OK, So I, like many other Apple TV owners, was so exited yesterday when I heard about the release yesterday of the new update to the ATV. But I was at WORK!... It was the longest day ever waiting to get home and run the update to see what it was like. When I got home it was the first thing I did and thought I would share my thoughts with everyone on the new update.

To be honest, I am a dissapointed.

New Interface -  It is just so plain and boring. They could have made it a little bit more visually pleasing. The old interface  was so much better looking, and they seem to have left the old running in the background anyway. For example when you go to 'My Movies' it takes you to the regular list of movies and their images that were there before and it is the same for most of the other menus. Also everything is geared towards you buying something and not YOUR content. In all the menus your content has been demoted to the bottom of the list. Anything which will get revenue is at the top. I can understand this (Apple are there to make money afterall)but it is just plain annoiying. If you are gonna buy stuff, you are gonna buy stuff. It shouldn't be at the expense of having all your own (pre-bought) content at the bottom of the pile.

The 'Movie' and 'TV Show' menu system......

Well where do I start on how crappy that is. Again visually poor.

The movies are all in rows which you just move to the left or right with little or no animation. You scroll up and down to choose your Category and then move left or right to make you choice of show. The trouble is there are so many thumbnails on the screen, it just looks a mess.

Also at the moment the content is laking. I have an account for the UK, US and NZ iTunes store and I am most dissapointed (If you like South Park or Ugly Betty then your in luck though). I thought going to the UK store I could find some good old English shows. errrr...no, nothing but the same old American stuff. And it's the same with the NZ store. Now I know that there will be more content added but as the update was delayed anyway you would have thought they could have got more localized content on there.

One thing I did like is the 'Viewers Also Rented' feature when you go into a movie to preview or buy it. It shows you eight thumbnails of other movies that have been rented in that genre. Cools for when you are looking at kids programs and want to filter out all the older viewers movies (I have kids)

Youtube - This is great. Add your account details in and you'll have all your favourites you saved from the web. They have done a good job with this.

Flickr - Add the username of the photo albums you want to see and voila. They all show up. Now the only thing with this is you don't actually sign in to your account, you just add usernames to the list and their photos show up, obviously only if they are public.

.Mac - .mac integration is a joke. Add a URL to get my .mac stuff when the device already knows my apple id? I don't think so - the UI provides no guidance or help on what to enter for a .mac gallery

iTunes Store - They have done a good job with this, in that you can sign into different accounts (not all at the same time obviously) The only problem, and it is a small one,is each time you sign in with a different account you have type out your email address and with the Apple Remote it is a bit cumbersom (Apple TV Keyboard????)

Podcasts - Being able to download and watch podcasts without having toi go through th computer is great. Again the only issue is the menu system is the same crappy one they have used in the Movies and Tv Shows.

Quality - The HD quality is great. There is definetly an improvement over the SD versions and is worth paying that little extra for. Download times are longer though. Downloading a HD movie probably takes around 10 times longer than an SD movie. And I wouldn't bother watching a trailer in HD, just to see what the movie may be like, you have to wait for it to completely download the trailer before it starts playing. Just go with the SD quality for the Trailer and then buy th HD version if you like it.

OVERALL
To me it's not that great an update. Not a complete waste of time but it could have been better. More content and a better UI would have done the trick and they desperatly need to release and 'ATV Keyboard'.