See One, Do One, Teach One

More feature disappointments for the new version of Apple TV.

No Video Playlists.

One of the amazing features on the audio side of Apple TV is the ability to play audio playlists. Select a playlist full of songs and you can listen all day. Why not the same for video?

A local wine company displays a video of visits to the wine country using the Apple TV. Shouldn’t they be able to have a playlists of videos from multiple trips running? I would love to have a continuous run of music videos, for example.

Obviously, this is something that can be updated in future revisions.

No Sharing.

Oh, if you have more than one Apple TV, you are not going to be able to share rented content between them. If you rent something on your Apple TV, that content is locked to that device. You can not bounce it back to iTunes or transfer it to any other device.

If you rent it on iTunes, you can bounce it where you need it. Just remember that iTunes rentals will be lower quality than direct-to-device rentals.

The initial version of Time Capsule will not allow streaming directly to Apple TV. It is uncertain if this will be something that will be allowed in future versions or not.

Despite direct to device renting available, Apple TV continues to be dependent on iTunes for synchronization. If (and it’s a big if) the Time Capsule can be used as network storage, it should be theoretically possible to use it to store the iTunes library externally.

External drive (air disk) -> computer with iTunes -> Apple TV

However, most people agree that currently iTunes does not handle network shares smoothly or consistently.

The dream of dumping all the media on an external device and using it without an additional box is still a far dream away.