You had an excellent idea. To expand the fabulous ATV with the ability to play DVDs and to collect other ATV hacks into one nice package. I would conclude from reading the other writers in this forum that by far the most popular feature is the ability to playback DVDs. Several writers have now told about problems playing DVDs after entering the DVD menu which arose from the latest updates of ATV Flash. Please please find out what the problem is and get it fixed. Our ATVs are useless if we cant play our DVDs… Please…
I would also like to add another note about ATV flash. Many of us are used to Apple products. Easy to use, simple interfaces with no hassle. Apples ATV has a simple intuitive and very userfriendly interface that even my mother can figure out how to use. By adding ATV Flash this interface has been turned into a nightmare of settings, preferences, unintuitive paths, codings, general nerdtalk and features that are not working. It really hurts my glowing Appleheart to see this unintuitive mess. I know the task is not simple and only few companies are able to create GUIs that people really want. But please sit down and try to spend considerable time and effort to bring ATV with ATV Flash back to somthing similar to what ATV was from the beginning. A nice gadget for everybody and not just for me the father and nerd of the family…
I have to disagree on the user friendlyness though… if you look at the alternatives (setting up Boxee, Plex or XBMC on any Mac or PC), ATV FLash is actually one of the easiest ones as far as setting up goes. The only thing that could perhaps use a little additional attention is a more in depth and “novice-level” tutorial on how to add HD’s that are connected to a Time Capsule or Airport Extreme, as that, even though it cán be very easy if you use a Time Capsule’s internal HD, can be a bit of a challenge to some people.
Other than that I honestly love the ease of use. As far as playing DVD’s goes… most people are buying an Apple TV because they never use (or intend to use) DVD’s anymore right? Personally I haven’t even touched a DVD in about 5-6 years. But if you do want to play DVD’s, Handbrake is an excellent program to rip them, and making an ISO out of them is also usable most of the time right? Either way, I’m sure the ability or expánded ability for DVD-formats will grow in time.
For now though, the only thing I personally am eagerly waiting for, is a solution for an untethered jailbreak on ATV’s with iOS5 (4.4 for ATV’s), hehe. Thanks for the continued work on these products though.
Quick additional question though… since basically everyone is installing Media Player after installing aTV Flash, would it be an idea to combine these two apps? Just wondering if that made any sense
