I was at the Apple store in Burlington Ma today, hoping to check out an Apple TV prior to buying one. There was one display model, showing a demo. Picked up Apple remote, tried to do something else, got screen of options (youtube/hulu/podcasts/etc), but couldn't pick any of them. While trying to move cursor around, notice that the pressing buttons on the remote doesn't seem to do much - sometimes the IR light on the ATV would flicker but nothing would happen. After a few minutes the screen went blank and said "no signal"..waited a bit..signal came back, but screen frozen. Apple rep tried rebooting, but no improvement. He felt the remote needed a new battery, but they apparently don't have spare batteries in the store. (why not?) I'm guessing the ATV is not a big seller, so they don't really try to keep it working well - it was in the back corner and hard to get to, so they don't pay the same attention to it that they would to an iMac or a rMBP. Is this flaky behavior typical of the ATV devices? Do they freeze and lose signal a lot? Or is there an issue with the display firmware/software they use in the stores?
Needless to say, I decided not to buy an Apple TV.
Needless to say, I decided not to buy an Apple TV.