Review: With ‘Take Two,’ Apple gets the Apple TV right
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Feb 22, 2008 at 9:06pm
With Apple TV, Take Two, Apple has finally got it right with the living room set-top device. It’s not perfect yet, but is much better than the “first take.” Apparently, the device is now much more than a “hobby” for Apple (as Steve Jobs once called it).
I was one of the early adopters of the Apple TV. It wasn’t bad, but as little more than a liaison between my Mac and my widescreen TV, it didn’t seem to justify its existence. But that’s changed. And how.
With the “Take Two” software (which, thank you, Apple provided free to those of us who forked out for the original hardware) movie fans like myself can now rent movies on the iTunes Store directly from our widescreen TV. It’s an effortless process. You just use your Apple TV remote to rent movies from a catalog films (which is supposed to top 1,000 titles by the end of the month). The titles include over 100 titles in high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound.
iTunes Movie Rentals are US$2.99 for library titles and $3.99 for new releases, and high definition versions are just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 and new releases at $4.99.
After upgrading the software on my Apple TV (a fast, seamless experience) I recently rented two films, Live Free or Die Hard and Waitress, both in high def versions. I was very impressed with the quality. I don’t have a Blu-ray player with which to compare the quality, but the films looked crisp and sharp on my family’s widescreen. The rental service also provides lots of info on a film and the talent behind it.
I was also impressed with the speed of the movie rental service. Once a movie is rented, it starts downloading from the iTunes Store directly to Apple TV, and users with a fast Internet connection can start viewing the movie in seconds. I have a cable connection. Once I rented the movies, it was less than a minute before they started playing. And there were no artifacts or “hesitations” during playback. Very impressive.
Customers have up to 30 days to start watching it, and once a movie has been started customers have 24 hours to finish it. Or you can watch it multiple times over 24 hours (though there are few films I’d like to see more than once in a day).
The “Take Two” interface sports a two-level menu. Movies, TV shows, podcasts, photos, YouTube videos and the device’s settings are on the left. The right column changes depending on what’s selected in the left column.
With Apple TV, you can also view photos from your computers, Flickr and .Mac Web Galleries on a widescreen TV as slideshows or screen saver. Anytime photos are updated on Flickr or .Mac, they’re automatically updated on Apple TV. Apple TV users can take advantage of the iTunes Store podcast directory of over 125,000 video and audio podcasts, view over 50 million originally created videos from YouTube or choose from a selection of six million songs, over 600 TV shows and 10,000 music videos to purchase directly from their Apple TV. Another nifty touch: purchases downloaded to the Apple TV are automatically synced back to iTunes on the your computer for enjoyment on the computer, all current generation iPods or the iPhone.
The Apple TV comes standard with HDMI, component video, analog and optical audio ports. Using high-speed AirPort 802.11 wireless networking, it automatically plays your iTunes content without setup or management.
Upping the ante, Apple has also cut the pricing on the Apple TV. It now has a suggested retail price of $229 for the 40GB model and $329 for the 160GB model
Alas, iPod games won’t play on the Apple TV. And, for now, iTunes Movie Rentals are available in the US only.
Also, there is a disadvantage in using an Apple TV to rent a standard-definition movie: you can’t transfer an Apple TV-rented movie to your iPod, iPhone, or iTunes library, even though the same movie rented through iTunes can be transferred to any of the other devices. On the other hand, you can only rent the high def movies on your Apple TV, not on, for example, your Mac.
Also, I thought I’d share a request from Macsimum News reader Tom Edmonson on the Apple TV, “Take Two,” which fits in perfectly with this review.
He writes: “I’m writing in hopes you can help all of us Apple TV owners encourage Steve Jobs and Company to release a fix for the Apple TV that will allow continuous looping of Music Video playlists. (You are currently limited to viewing one video at a time and are thrown back to the main menu to select another video.)
“If you go to the Apple Support forums on Apple TV you’ll find literally hundreds if not more of postings about this subject. I love the new upgrade and am wowed how Apple incorporated Airtunes into the product! Bravo! But this continuous playback of music videos feature has been lacking since the initial 1.0 version and lots of people were expecting the upgrade to fix this. Myself and countless others have purchased many music videos in hopes we could make a playlist for parties and let itunes continuously play them … similar to audio only music.”
Sounds like a great idea—and a relatively minor “fix.”
Despite some areas for improvements (and the fact that Netflix has an estimated 6,000 movies for rental), with Take Two of the Apple TV, the device finally has a real goal and purpose. And it can take its place with pride among the Apple line-up of products.
Macsimum rating: 8 out of 10.
Matthew Says:
Regarding #6 from “Better...”, I disagree about stretching non-widescreen content. I think it ruins the entire look of whatever I’m watching when it gets all stretched out on my screen. Perhaps it would be nice to have the option there for those who like it, but I’m glad it doesn’t do it by default.
Also, I was wondering - is the 160GB version worth the extra $100? I’d love an opinion on that from somebody who uses this. I’d like to replace satellite with AppleTV, but I think 40GB might get full fast with heavy use.
Posted on February 22, 2008
Lantz Newberry Says:
Regarding #7
Agreed we NEED a better remote for searching with type. Besides the iPodT/iPhone option I think another cool option would be to share a MacBook’s keyboard with the ATV. Kind of like the MacBook Air shares optical drives with another Mac or PC. You could just click on the ATV icon in the iTunes Playlist window and there would be a button to click that says sync keyboard to ATV.
Posted on February 22, 2008
Re Matt Says:
The reason I bought the 160GB is because I work out of town during the week and the local cable in the call room (hospital) is atrocious. I put a 20"HDTV in and bought the Apple TV to hold the stuff I want to have available to watch and download a couple of Daily Video News podcasts to save wear and tear on my laptop and my eyes. I really couldn’t care less about rental movies although I have bough quite a few movies from iTunes.
Like I posted above, change anything on your sync library and it does a resync of the whole thing. The iPod model would be much better.
Posted on February 23, 2008
BDK Says:
Nothing about the menu system? How about that it takes twice as many steps to watch a shared movie than version 1. How about that this new menu still can’t display the whole description of shared movies because it’s laid out in a vertical format even though we use widescreen TV’s?
If you’re going to review the Apple TV, you have to use the whole system. Not just the parts you use for yourself. And since you’ve had the Apple TV since it’s release, you have left a lot of stuff out.
Posted on February 24, 2008
Geoff Attwood Says:
Continuous playback on music videos a must for Apple TV. Although I still have an Apple TV unit I have now purchased a mediagate to play back music videos continuously.... Apple must move on this or they will lose their advantage quickly
Posted on April 21, 2008
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
Better, But Not There Yet Says:
I have a 160 GB Apple TV and despite using it a little differently than most, think some refinements are in order.
1- The sync setup is modeled after the iPhone model- not the iTunes model for local storage of content. Otherwise, if you sync your Apple TV and the content has been removed from iTunes it will be removed from your Apple TV. I have a large library of content that does not always reside on my Mac and this is a royal pain. I want to be able to load content once and leave it there until and unless I choose to delete it. The Apple TV already does this for internet content (Podcasts), so why not my own video and audio content?
2-The responsiveness of the hardware is a little sluggish- even on local content. Maybe the 40GB model lacks this problem, but a loaded up 160GB seems to be a little less responsive than it should be when navigating the menus. Maybe it’s the under-clocked Pentium chip or the system bus or the software. I don’t know, but I’m sure Apple can do better.
3-Streaming Internet Radio should be a feature of this device. Currently, users are assigning internet radio to a playlist. It supposedly works but is at best a work-around. The stations available in iTunes should be made available on the Apple TV.
4-The menus are biased to rented content, putting my videos on the bottom of the list rather than on top. A simple preference check-off in iTunes or on the Apple TV settings panel could cure this.
5-I think that the pricing for movies is out of line for 24 hours. Why rent for $3.99 when you can buy the movie for about 3x the price and own it? I have never been much on renting movies and disagree with Steve Jobs when he says most people only watch movies once. I wonder if he has heard of American Movie Classics, Turner Classic Movies, Fox Movie Channel, HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. In my mind a movie not worth buying is not worth watching.
6-The Apple TV should be able to stretch non-widescreen content to full screen. Every wide screen TV has this capability as do most software media players- including EyeTV on the Macintosh. It shouldn’t be a very big deal to get done. I see this as a huge oversight on Apple’s part as it is a no-brainer.
7-Apple should consider adding a Bluetooth module to the next HW revision of Apple TV. Imagine using an iPhone as a smart controller for the Apple TV- especially when typing in search criteria. It would be a great selling point and wouldn’t take much effort.
8-Widgets need to be available for the Apple TV. A whole new category of widgets that work on the Apple TV home screen could be a cool thing and an RSS feed screen saver- a la OS X, could be another option.
It’s time to ‘think different’, Steve.
Posted on February 22, 2008