Matt Van Stone

Late last year I decided that I wanted to start getting movies and TV shows more legitimately. I decided to get an Apple TV so that I could have access to all of the movies and TV shows on iTunes directly from my couch. Until this past weekend I hadn’t yet rented anything, but I’m happy to report that my first experience with rentals was great.

My wife and I decided to rent the movie Orphan in HD. After purchasing the movie, it took about 30 seconds to a minute to buffer enough before we could begin watching. Our internet connection is the standard 7.5Mbps from Shaw in Calgary. We watched the entire 2 hour movie without any glitches. At no point did it need to pause to buffer.

Video and sound quality was quite good. To me the HD video clearly wasn’t Blu-Ray quality, but I would say that it was better than the HD movies I have watched on Shaw HD. I can’t make a comparison to an SD iTunes movie though because I have not rented one.

The next day I purchased a few episodes of The Office. I purchased both HD and SD episodes. I was very pleased with the SD quality but I didn’t feel that the HD episode I purchased brought enough increase in quality to justify the extra dollar.

Overall I am really pleased with how the Apple TV performed for renting and purchasing. I am going to need to start budgeting for monthly iTunes gift cards though.

Do you use an Apple TV for renting Movies? Do you like it? Hate it?