Dude, I was at the Apple Store yesterday in Novi, MI and tried out the Apple TV... I was way dissapointed in the quality of the movies/videos. Pictures were good, but motion video seemed very low resolution or something. Like the trailer of Cars, PrisonBreak, etc. Is this because of how the video is encoded from iTunes? Or is that all the Apple TV is capable of doing?
The Apple Store currently has about the worst combination possible for demoing AppleTV. In fact, I'm contemplating complaining to Apple marketing executives on this one because the launch has been atrocious.
First, they're using entry-level Sony Bravia LCD monitors. This is about the worst image clarity you can get in modern displays. Knowing that CRT's are kind of out of the question (my Trinitron XBR HDTV looks STELLAR running HD over AppleTV but at 200lbs it would be a pain to ship one to every Apple Store... even though it's cheaper than an LCD)... I would have recommended cutting down the number of displays and instead using one Sony SXRD prominently placed. SXRD sets use Liquid Crystal on Silicon which provides far greater clarity, contrast and color than any LCD TV.
Second, they're using sub-iTunes content. The demo videos that shipped with the AppleTV units don't even have 640x480 resolution according to several store reps in Southdale and Mall of America. This is patently stupid. They're not selling any AppleTV's to walk-in customers, I can tell you that.
In addition to the atrocious combo of low-res material and crappy HD displays... They positioned the units off in a corner which ends up looking as if they're just background displays for ambience and not really a product. No one notices the AppleTV units next to them. Something needs to be done to make these display setups more prominent because most customers see the big computers with apps running, the headphones around the iPod displays, and they recognize these are products. People see some displays over in the corner with crappy video on them, have no idea what they are, and move on... or if they do investigate, they're not impressed with the low quality demo and will never know what they could be watching.
Lastly, the store reps are next to totally incompetent when it comes to answering questions about AppleTV, its capabilities, media types, compression rates, etc. You know... the things that anyone considering dropping $300 on a next-generation media bridge might be inclined to ask. One rep sounded like he was making up approximate file sizes on the spot and made the deadly mistake of trying to answer questions about encoding standards he knew nothing about (ironically, about H.264 which is common to the iTunes Store).
They claim that Apple corporate is working on fixing the demo content issue but we're already into April and the only thing that might save AppleTV from complete failure is the unmitigated stupidity of competing designs such as the Netgear EVA8000 which is touted to support 1080p but has no internal hard drive and cannot stream 1080p worth a damn because no one thought to actually incorporate 802.11n on the device. Incidentally, Apple DOES have 802.11n and the Apple people were smart enough to only go as far as guaranteeing only 720p and only at n speeds (even though most first-movers report it works great over 802.11g, which I have found as well).
