[flybynight]

It is a great product, but hopefully will get even better.
I can live with the remote, but they need to give us more ways to organize movies and TV shows. I use the EyeTV to record Good Eats and Mythbusters. I have over 140 episodes of Good Eats now, and scrolling that list is tedious to hit anything in the middle. Sub-organization (by seasons, for example) would be great. Also, genres in My Movies. Now that @TV supports DD5.1, HandBrake, MetaX and @TV are my new best friends!
Dan Frakes - why use the Airport Express now that @TV has AirTunes built in?
As for the movie library... didn't Steve say 1,000 movies by the end of February? I would be interested to see future target numbers...

[mario_capo]

My 2 biggest beefs with the Apple Tv are
1) 720p is the highest resolution available. While my tv isn't 1080p, I still prefer to watch my content in 1080i.
2) Didn't Jobs say in the keynote that movies will become available 30 days after they are released on DVD? 30 DAYS?? If I heard that correct it won't be replacing my blockbuster membership anytime soon.
If these 2 items were solved, I might just forgive the 24 hour viewing period, although I really would prefer like a 3-7 day period in case I fall asleep on a movie and can't get back to it
until a day or 2 later.
And to the poster who mentioned all the DVD special features, I didn't even think of that till they mentioned it. That also blows pretty hard, I like special features once in a while.

[flybynight]

My understanding is that you have to turn off the screensaver for the pause to hold longer than a few minutes. But, that would take away your sales tool! I guess turn the screen saver off/on as needed?
An "N" network does make a big difference, but running an Ethernet cable is still even better. I'm glad I planned ahead and ran cat5 to my home theatre. Now, I just wish I ran more than 1 line! Guess I'll get another hub at some point for the other devices that can use it...

[swiller]

A few movies like Michael Clayton, have already broken that 30 day wait. Let's hope we get more.

[cprice53]

I like my Apple TV and I've had one for a while, but I fear that they haven't got the use/simplicity tradeoff quite right.
Perhaps the problem is partly that iTunes is being stretched past the original design vision.
One effect of "seamless integration" of the Synced computer's iTunes library and the ATV disk contents is that accesses to the content seem slower to me - trying to look at any music lists takes longer for example -- too long (using a gigabit network cable doesn't help).
Everybody who tries the ATV clicks the remote at least twice in this interval since there is no indication that it got the first click. One of the really, really nice properties of the iPhone is that the display response to touch input is instantaneous -- even a slight delay would trash the user experience as this too-long delay with the ATV is offputting.
A more difficult problem with the "seamless splicing" for me is that I no longer have good access to my music. Because, you see, I have 3 versions of each CD cut in my main iTunes library -- Apple lossless for the machine with lots of disk, 128K AAC for my laptop (and the ATV) and 64K mono (i.e. 32K effective) for my iPhone. I manage the syncing selection by using smartlists that select based on encoding rate. On the main machine I can select and play music in the "bitrate_hi" list and iTunes gives me all the selection tools and mechanisms inside that playlist. This is a bit clumsy, but it works fine.
On the ATV however, I now see all 3 cuts from the top-level music selection menus. If I select an album to play from the Albums list I hear each cut 3 times. I can, of course, quit iTunes on the main machine or send it to sleep so that I only see music on the ATV disk, but then I have to go start it to see TV shows or video content... If I go into a smart playlist on the ATV I don't have any selection tools -- no artist or album or genre -- just a list of all the tracks in the playlist. Not at all useful.
I'm not sure the ATV should take the blame here. Their intent is clearly to present a simplified interface that can be navigated with a minimalist remote (how successful that is is a different question). It seems to me that iTunes has an inadequate (or no) framework to manage multiple versions of the same content -- as if it were not a problem they had thought about -- and now that there are more diverse needs for both storage space (and video resolution) that the application is stumbling.
The idea of the Apple TV is quite enticing and the price point is very appealing, but I think it might still be more trouble than my mother would be willing to go to.

[nathansmith]

BTW, Costco is selling the 160GB version of ATV for $299.99. I got mine refurbished from Apple for $279, but this is a great price for a new one. If you have a library that will fit on the largest iPod, you can get it all on the ATV, and not worry about having it sync first.

[smith.dan]

Macworld said:

You?ll start at the top of an Artists list, hold down the Apple Remote?s Down button, and wait, wait, wait while the alphabetical list of artists flies by so that you can finally select an artist whose first name begins with the letter W.

Two things Apple could do to make this a much easier process -- and without requiring me to use a clunky search interface -- by simply pruning the artist list:

1) Group all the artists in the Apple TV/iPod/iTunes "Artist" lists for whom I've only got one or two songs into a "Singles" ("One-Hit Wonders"?) entry in the list. That would throw away about 2/3 of the entries in my library. Do the same thing for the "Albums" and "Composers" lists.

2) Allow multiple artists/composers to be associated with a single song. That is, instead of writing "R. Kelly & Celine Dion", there would be two different artists associated with the track: "R. Kelly" and "Celine Dion". Browsing to either one of those artists would display the track. The "R. Kelly & Celine Dion" entry in the artist list would disappear. (Bonus points if they figure out how to accurately parse the current text (with "&") so that it recognizes both artists' names without manual intervention.)

On another topic in this same area, the intuition that sophisticated organization tools for videos aren't necessary (the way they are for music) is incorrect: even if you have a relatively small library, it's still nice to use smart playlists to organize videos by last played date or star-rating. It'd be nice if Apple TV helped me keep my daughter from watching the same few episodes of Dora the Explorer over and over again...

[smith.dan]

Don't know how widespread it is, but a lot of users, including me, are having all sorts of performance problems with the update: Take 2 Update Causes Crashes, Freezes, Glitching. The thing freezes on me (for 10-120 second intervals) so much that it borders on being unusable. I'm torn between being patient with it so I can use some of the new features, and just giving up and downgrading to 1.0. (One of the benefits of factory restore going to 1.0 rather than 2.0, by the way: in the absence of a more sophisticated software management process, that's the only way you can get there. In contrast, I don't believe there's any way I can revert to 1.1.)

[Jon Seff]

When you say that it took 'almost 30 hours on a very fast "G" network to
download the Latest "Die Hard" movie,' that speed has nothing to do with your wireless network -- it's all about your Internet connection. A g wireless network is much faster than any DSL, cable, or even FiOS connection you're going to have, so if you're purchasing a movie from the Apple TV itself, the speed of your wireless network doesn't matter.

[nathansmith]

I did download this the day the update 2.0 came out, but I strongly suspect the Apple TV. It took about 3-4 hours to download "Sunshine", a standard definition movie, but it only took 10 minutes to download another movie on my Computer using iTunes, and then I transferred the movie with Ethernet in 2 minutes.

Does anyone know if the first Apple TVs were "N" compatible? My refurbished 160GB ATV says 802.11 compatible on the box, but I don't know if that means "N" speed. My tower and my router are "G" rated.

[nathansmith]

Apple TV does do 1080i- go into Settings on the ATV and change it- that is how mine is set.

Actually, unless you are watching Blu-Ray or HD DVDs, NOTHING else is broadcast in 1080. Many consumers are spending hundreds extra on 1080P when nothing broadcast in HD is more than 720P.

[Jon Seff]

nathansmith said:

Apple TV does do 1080i- go into Settings on the ATV and change it- that is how mine is set.

Although you can set it to 1080i or 1080p, the Apple TV only supports 720p video for playback.

[Jon Seff]

Many people would argue that 720 lines displayed progressively looks as good as (or better than) 1080 lines displayed interlaced. I don't think this is a deal-killer.
[quote name='mario_capo']My 2 biggest beefs with the Apple Tv are

1) 720p is the highest resolution available. While my tv isn't 1080p, I still prefer to watch my content in 1080i

[chesterdad]

I enthusiastically purchased Apple TV 160gb after the keynote, figuring that Apple had figured out the bugs. I don't think they have. Version 2 software is buggy, drops connections. The Podcast feature is great, but sometimes the downloads stop. This isn't stable enough for a wide range of consumers who are challenged just by their DVD players.
Apple should also exploit the possibilities of having a constant connection to the internet. Take a simple cue from the Squeezebox and provide basic, RSS feeds during the screensaver mode. News headlines, weather, whatever. This is more than just a big ipod. They need to rethink the capabilities for the end user and don't only think about how are they going to squeeze more money out of the buyer with pay content.