Comments on: Apple TV software update: First impressions

We've spent a few hours with the new Apple TV update--and can share some first impressions.

[manualfunky]

Looks great, just a shame aussie internet is 1.5M

just downloaded and installed and, if the australian internet was say faster than 1.5Mbits then it'd be great! oh yeah and perhaps movie and tv downloads over here too sometime soon would make the $500 investment in my appletv much more worthwhile, eh? c'mon apple! we've finally gotten the photobook service out of iphoto as of last weeks update and sure, theres always visualhub etc to use to encode movies and tv shows myself...

[manualfunky]

an update to what was previously written

I must add tho that it is now extremely fast loading vidz etc stored on my wireless network and also playing podcasts direct from the internet. The new interface isn't at all flashy, which was unexpected from apple but in some weird way it makes a lot more sense navigating around it and its easier to get to where i need to go. Quick downloading from itunes music store (quick for australia....) and a new start up screen and a screen saver that seems to think that i love looking at flowers and plants of all different types and colours!

[glen engelmann]

the flower screensaver explained...

they include several pictures built-in to appleTV so you don't just have a blank
screen as a screensaver. After you sync your photos to the appleTV then those
built-in pictures are replaced with a random display of YOUR pictures as the
screensaver. It is actually very cool.... try it.... and enjoy!

[GadgetDon]

Renting cool, but...

I'm not so happy with the interface changes for viewing content on the Apple
TV. For example, my main use of the Apple TV is podcasts and video
podcasts. I go to podcasts, and it shows me all the unplayed podcasts, and
it's easy to pick one. Now, it's showing everything from my computer, so all
the podcasts that have nothing new are in the lists. (Yes, there's a dot on
podcasts with unplayed podcasts, but I have to scroll through a fairly long list
to get to the one I want).

TV shows are even more messed up. It's showing all the episodes on my
computer, and it's not even "pick the show, then pick the episode".

It also shows all movies from my computer, and that's not so bad...though
the question of why copy any to the Apple TV is unclear.

The new functionality is nice. But I want an Apple TV Take 2.1

[jdimstr]

couple of questions

- How is the selection, especially HD titles? How many movies in total are available. Personally, I'm questioning how it compares to Amazon Unbox in terms of the number of titles and video quality.

- How viable would it be to replace a cable HD service w/ Apple TV if you're largely interested in movies? I'd augment it with an HDTV antenna. For someone who watches 10 hours/week of TV, mostly movies, I was thinking about putting in an Apple TV and ditching my $75/month cable bill.

[jpfalcone]

lean selection for now, but...

... it's going to be growing in short order. Apple's already signed deals with all the major studios, so the available movies should ramp up pretty quickly.

If you want to check individual titles, just boot up iTunes and go to the iTunes Store--all of the same movies are listed, and the HD ones will say "This movie is available in HD on Apple TV" where applicable.

[GadgetDon]

Ooops, that last comment needs correcting.

Um...scratch most of that. I figured it out.

In the configuration in iTunes, there's an option "show only the synced items
on my Apple TV". Check it, and it only shows items on the Apple TV.

It should be an on-Apple TV option (so if I'm in the bedroom, want to watch
a movie only on the computer, I don't have to go to the office and uncheck
the option) but at least it's there. I will still say they have messed up TV show
display, however.

[cant_get_enough_tech]

Recording-

Can you use the Apple TV like a TiVo box?

[pauleddie]

Subtitles or captioning on HD movies?

I am hard-of-hearing and I watch shows with the closed-captioning or english subtitles. Is this feature available on the Apple TV?

[duoart]

Still lousy for photographs

Installed take 2 on my original drive and immediately put the hacked 1.1 drive back in to the unit. What a waste of time!

Apple still has not made it easy to browse folders of photos. That is bad. The killer app for the Apple TV is not video rental or music playback, it is displaying digital photographs on biggest and highest resolution screen in the house! This is the application I get the most questions about when people see my AppleTV. Period.

EVERYONE has digital cameras and not everyone is comfortable with using Flickr or .mac to host their photos. Many of us simply have a folder for each year and sub-folders for each month etc. We should be able to use AppleTV to get to a specific folder and and browse thumbnails to display a specific photo just like on our computers. Waiting for a shot to come around in an automated slide show does not cut it!

Photographs are intensely personal and there are those of us who will NEVER put them on hardware we don't own. I understand that having partners like flickr and supporting .mac are important, but not being able to efficiently navigate our own home photo albums is totally missing the boat.

GET IT RIGHT NEXT TIME APPLE! stop trying to make the ATV a way to extract more money from me through video rentals or .mac subscriptions. I'll part with some of my money for those once I can do what everyone expects to do with their digital photo collection.

Until this is fixed, I cannot recommend AppleTV to my friends and family. As it stands, the product continues to be a horrible tease!

GRRR!!!!

[hfa13]

song lyrics

Can you now access lyrics that have been manually added to a song?s file on iTunes?