...
written by Nick , February 12, 2008

Just finished the update. took about 15 mins. Once you log in to your iTunes account all of the menus are accessible. Really awesome new interface as promised and amazing navigation for Movies, TV, Podcasts! Well done Apple

...
written by shagless , February 12, 2008

So how do we view a movie we rented on our computer to show up in Atv?
Other than that I am very impressed.

...
written by Christopher Lucas , February 12, 2008

I've just upgraded without a hitch, but I live in New Zealand, and the upgrade does little for us here as the world doesn't seem to exist outside of the States.

...
written by Nik , February 12, 2008

How i totally agree with Christopher....come on guys....why sell the ATV outside the states if you cant use it full capabilities...and the funny thing is, it cost more to buy...

...
written by Edo , February 12, 2008

although also no access to the movie rental, I really love the podcast and iTunes store possibilities. Well worth the upgrade.

...
written by segsu , February 12, 2008

Well still forgot the most important thing for me !!
No 'movie folders' or movie playlist for my personal stuff.
Going go to have to keep scrolling down my mile long list of movies

...
written by CHRISTIAN , February 12, 2008

very very nice.... AirTunes is awesome... it puts the album artwork up and works nice and fast. I love the flickr photos too, works great... and browsing store and podcast directory is fun.

...
written by The Sampler , February 12, 2008

How to I stream my 700gigs of content wirelessly like I did with the previous version???? If you can't anymore, then I want to downgrade.

...
written by The Sampler , February 12, 2008

Thanks Luck - I found out it was a settings in iTunes (don't show unsynched content checkbox that was checked), I unchecked it now good to go

...
written by Nik , February 12, 2008

well after playing with the new update...i do like it...i just wish we could get the movie downloads... but very nice!

...
written by Sammyfan , February 12, 2008

If you live outside the US, prepare to be even more miffed. I can't believe how good the HD quality is. I got 300(HD), set my ATV to 1080p output to match my 61" TV and the results are shocking! A 3.65GB file looks very close to it's HD disc cousin. The 5.1 soundtrack has terrific separation and the signal is strong enough that my Yamaha RX-V1 gives a spectacular 6.1 matrix.

Video is a tick under the disc but I suspect the difference will only be noticeable during opening production company logos. I played the movie alongside and noticed very little difference ("Blasphemer!!"). It's just a beautiful result - and I was all ready to be disappointed after hearing about DirectTV's HD download quality and the God-awful "HD"VOD through my cable company.

I'm still stunned at the spectacular results from such a small file size. I think I mentioned in an earlier post that I was prepared for a 15GB movie, at under 4GB the result is little short of amazing. There shouldn't be any transfer caps from ISP's at that size. I wonder how pro reviewers will react but I'll continue to believe my own happy eyes.

...
written by Solerous , February 13, 2008

Wow, I am very impressed with the new Apple TV. I messed around last night with all of the new menu options. I didn't realize we'd be able to buy music as well! That is really cool. I also really like that I don't have to go to sources and sync to my iTunes library anymore.

I have a .mac web gallery and logged into that and it was extremely fast viewing. Maybe, even faster than using safari on my Mac Pro! Very impressive!

But the big news for me was the movie rental feature. I really wanted to try the HD rentals, but I had already seen all of the HD offerings that were of interest to me and I didn't want to rent a movie that I was not interested in just to see the HD quality. So I'll have to wait on that one. You can see 2-3 minute previews of all of the movies which is much better than going to the rental store as you can get a sense for whether you will like a movie or not if you've never heard of it. There was a decent movie selection overall. Not nearly what it should be, but that is no doubt because movie studios are being stingy with their content.

We ended up renting 'Meet the Robinsons' instead. Based on just that one movie, I was blown away by the quality and the simplicity of the process! The quality was as good or better than DVD. The movie was gorgeous. It was ready for viewing in less than 30 sec even though my wireless network and cable internet are on the low end of the spectrum. It started without a hitch and we paused it a couple of times and resumed watching instantaneously. The process was so simple, just hit the 'rent' option and put in your password and boom, the movie shows up in no time! I did not have the Apple TV remember my password since I have young kids who might mess with the remote, but that was an option.

I can't say a whole lot based on just one rental experience, but if that movie was any indication, this is an amazing new feature for the Apple TV. Outstanding picture quality and dead easy interface make for a great movie renting experience!

...
written by Johno , February 13, 2008

So far I see the following problems/disappointments:
1. My Movies w/Dolby Digital 5.1 still will not pass thru (yes I have the optical audio cable setup to my receiver). The Apple TV intro plays in 5.1 but thats it. Even the HD trailers are not 5.1.
2. All my movies on iTunes show up in My Movies. I just want my synced movies to show up as they did in the 1.1 version.

...
written by txyall , February 13, 2008

Apple did not include the ability to play music videos continuously or shuffle them, which of course makes video playlists useless. How could they release this major update without fixing this basic issue that every iPod is capable of doing, and that generated so much feedback! Although renting movies is nice, it's not my reason for having an ATV.

...
written by gardoni , February 13, 2008

I updated too! So far it works great. I rented Evan Almighty oh Hd just to try it out. It took about 2 1/2 hours to download!! (my connection is a standard DSL at 1.5 mbps) I have to say that the I was impressed with the quality. While it might be true that after all of the compression factors it isn't truly HD, it still looked a whole lot better than any other movie I had watched on the previous software. Well, that is all for now.

...
written by Andrew Koransky , February 13, 2008

I updated and hooray! My internet radio playlist (containing stream URLs) sync-ed over and actually has entries in it... and it plays! So AppleTV 2.0, in a round-a-bout way, supports streaming live over the internet. Now I can enjoy Radio Paradise in my living room. Thanks Apple!

...
written by Brian M , February 13, 2008

Updated last night and everything was well until I tried a slideshow of my share photos and NO MUSIC!!!!
Call Apple today and IT is a problem!!

...
written by nwgeek , February 13, 2008

Anyone figured out how to stream and sync from the same library? In 1.0, I could sync my 20 gigs of photos but choose to stream my music by selecting the same itunes library as a source. I can't seem to do that in 2.0. Anyone figured this out or did they remove that functionality?

...
written by shagless , February 13, 2008

Downgraded today for me. The movies were cool, but after that I was miffed. Interface is poor to me. I have the audio problem for those of us who run our Apple TV by HDMI to TV and then audio from tv with coax to receiver. No sound anywhere except the dumb remote and when 5.1 movie rentals played. No sound for my music, movies, podcasts, youtube. That is a big problem for me. What was the strangest was that using airtunes, the HDMI worked fine. Apple really screwed (sure they think it is an enhancement) something up with the audio format out.

...
written by nwgeek , February 13, 2008

Fixed my issue - I wasn't sharing my library on the network. Once I enabled that, I can stream from the same device I sync from.

...
written by txyall , February 14, 2008

Shagless... I agree completely about your interface comment. It's really poor. The interface has the appearance of something that would have been created 5 years ago.

...
written by zarkoff , February 14, 2008

The current menu structure bugs me.

Here's how I think the main menus should look:

Video
Audio
Photos
Itunes store
Settings

Under video:

Movies (yours)
Tv shows (yours)
Music videos
youtube
Any other online free video content

Under Audio:

Your music library
Streaming radio
Podcasts
Audiobooks

Under photos:

Your photos
Flickr
(whatever else is available photo wise)

Itunes Store:

Purchase music/movies/shows
Rent movies/shows
Other itunes store stuff


This way you don't have to bother with all the purchase/rental menu clutter every time you want to just play your media.