Impressions of the 3.0 Update

[BoulderBum]

This thread isn't to announce the 3.0 update, rather it's to let posters have a place to state their opinion on the new software.

The changes aren't really drastic to me. The menus themselves haven't changed, they've just been reorganized a bit, though I do have to commend Apple for making it easier to understand (each heading has its own menu underneath instead of the dynamic submenu that changes depending on the parent menu).

The internet radio is kind of cool, though radio isn't my primary use for a TV connected device.

Some of the bugs I was hoping would be fixed are still there (still can't add a favorite in YouTube, "Favorite Podcast" images sometimes disappear, etc.).

I'm anxious to try out the iTunes extras for some of my recent purchases (Wizard of Oz), but I can't seem to get that feature to work (or I don't know how to use it).

What does everyone else think?

 

[GermanSuplex]

You may have to update iTunes to the version just released today and then re-sync your Apple TV to get iTunes extras to work.

 

[BoulderBum]

You may have to update iTunes to the version just released today and then re-sync your Apple TV to get iTunes extras to work.

Did that before (even made sure the "Include iTunes Extras" box was checked). No dice.

 

[dynaflash]

For a list of published changes:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3187?viewlocale=en_US

For kicks throwing some 720p @ 30 fps at it just to see if it now works by some miracle.


Udpate: 720 at 30 fps still is a no go. FAIL. ... it was worth a try.

 

[pjarvi]

Sadly they failed to fix one of the major bugs: the full list of movies still is not appearing when browsing via Genre on the AppleTV. They improved it a little bit: Comedy went down to the 'D's for me whereas it stopped in the 'C's before.

I like the new main menu and it's about time they added Internet radio. I'm also looking forward to iTunes Extras working, but they haven't updated the Wizard of Oz for it yet.

One performance issue that is still bothering me is that when fast-forwarding through a Podcast it takes 5 seconds or more before it starts playing again. This happens even though I have the Podcasts synced to the AppleTV. Also, when fast-forwarding through streamed movies, it fails to buffer fast enough causing the fast-forwarding to stop within 2-3 seconds and start playing the movie again. (mine is networked via a cable too!)

 

[Jungle]

Internet radio - how do I tag stations or make playlists?

I'm quite pleased overall with the 3.0 update. Nothing too radical but it does at least mean that the product is moving forwards. I do like the Internet radio feature - this means I can now sell my Squeezeboxes which have just been too techie for other family users.

That said, I must have my Dunce cap on today as I can't see any way of tagging stations or creating playlists of stations. Anyone managed to do so? If so, could you gently let me know what I have missed?

Ta.

 

[roidy]

That said, I must have my Dunce cap on today as I can't see any way of tagging stations or creating playlists of stations. Anyone managed to do so? If so, could you gently let me know what I have missed?

Ta.

Yep in iTunes 9.0.2 you can drag stations to the playlist area at the side and when you sync with your ATV there will be a new playlists categorie in the radio section.

 

[nottooshabby]

Yep in iTunes 9.0.2 you can drag stations to the playlist area at the side and when you sync with your ATV there will be a new playlists categorie in the radio section.

I have an iTunes LP, but I don't see where the capability in Apple TV is to see the content. It looks just like before where I can just access the music and videos that came with it....How do you access the extra content? And yes, I do have the boxes checked to sync the extra content. Is their an LP section somewhere in the music section or the album list?

 

[bjd42]

ATv 3.0 update

I updated yesterday and like the new interface, however each time i select shared movies, shared Tv or shared Music (from a ripped collection of owned DVD & CD's) it "Loads iTunes Library" this introduces a significant delay in accessing content. Previous version 2.4 would only load "iTunes Library" on a reset you could seamlessly navigate between all my shared content with no delay. I have a streamed library as the content currently fills a 1TB drive therefor would not fit on to a 160GB aTV. Anyone else out there with the same issue?

 

[roidy]

I have an iTunes LP, but I don't see where the capability in Apple TV is to see the content. It looks just like before where I can just access the music and videos that came with it....How do you access the extra content? And yes, I do have the boxes checked to sync the extra content. Is their an LP section somewhere in the music section or the album list?

Did you purchase it before the 3.0 update was avaliable?

Because if you did then I read it's not compatible with ATV 3.0 and apple are sending out emails asking people to redownload the content.

Also try this link:- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3938

 

[nottooshabby]

Did you purchase it before the 3.0 update was avaliable?

Because if you did then I read it's not compatible with ATV 3.0 and apple are sending out emails asking people to redownload the content.

Also try this link:- http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3938

Yes, I downloaded it a few weeks ago. I'll check out the link.

 

[JonHimself]

I'm ok with the update, it doesn't seem to take anything noticeable away (unless you've used patchstick I suppose, though that's likely just temporary) and is promising in terms of the ATV future (ie not being discontinued). I still am on the fence about new hardware, because in terms of what Apple offers (from iTunes) the current hardware is more than capable.

One thing I've noticed is after seeing the new horizontal main menu, the sub menus look dated.. maybe it's just me?

 

[uraniumwilly]

The update is fantastic. The UI is excellent, the functionality is about 85% wonderful (streaming still seems a little slow.), and the look is very attractive. I'm thoroughly enjoying it.

 

[Bcos17]

Problem tagging Art?

Has anyone else tried to tag movie files with artwork since the Itunes update and noticed a problem? I used to pull artwork up on a website and then drag and drop the art into the appropriate box on Itunes and it worked fine. Now the art has that green arrow when I drag it over the art section in itunes after opening up the file info but it doesnt drop it there. To get the art to drop into the file I had to drag the art to my desktop and then to the file info art area. I tried this with several different movie files and several different artwork files, all with the same result.

 

[kiranmk2]

Unless some new hardware is imminent I don't quite get 3.0. I came to ATV at 2.1 and as far as I can tell, the 2.x upgrades were more significant as they introduced: option to select audio tracks, soft subtitle support, app store remote support and more, where as a new main menu, extras/lp support and internet radio (already an itunes feature) - is this really worth a full update from 2.x to 3.x?

It'd be nice if itunes videos featured subtitles and alternate audio (such as commentary tracks) - but even then this would simply be taking advantage of features already in the 2.3 software. I would like to imagine that 3.x will eventually coincide with an itunes store subscription option (2.x's main offering was the ability to rent HD videos straight from the ATV).

 

[dynaflash]

well, its worth noting that snow leopard on the mac is really not a huge upgrade interface and feature wise to leopard. However in the same way I think probably there are some under the hood changes that my make atv 3.1 updates possible that would have a larger impact on the user experience.

Otoh, I could be totally wrong. Decent update imho. worth a point release ... ? I really don't know yet.

 

[dmm219]

I was hoping we'd see something along the lines of the MLB live streaming app for the Iphone. I thought one of the updates was to enable live streaming of content. While it may be enabled, we don't have any live content...yet...

 

[Macwick]

For a list of published changes:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3187?viewlocale=en_US

For kicks throwing some 720p @ 30 fps at it just to see if it now works by some miracle.


Udpate: 720 at 30 fps still is a no go. FAIL. ... it was worth a try.

Thanks for checking that. Damn it. I could give a rat's *ss about stupid LP content on the Apple TV. All I want is to be able to stream my HD home movies to the Apple TV without them looking like Charlie Chaplain films. Because I have to downgrade my 1080i/30fps footage to 720p/24fps, the movies are actually painful to watch. I don't care about downgrading to 720p, but the frame rate downgrade really kills it. <sigh> perhaps a hardware refresh soon......

 

[jaw04005]

Unless some new hardware is imminent I don't quite get 3.0. I came to ATV at 2.1 and as far as I can tell, the 2.x upgrades were more significant as they introduced: option to select audio tracks, soft subtitle support, app store remote support and more, where as a new main menu, extras/lp support and internet radio (already an itunes feature) - is this really worth a full update from 2.x to 3.x?

You could make that argument for every new major release of iTunes too.

The new features are big enough for consumers that for marketing reasons alone it would be worth a bump in version numbers.

Because I have to downgrade my 1080i/30fps footage to 720p/24fps, the movies are actually painful to watch. I don't care about downgrading to 720p, but the frame rate downgrade really kills it. <sigh> perhaps a hardware refresh soon......

Why don’t you just use the recommended 540p? At least your frame rates would be correct.

But your underlying point is correct, The Apple TV needs a hardware update.

 

[Bevz]

The new front screen is growing on me, shame they didn't make the style consistent throughout.

Other than that i really struggle to see what else they've really changed... There are so many things they could have done to increase basic functionality and useability, but they've haven't addressed any of these shortcomings (lack of USB external drive support for a start!); for a jump from v2.4 to v3.0 i would have expected a lot more than just the mainly cosmetic changes (apart from radio - nice to have but not really top of the list for a TV based device).

I've just waiting for the hackers to catch up so i can hack it again to get Boxee and my 1TB external drive storage back.... I was really starting to get used to having BBC iPlayer on my widescreen telly!!

I Love Apple TV, but apple really need to start taking their own product seriously and stop just "tinkering" with it.... Just my opinion.

 

[davegregory]

dmm219 is right on the money. Streaming apps for apple tv would really give the product a boost I think. It would be great to see sports highlights or even deliver paid on-demand third-party content to apple tv users. Probably won't happen. But to get that under a unified user interface would really be something awesome.

 

[bbydon]

I'd imagine the internet menu will bee expanded more. Perhaps when the tablet it released.... I'm think they will start to offer channels like plex does or other portals besides youtube.
Anyway i hope so.

 

[BertyBoy]

I came in at v1.0, and I bought ATV for the whole Front Row interface. Of curse it lacked the menu hierarchy required to handle seasons of tv shows and even viewing the movie lists in anything other than "Sort Name" order.
More than once my 2yo son got the remote and accepted the firmware udates for numerous v2.x firmware versions. every time I had to factory reset to get back to v1.1 (patched the reset firmware from v1.0 to v1.1).

But the last time it happened after reading v2.4 comments here I decided to see how long I could live with it. I got used to the interface, it was after all just that one static two-tier menu above the (improved) front row interface. Movie rentals, buying movies mean nothing to me, I buy the DVD, sometime the BluRay, always for less than Apple is offering it in the iTunes store.

So do I understand correctly, the v3.0 firmware offers little (or no) new real functionality ? Internet radio doesn't mean anything to me, not when I have 300 movies ripped from DVD and some 40-50 seasons of TV series ripped from DVD to choose from.

I also have one truly annoying feature from all the versions, maybe more to do with iTunes. When I add new content, iTunes starts syncing immediately, before I've had the chance to add the metadata. Really, really annoying. I've seen it reported here a few times also. Does the new iTunes v9.0.2 and ATV v3.0 still do this ?
I have certain TV series and unwatched movies marked to sync, usually the TV series I'm currently watching, ie. Columbo season 7, The Unit season 3, Lost season 2 (started from the beginning again while waiting for season 6). This is just in case the Mac Pro (with all the content) goes to sleep while I'm watching one episode and I want to watch another.

 

[appleguy]

A few issues

Ok I did the both updates itunes and atv
I cant get my itunes LPs to appear on the AppleTV.
I manually select my music by a selecting certain playlists
but for some reason they all seem to come across even the genius ones I have for my iphone (even not selected for the ATV)
I do have another play list for my LPs
that is selected and the option to include LPs is selected yet that play list doesnt come across.
even when I have streaming on it doesnt see my LPs from other comps
Any ideas?
**********
IGNORE ME ABOUT THE LPs just seen up there for the reason
but if you can say why all the play lists are coming over instead of just the ones I tick
that will be ok
**********

 

[Unconsoled]

When I set up my iTunes account when it was first released I had a free .mac email address for the 60 day trial and that has stayed my account email since then, maybe 6-7 years. How will I know if I have and email from Apple about my iTunes LP content?