Over at iLounge they recently tested the picture quality of Blu-Ray, Apple TV 2.0 against DVD and HD Cable. Although not a scientific test, they paused the pictures and used a Nikon camera to capture the images, it does show the vast differences between the formats and the effects of compression.
Apple recently upgraded my AppleTV to version 2.0 and I rented an HD movie. The startup time was very quick, less than 2 minutes, although you have to navigate a couple of menus while it buffers–very un-Apple like. Once the download buffered sufficiently, playback was smooth. Overall the video quality was excellent, not Blu-ray quality but sufficient to warrant the difference in price for the HD rental–an extra dollar. The movie appeared a bit dark. I immediately thought Apple might be covering some compression artifacts.
Overall, AppleTV is great for the impulse rental satisfying a need that Netflix (via mail) cannot satisfy (Netflix download service doesn’t work with Mac and I don’t want to watch on my computer anyway).
