and HDMI cables are managed using the TotalMount cord management system, (PRNewsFoto/Innovelis, Inc.)
The Apple TV and remote are attached to your television (the remote holder can go on the side or rear) and the USB and HDMI cables are managed using the TotalMount cord management system, (PRNewsFoto/Innovelis, Inc.)
Here again, though, the TotalMount Pro has thought things through, providing a separate charging remote control holder which can be fastened to the rear or, more usefully, side of your TV for easy access.
As well as ensuring that your Apple TV remote is always more or less fully charged, it seems to us that getting in the habit of popping the remote into its TotalMount Pro holder whenever you’re not using Apple TV will drastically reduce the amount of time you spend looking for the tiny handset between sofa cushions…
If you’re wondering how the remote control can communicate with the new Apple TV when the Apple TV box is stuck behind your television, the answer is that the latest Apple TV system uses RF rather than infra-red communication, meaning no direct line of sight is required.
The TotalMount Pro can be installed by anyone without the need for any tools, and even features ventilation channels in its design to make sure your Apple TV doesn’t overheat.
One thing the TotalMount Pro can’t do, alas, is make the Apple TV flatter. So I guess it’s possible there may be one or two extremely thin TVs that sit very close to the wall where the TotalMount Pro won’t be workable.
But the TotalMount Pro really does add hardly any extra depth to the Apple TV it holds, and it’s worth remembering that even ground-breakingly thin OLED TVs have to stick out a good few centimetres over at least a portion of their rear sides to provide space for speakers, tuners, image processing drivers and the like. So situations where the TotalMount Pro couldn’t be used really should be few and far between.
Finally, perhaps the single best thing about this patented, Innovelis-designed Apple TV accessory is that it only costs $29.95.
While the TotalMount Pro is already available in the US Apple online store, it doesn’t seem to be available on a worldwide basis yet; for instance, it’s not yet appearing in the UK apple.com store. I’ve asked for more details on global availability for the mount, and will update this story if I hear more.
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