Apple Take 2 Software Update Impressions!!

[ben1080p]

Its here.
Downloading now.

[ben1080p]

I just spent a good hour going through the interface.
Overall,, I really love it!
Although fewer movies than I thought were in HD, the election is nice. I am watching Brave One in HD and have to say it looks good. Still dont understand why you can't stream TV shows in HD but oh well. This is definitly the future of movie rentals .Soo Netflix can be BD exclusive all they want.

the music interface is good but I found it to much of a hassel that you have to click every individual song to preview it. Then press menu to go back and go to song selection, then click another song to go to a different page to preview.
Ill stick with my itouch for that..1 click preview, double click buy.

overall really impressed and can't wait to see more HD movies, HD TV shows!

[DustoMan]

I rented two movies in HD to see the quality for myself. Also Ben, did you notice the new options in iTunes when you click on your AppleTV there?

[hidefimports]

The 720p 5GB HD movies looks reallly good. Not as good as 1080p Blu-ray or HDDVD, but really close. I'm not kidding. You don't see the artifacts you see on DVD with MPEG2 compress. I really like AVC/H.264 compression.

[ben1080p]

Also...there is a 1080p resolution now..
altough there is no HD content on Itunes other than Rentals and some podcast...lame.

[MrE]

How often do you guys use the built-in hdd? I'm thinking about buying AppleTV but wanted to know if I should spend the extra $100 for the 160gb model.

[mmmmDoNut]

One of the features I like is the aTV is now transparent when connecting to your shared library. Also it seems like the connection to the shared library is much faster.


MrE - If you've got plenty of room on your PC and decent network connection between your PC and the aTV, then the 40GB version is sufficient. I personally stream all of my videos and use the HDD to store photos (cant stream photos btw) and my music.

[ben1080p]

Originally Posted by mmmmDoNut

MrE - If you've got plenty of room on your PC and decent network connection between your PC and the aTV, then the 40GB version is sufficient. I personally stream all of my videos and use the HDD to store photos (cant stream photos btw) and my music.

I think there is no option if you would like to save or not.
I tried looking in the setting in the source and theres only one option.
I think it streams everything now,, it has everything in my iTunes.

[mmmmDoNut]

within iTunes you now have a customized sync or an automatic sync.

Using customized you can select what you want sync'd. Everything else is streamed. With the new 2.0 software, at least you dont have to go to sources and select the source. That is now transparent and very much improved.

[tranzparentl]

Originally Posted by ben1080p

Also...there is a 1080p resolution now..
altough there is no HD content on Itunes other than Rentals and some podcast...lame.

So with the update AppleTV has a 1080p option?

Does that mean you can stream 1080p videos you have on your PC? I've been hoping they update it to allow 1080p but also concerned about stuttering if streaming the video.

[josuff247]

Does anyone have a list of HD movies Available?

[ben1080p]

Originally Posted by josuff247

Does anyone have a list of HD movies Available?

its only like 70 movies or so.
They dont even have movies like Sunshine or Invasion in HD even though they are avaliable on discs.

[DustoMan]

Image quality comparisons over at ilounge:
http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/art...he-comparison/

[ben1080p]

how is the regular download quaility?
please tell me it isn't as crappy as the movies bought on iTunes.

[MrE]

Originally Posted by ben1080p

how is the regular download quaility?
please tell me it isn't as crappy as the movies bought on iTunes.

earlier videos on iTunes where 240p since there was no AppleTV back then and they were more geared towards the iPod 5th gen models whose screen size was 320x240. Videos released after AppleTV debuted, are at least 480p but I don't think they ever updated all the older videos to the new size.