Apple TV Take 2: Even Better than the First?

Apple recently released a major upgrade to its Apple TV software that sports a new interface as well as additional features; the most significant of which is movie rentals. They’re offered in both standard definition and, in some cases, high definition.

I didn’t jump on the upgrade bandwagon immediately; over the last year I’ve been using my Apple TV primarily to watch videos stored on my NAS in non-Quicktime format, and I didn’t want to lose that capability. So, I decided to wait and make sure that the various hacks which allowed me to do that were going to be updated to support the Take 2. They are all in various states of beta testing at this point, so last week I did the upgrade and began playing with the new release. So far, here are my thoughts:



A New Interface
At first, I didn’t really like the new menu layout as much as the original. I can’t completely say why, but it just looked a little less pleasant, and the buttons were a little less than standardized. In the old Back Row, the select command always took you forward, and menu always took you back, just like an iPod. Take 2 uses left and right in some cases, and menu/select in others. After about 2 minutes, you can easily guess which combo to use in each screen, and the change is fairly logical - but it’s a slightly different pattern nonetheless. After using it for about 5 minutes, I decided I like the new menus better than the old because of the overall structure, if not the first glance appearance.

The best part of the interface redesign is that there is now a clear hierarchy based on content types, not content location. That is to say that before, you had to choose if the media you wanted to play was local to the Apple TV, or on a remote iTunes library. After that selection, you would then select the media type (movie, tv, audio), and then finally get to the media itself. Take 2 simply lets you start with the media type on the main screen, and then you select which library to go to. This is a much better organizational style, and it’s a lot easier to find things with this context.

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[Link: electronichouse.com]