My initial reaction to Apple TV is fair….
- Where is the power button on the remote? I know they use the same remote for every other computer, but it would be nice to turn if off with a button and not have to navigate a menu.
- Great Quality!!! I had some Digital Downloads from Blu-Ray disks and they look great! I am thinking I will keep it and not send it back 🙂
- Unable to Multitask? It appears that while I was watching a movie from iTunes, Apple TV was unable to download my rental. I figured I would do something else while I waited for my slow DSL connection to grab the HD rental. The progress bar on the Download did not move at all.
- Unable to Buffer Rental. I was a little bummed to find out that I needed to download the entire rental before I was able to play it. Amazon UnBox lets you download movies locally, but also lets you start playing them about 10 seconds after you start. That would be nice. Apple TV told me: Ready to watch in 10 hours. Granted if I had a faster connection this would not be a big deal, but until now, I did not see a need to have the $100 /month Internet Speed.
- Shady HD Rentals – I should not have to pay an extra $1 for and HD rental.
So…my initial reaction so far….I like it and it will do what I ultimately wanted it to do, play video files at a DVD quality level. I don’t think I will dump my Blu-Ray anytime soon, but I may start picking up old movies from Apple for $4.99 if I don’t see the need for the Blu-Ray edition.