Apple TV update 2.0.1

I better wait before I install this update. Looks like ATV is getten even worse.

Ever since the update to 2.0 I want to throw this thing out the window every single time I use it. 1.0 was amazing. Very quick and intuitive and it showed you what was on the device while keeping the stuff on your mac in reach. All you had to do is select the synced library and there was all your stuff.

With 2.0 however, my most beloved gadget has rendered almost useless. Sometimes it takes up to 10 minutes to even only start watching something. Mostly you can start after 'only' two minutes though. Clicking more than two menu items makes it do a wild turkey on the hard drive for minutes and the graphics behave like an old win95 System that tries to play DVD content. You know, this stuttering, hanging graphics feeling.

Furthermore, there is no way to see any video playlists. Lets say you have about 1,000 movies on your mac and you want to play something new that's way down in the alphabet. It's the scroll monster from hell. And why aren't there any blue dots sitting before unwatched movies? At least then it would be easier to spot them. I had only the newbies synced to 1.0 and it was nice and easy to find them, but now?

In general, I am a huge Apple fan, but this ATV box turns out to be a total desaster. Yes, I will continue to buy and rent, but please give me back a product to nicely browse what I already have.

Then I don't have to keep telling other people 'no, we can't watch anything, the ATV is broken'. I want to spare the embarrassment. After all, I am still the one trying to convince them to switch to a Mac, because 'it just works'

It seems some people including myself are having wireless network problems since installing 2.01

The fix for me was to unselect "Use wide channels".

Anyone else suffering from this malady? Am looking forward to 2.02

Crash, crash, crash. This update is not stable. Too many crashes to count and all sorts of trouble staying with my 'N' network. G seems to be more stable but the crashes are frustrating.

I just installed the update 10 minutes ago and my AppleTV has already crashed twice! It has never crashed before. Ugh.

Regarding Take 2 in general:
The ability to rent movies is great, and a huge addition to the device. The fact that every menu is loaded with options to buy stuff and the My is last menu option is obnoxious. Also, the interface has slowed down dramatically. There are longer pauses after button pushes and the flip effect that occurs when playing music/podcasts must be running at about 5fps.

Also, has anyone else noticed that the randomization of album covers in the screen saver is worse? I have about 12,000 songs yet about 1/3 of the time there are two copies of the same cover in the screen saver.

One last thing: It is really annoying that the AppleTV maintains a separate list of favorite podcasts rather than letting you manage your iTunes podcast subscriptions. One of the reasons I use iTunes is that the synching between my mac, iPods, iPhone, and AppleTV just works. Now there are two libraries of podcasts.

I've owned an Apple TV almost since the first month they were shipping as 1.0 devices last year. If anything, I think the Take 2 software sped up the UI, though there is still some very short but understandable lag at times. But that's because we have a 230+GB library that we stream everything from; there's bound to be at least a little lag.

Something I've found to help speed overall performance up is switching our AirPort Extreme station to 802.11n-only (5GHz) mode.

Still have a problem with limited movies. Where is all the content. What they have is largely old. My wife remains unimpressed

R Goren

I'd like to see a soft reboot option in the settings menu. Pulling the power cord can't be good.

Looks like the Apple TV now respects the Skip When Shuffling option. That's been one of my major complaints as I listen to a lot of music with it. I hit shuffle and FF'ed through about 200 songs, none of the many I have marked for skip came up. That's not a definitive test of course, but it gives me hope.

Seems slow as usual. One problem I hope they've fixed is leaving the Apple TV and not using it for more than a few days - I come back to a frozen Apple Logo in the middle of the screen that won't go away.

The original poster of the article acts as though Take 2 is as fast and zippy as 1.x was? Have any of you owned a 1.x box before going to take 2? Don't you notice a major difference in the speed of the device? The Apple forums are loaded with posts about Take 2 significantly causing interface glitches and generally being slow. I take it that 2.01 didn't do much to remedy this issue?