Hands On with Apple TV 2.0

Apple TV was one of those products that I always wanted to like but just couldn't when it was released. Oh sure, it was neat to see my photos on my TV and play music or watch a TV show or two. The interface wasn't anything to rave about, and I couldn't get any kind of HD programming.

The latest Apple TV 2.0 release fixes a lot by adding HD movie rentals, a slick new interface, and the ability to buy/rent without having to use your computer. The Apple TV is now officially a stand-alone (though you can still synch to it and from it if you want) entertainment center.

I had no problems downloading or installing the Apple TV 2.0 update; although I was confused at first because, for some reason, I thought I needed to download it via iTunes and then synch it or something. I actually just went into the settings on the Apple TV and downloaded it from there. Installation didn't take too long even though the Apple TV rebooted a few times after installation.

New Interface
The first thing I noticed when I went to use my Apple TV was the nice new user interface. It's very simple and easy to navigate. There is a list of choices on the left hand side and another list on the right that changes depending on what selection you make.

On the left hand you have seven categories:

• Movies
• TV Shows
• Music
• Podcasts
• Photos
• YouTube
• Settings

Here's how the selection of sub-menus breaks down on the right side for each of the categories above:

• Movies – Top Movies, Genres, All HD, Search, Trailers, My Movies.
• TV Shows – Favorites, Top TV Shows, Genres, TV Networks, Search, My TV Shows
• Music – Top Music, Music Videos, Genres, Search, My Music
• Podcasts – Favorites, Top Podcasts, Genres, Providers, Search, My Podcasts
• Photos – My Photos, .Mac, Flickr, Settings
• YouTube – Featured, Most Viewed, Most Recent, Top Rated, History, Search, Login
• Settings – General, Screen Saver, Audio, Video, Computers, Downloads

It's simple, quick, and easy to navigate Apple TV's new menu system even if you've never seen it before. Continued...

One of the things I've been looking forward to most is the ability to rent movies on my Apple TV. I got rid of cable TV a while back because it's horrible and far too expensive. As with iTunes movie rentals, Apple has made it very easy and quite comfortable to rent movies right from your living room.

You'll pay $3.99 for a new SD rental and $4.99 for a new HD rental. Older movies are $2.99 for SD and $3.99 for HD rentals. You have 30 days to start watching it and 24 hours to watch it as many times as you want after you start playing the movie (though as I understand it, you can always pause the movie and finish watching it past the 24 hour timer...a little known feature that Apple seems to have neglected to mention).

You have the option to view a list of the Top Movies, browse via genre, see all HD movies, or search directly for a title. I think that seeing "All HD" movies is going to have to be changed as the selection gets larger but it's easy to use for right now.

I prefer, for the most part, to browse via genre as it better fits with the mood I happen to be in while looking for a movie. Parents can easily find G- rated movies by choosing that genre; it's a nice touch to find family-friendly content that's kid-safe.

The western genre section has some good flicks like True Grit, Red River, and others but it definitely needs to be beefed up. I want to see the entire John Wayne catalogue available for purchase and download.

As I pointed out in the iTunes review, I disagree with some of the pricing decisions. Red River is a great movie, but it was made in 1948, and it's in black and white. Why does it cost $2.99 to rent? Apple needs to come up with a "Classics" pricing scheme that lowers the price to rent/purchase movies that are more than 50 years old. Flicks that old shouldn't be more than 99 cents to rent or more than $4.99 to buy.

You can also view trailers, something that I found to be surprisingly entertaining. I generally don't bother much with viewing trailers on the Web, but I liked watching them on my 720p 50-inch DLP HDTV. The trailer for 10,000 BC has me primed to see that flick when it's available.

One thing that's missing from the Apple TV movie menu is a "New Releases" section. There seems to be space left in the menu for another section, so let's hope that Apple adds it as it would be very nice to see the newest flicks.

The quality of the movies seems pretty good to me. Note though that I have a 720p HDTV and not a 1080p set. As I understand it, Apple TV can upscale the image to 1080p but it is a 720p quality film. Those of you who have 1080p sets will have to weigh in after you've had a chance to rent a flick and tell us how it looks. For my part, I think they look great.

I don't have a Blu-ray player, so I can't tell you which is better. I have no intention of buying one either but I'm sure the Blu-ray quality is probably a bit higher. With Apple TV, you get the immediate experience of getting your HD movie rental, with Blu-ray you have to go out and buy the disc or rent it from somewhere. For me, I'd rather download it. My days of buying discs are over and I have no intention of going back to them.

If you want to see a helpful comparison of Apple TV versus Blu-ray versus HD Cable versus DVD, check out Charles Starrett's article(Opens in a new window) on iLounge. He breaks it all down and seems mostly positive about how Apple TV compares to the other formats.

The sound also seems fine to me, but I am not an audiophile. I don't even have a surround sound system hooked up to my TV right now; I'm just using the built-in speakers and it sounds pretty good to me. I may add another surround sound system later, but I'm content with what I have right now.

You can view a complete list of the Apple TV's tech specs in case you want to dig deeper into what it can and can't do. For my rather casual viewing tendencies it worked pretty well and I give the quality a thumbs up. Continued...

There's nothing really quite notable about TV shows, music, or podcasts. If you've bought any of them from the iTunes store, then you'll be familiar with them on Apple TV. What's new in this release, of course, is the ability to buy/get them from the iTunes store right from your Apple TV. It's definitely more convenient than buying them on my Mac and synching them over to the Apple TV.

I would like to see TV show rentals added at some point as there are very few TV shows I'd actually like to own. Buying them is easy via Apple TV, so if you want to watch something, you can buy it quickly.

One thing I noticed that was missing from the Music section was audiobooks. There seems to be no way to buy them on your Apple TV. Now perhaps I'm the only person who would do so but, since they get synched back to your Mac and iPhone anyway, I'd like the convenience of being able to purchase them while browsing my Apple TV. You can listen to those that you've bought via your computer that you've synched over though, so audiobooks are accessible if want to go that route to get them.

Podcasts don't seem to have received much attention, having taken a backseat to movie rentals. However, if you are looking for some excellent free content, it's worth browsing the Podcast section of Apple TV. There's quite a bit of content there, some of it is audio but some is also video.

I was somewhat annoyed though that there is no easy way to find HD video-based-podcast content on Apple TV. Yes, it's there but you have to dig a bit by genre or podcast to find it. Apple needs to highlight this and make an HD video sub-section of the podcast menu. Continued...

I am not a big YouTube user, so its appeal is relatively limited to me. However, if you're a YouTube fan you'll love being able to browse YouTube and watch videos on your TV set. I do have a few videos of my own as well as some favorites of mine, so I pulled them up on my TV and they were fun to watch.

I also found it easy to pull up my photos on my .Mac account. When I did, Apple TV started playing some music that I had and it was fun to watch my photos cycle on the screen while the music played.

I don't have a Flickr account so I didn't test that. If it works as well as YouTube or .Mac, then it's not surprising. If you use any of these services, you'll have a fun time watching stuff on your TV. You'll need to log into your accounts, so make sure you have your passwords and user IDs handy (you don't have to log in to browse YouTube, only if you want to pull up your favorites, etc.).

The integration seems to have been done very well. If you're a Flickr user and you've tried it in Apple TV, then please be sure to post that in the forum thread for this article so folks can know what your experience was like. Continued...

Apple TV comes with parental controls. You can choose to restrict the following:

• Internet
• YouTube
• Podcasts
• Purchase and Rental

You can opt to Show, Hide, or be Asked whether or not that content should be viewed. You can choose the ratings for the country that you are in and you can restrict movies or tv shows according to the following choices:

• Restict Movies: No Restrictions, G, PG, PG-13 or R
• Restrict TV Shows: No Restrictions, TV-Y, TV-Y7, TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14
• Explicit Music & Podcasts: Ask or Allow

Although I'm not a parent, it seems like Apple has covered all of the bases as far as protecting kids from inappropriate content.

Problems with Apple TV
I like a lot of what I see on Apple TV right now, but it's not without its problems. At this point you can't buy HD movies, you can only rent them. I'm sure that Apple will probably tweak this and allow purchasing, but right now it's not possible, and I find that somewhat irritating.

In the two current versions of Apple TV (40GB and 160GB), the storage offered is simply too small to last long over time. It is amazingly easy to fill up such a tiny amount of storage that I can see the need for at least a terabyte of storage if somebody wants to really build a collection of movies. No doubt Apple will bulk up the storage offering later, but right now I'm just not satisfied with it.

I tried hooking my 250GB Western Digital Mybook external hard disk up to my Apple TV via the USB port in the back and the Apple TV did not find it. I checked in iTunes and no additional storage was available there either. So I'm taking some points off for this because I do not understand why that USB port in the back of the Apple TV is not on and available for additional storage.

Apple should consider offering three models of Apple TV:

1. Entry-level 160GB model for $199
2. Mid-level model with 500GB storage for $299
3. Power-user model with 1TB storage for $399.

Those options would cover all the bases and make Apple TV much more valuable to movie/TV buffs who want to use the Apple TV to help build a collection of content.

As I pointed out earlier, audiobooks should be purchased on the Apple TV. Some folks might want to buy them that way if they don't have a computer in their living room and they just want to listen to a book. Continued...

Apple TV has taken an important step in adding much more value than it offered in its previous version. The interface is better and the ability to easily rent movies (HD and SD) without the need for a computer is terrific. I think it's worth buying if you want an alternative to what cable TV has to offer and you can live with the limited storage. It's also quite nice to view your own photos, use YouTube on your TV, and so forth.

However, if you are not in dire need of an Apple TV, you might want to sit tight for at least a little while and see if Apple will soon offer a version with much larger storage or at least allow Apple TV users to plug in their own external hard disks into the Apple TV's USB port.

I was going to give Apple TV an 8 but I'm going to knock that back to a 7 because of the storage issue. It's something that Apple really needs to address very quickly as I think that the power users of Apple TV are going to fill their disk space up extremely quickly if they buy a lot of movies, TV shows, music and so on from iTunes via Apple TV.

If you're already an Apple TV owner then you're going to love this update. It adds a lot of value and it really makes Apple TV what it should have been when it was first released.

Product:	Apple TV 2.0
Company:	Apple (Opens in a new window)
Price:	$229 for 40GB model; $329 for 160GB model
Pros:	Slick interface; HD movie rentals
Cons:	Small storage space; can't use USB port in the back for additional storage
Summary:	Apple has added a lot of value, this is the best Apple TV ever but it needs more storage space.
Rating:

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