Hands-on with Apple TV "Take Two"

It's a couple of weeks late, but the free software update for Apple TV—which finally lets you download movies and TV shows directly over the box—has finally arrived. I've been playing around with Apple TV "Take Two" for a few hours now; read on for my first impressions.

Slick interface: The "Take Two" version of the Apple TV menu is vastly improved over the original version. The two-paned main menu gives you quick access to all the main functions (including Movies, TV Shows, Podcasts, Music, and so on), and you can call up the main menu at any time by pressing and holding "Menu" on the remote (rather than having to back out of several levels of menus).

Browsing for movies: It's such a relief to finally be able to browse for movies on Apple TV, and the menus don't disappoint. You can browse by rating or genre, or you can search (results pop up the moment you key in a letter), while movie details pages list actors, directors, producers, user ratings, and related movies. That I liked; unfortunately, you can't click on an actor to see other movies they've been in, a key (and cool) browsing feature on the competing Vudu set-top box. I also wish there was a "favorites" or "wish list" for movies you'd like to rent in the future (again, another feature available on Vudu).

Movie selection: Better, but still relatively weak. This is the first time we've had a chance to see the iTunes HD movie collection, and as of now, about 75 titles are available, including new releases like "300," "Transformers," "Superbad," and "Live Free or Die Hard," along with catalog titles like "Altered States," "Speed," and "Alien Vs. Predator." That's fine for day one, but the SD collection still leaves a lot to be desired: just 376 movies for rent, compared to 5,000-plus on Vudu. Steve Jobs promised us a thousand movies by the end of February; he'd better get cracking.

Movie video quality: I rented a couple of HD movies: "Speed" and "Transformers," and both movies looked much sharper than, say, upscaled DVD, but softer than the HD image you'd expect from a Blu-ray or HD DVD player. I didn't see much in the way of digital tiling during fast-action sequences (that's good), but in some cases, backgrounds looked a tad blocky (for instance, the smoke hanging in the control room at the beginning of "Transformers" suffered from noticeable, jagged contours). So not bad, but not stellar, either. On the SD side, I tried "The English Patient" and was pleasantly surprised; the vast desert scenes and wounded Ralph Fiennes looked better than expected, although softer than you'd see on DVD.

Downloading speed: Using Time Warner Digital Cable here in Brooklyn—which delivers about a 5Mbps connection—I got relatively speedy downloads. Both SD and HD movies were ready to watch within a minute of clicking "Buy Now," and I didn't run into any buffering problems during my (admittedly brief) tests. That's in stark contract to the Xbox Video Marketplace, where downloading logjams have often stopped my HD movies in their tracks.

Movie rental transfers: Looks like you can't transfer movies you've rented on your Apple TV back to your Mac or PC, or to your iPhone or iPod, for that matter. Why not? Wish I knew.

TV show transfers: Luckily, TV episodes you buy on Apple TV will transfer back to your PC or Mac the next time you sync.

HD movie previews: They're here at last, and they look gorgeous, and load within seconds. Love it.

AirTunes: Here's a cool feature that just came to light—turns out Apple TV has the same "AirTunes" feature that's on the Airport Express, meaning you can stream music playback from iTunes to your home theater via Apple TV, including Internet radio stations. Nice.

Music browsing: The entire iTunes music catalog is at your disposal over Apple TV, and purchased songs sync up to iTunes automatically. Cool, except the Apple TV/iTunes Music Store combo cries out for some kind of subscription music option. But Jobs, in his wisdom, has decided that us users only want to own music. Ugh. Also, it's too bad Apple TV doesn't have the crossfade playback feature that's available in the iTunes client.

I'll have a full review of the new Apple TV once I've had more time to test, but for now, I like what I see. Granted, Apple needs to ramp up its catalog of rental movies—rapidly—but at last, Apple TV is looking like a set-top box I can actually recommend (and indeed, my own neglected Apple TV may finally get some use).