AppleTV Take 2 – It’s finally here
By john on Feb 13, 2008 in featured
So this is perhaps old news, as it happened yesterday, but Apple finally released the updated AppleTV software. While I downloaded it and installed it yesterday, I hadn’t been able to really play around with it until earlier today. I can say that it seems better than the previous version. Movie rentals are now possible, as is purchasing tv shows directly from the TV. You can also view .mac and flickr photo streams – a nice added bonus – and it all sports a new shiny interface. But what’s it really like?
Not surprising, it’s pretty good. I was able to add my flickr account to it, and set it up to be the screensaver, fairly easily. Browsing through movies to rent also seemed pretty fast and stable, and watching previews was dead simple and incredibly fast. Ive not yet tried to buy anything through itunes, or rent any movies. This is mostly because there’s nothing I really want to buy and/or rent.
The downside is that there’s still not that much selection to rent, especially in HD. As the list grows, though, the service will become more useful – something I’m looking forward to.
Downsides: it still won’t play any type of video file, so those who have had movies / shows in digital format (but not appletv compatible ) are out of luck. You could use something like VisualHub to convert, but if you’ve got a terrabyte of movies (as a friend of mine does) that’s just not something you’re willing to do.
It’s also still tied to the ITMS and/or iTunes software. To rent or buy from the AppleTV you have to do so through itunes, and if you want non-ITMS content you have to use the itunes software to do so. While that doesn’t bother me one bit, it is a show stopper for others who don’t want to use iTunes or the ITMS. To those people I simply say “this isn’t the device for you”.
It’s definitely a step in the right direction, though, and it’s nice to see Apple release it as a free upgrade for existing owners.
The update process took about 4 minutes to download the update and maybe 5-10 minutes to apply it, restarts included.
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