My Apple TV Developers kit showed up last night, so I spent an hour playing with it. I was familiar with the pervious version of Apple TV, so the setup procedure was relatively quick. There were some differences, but the user interface was similar and very straight forward. The new remote with touch, swipe and click is an improvement, but I would have to say that overall, I was disappointed.
I understand why Apple is seeding the developer community with kits because the box by itself is lacking. I checked to see if the Siri interface was working but I could not enable it. I thought I might connect to the AppStore and see what additional Apps were already available, but there was no AppStore.
I have yet to connect it to Xcode or look into the development side to see what libraries are available. In it’s current state, it doesn’t have half of the features that my old Boxee Box has. No connection to Internet content, no ability to play MP4’s from my local file server and no games.
I guess Apple has placed the ball in my court so stay tuned for more after I dig into the dev kit.