New Apple TV main screen
From here, the new options can be selected using the Apple Remote.
Read on to see more of the new Apple TV features in action.
Movie Rentals
OK, this is the big feature that has had most Apple TV owners salivating over the update. With the new update, you can now rent movies from iTunes Rentals directly from Apple TV. Additionally, Apple TV owners are the only people who can rent from Apple's HD selection.
You can browse through movies by genre, Top Movies (most popular) or through a search list. Once selected, you can decide to rent the movie on the spot. The title will start downloading, and for most standard definition films on a broadband connection start playing immediately.
The new rentals screen in Apple TV
TV Shows
Also new to the Apple TV is the ability to finally (!) purchase content from the iTunes Media store. For television shows, this can be especially convenient from the Apple TV. The process of finding a show is very similar to finding a movie rental. You then have the option of purchasing a single episode or subscribing to the entire season.
If you synch your Apple TV with your Mac or PC, your TV shows will automatically be downloaded to your computer as well, so that you can watch it back from the computer or transfer it to the iPod. That's pretty cool.
Buying a TV show via Apple TV 2
Photos
The Apple TV has updated its photo display ability and it can now communicate with .Mac and Flickr. You can view your own pictures, or those of your contacts straight from the screen and choose to play them back to music you have on your Apple TV or connected computer.
You can view your Flickr streams (and streams from friends) via Apple TV
Podcasts and Music
You can watch video podcasts right from the Apple TV and also buy music albums. Like TV shows, these will synch with your Mac or PC if you choose to interface the two devices together
Watch an HD vodcast on your HDTV
All in all, this looks like a pretty nice update. While some of these features probably should have been included last January, it's nice to have them now and that plus iTunes Rentals integration has made the Apple TV a whole lot more attractive.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
2-12-2008 @ 3:27PM
mrhack636 said...
Can we get a screenshot of a HD video playing?
I want to see how the quality of the video is..
Reply
2-12-2008 @ 3:29PM
mr. anyonmous said...
Will we be getting this for os x?
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2-12-2008 @ 3:41PM
blessingx said...
Could you tell me when playing music if the graphics swap back and forth every minute like Front Row? It may sound like I'm anal, but its distracting when trying to listen. No screen burns in in 60 seconds.
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2-12-2008 @ 4:10PM
jancornelissen said...
You can turn this off in the prefs.
2-12-2008 @ 3:42PM
Rick Roberts said...
Needs a category for unwatched movies. I chose to let it autosync, and now unwatched (ripped) movies are all mixed up with all of my old movies.
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2-12-2008 @ 3:49PM
Chroma said...
I'm still at work (not home), but I hope for the love of god, that it the descriptions for your movies is longer than the space to display it, it would scroll! duh! Come on apple, I thought that was straight from your own playbook.
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2-12-2008 @ 3:59PM
robhim said...
is it possible to run the apple tv 2.0 on a intel mac?
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2-12-2008 @ 4:05PM
Pedro said...
I hope people noticed the Magical Mystery Tour album art at 4:48-4:52. They're just taunting us now.
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2-12-2008 @ 4:08PM
Aron Trimble said...
Seriously? No idea of what the HD content looks like? Is it decent? Does it even deserve to be called HD? Will it require further inspection?
Inquiring minds want to know!!
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2-12-2008 @ 4:17PM
Rob said...
First the HD content will be ONLY 720p which technically qualifies it as HD.
But the content will be HIGHLY compressed. It will NOT look nearly as good as a HD-DVD or Blue-ray Disk. Probably closer to a regular DVD as far a quality goes but it will be in the right 16:9 aspect ratio.
In my experience, on a smaller screen, many people CANNOT tell the difference between a regular DVD (showing widescreen content) and a HD-DVD / Blue-Ray Disk.
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2-12-2008 @ 4:50PM
Eideard said...
Uh, too bad you can't tell the difference between a DVD and 720p.
2-12-2008 @ 4:44PM
conigs said...
People. 720p is a flavor of HD. Deal with it. It may not be 1080p, but that does not disqualify if from being HD.
Say it with me... "HD is 720p, 1080i, and 1080p."
2-12-2008 @ 5:14PM
Aron Trimble said...
You don't really know a lot about Home Theater, do you?
2-12-2008 @ 5:15PM
Aron Trimble said...
@Rob: You don't really know a lot about Home Theater, do you?
2-12-2008 @ 4:25PM
Miguel said...
If that first screen show is the new opening screen, then will I locate 'sources' under 'settings' now? All my media is on an external HD and I want to make sure I can still get to it!
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2-12-2008 @ 4:29PM
St3phen said...
The AppleTV update also allows the AppleTV to act as an AirTunes destination in iTunes. Rogue Amoeba is also investigating leveraging AppleTV's new functionality in Airfoil 3.
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2-12-2008 @ 5:19PM
Joseph Agreda said...
This was something that took me totally off guard. Although I was thinking about life with AirTunes on my AppleTV the other day. I can't wait to see what Rogue Amoeba can cook up!
2-12-2008 @ 4:44PM
Tom Twigg said...
Can anybody who has updated tell me if the Apple TV now consolidates the multiple iPhoto libraries that might be in the house? For example, I have my photo on my MBP, my wife has hers on her MacBook ... can we browse them together from the Apple TV (take2)? An Apple store employee told me this would be possible, but I want to hear it from somebody who has actually seen it work.
Thanks!
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2-12-2008 @ 8:11PM
sixhoursago said...
Good idea, because most Apple retail employees don't know what the hell they're talking about.
2-12-2008 @ 4:50PM
bobm said...
OK, here's my 5 minute of usage review:
If you are someone who has lots of local content this update is not so hot.
All of the local content (eg. shared itunes libraries) are at the bottom of each menu and shared content isn't on the other menus.
For example - Under Movies -> Genres are only what Apple has available at the store, it doesn't appear to mix in the shared content.
That's sad since I have a massive repo of my own movies and was hoping to have them sorted to make the searching less painless (I have > 700 movies so far).
So the UI is uglier (a 2 column box on the main screen, ick) the parts I use seem to be the same with no noticeable improvments. (plus I lost the indicators that showed what tv shows I've already watched).
What's interesting is what my iTunes on my mac mini shows for the aTV now, I only have a choice of syncing the photos now, I could have sworn that I had choices of what tv shows to sync up, etc.
I'll play more tonight but so far I'm disappointed..
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