Brokencyde Not surprisingly, the interface on the Apple TV

Brokencyde Not surprisingly, the interface on the Apple TV is a lot smoo the r, cleaner and more polished than navigating on the Roku. But while it looks nicer, navigating the Apple TV interface is not as easy as it should be and requires far too many clicks to enter text or passwords. Apple uses a long list of letters that you have to scroll through brokencyde have to travel end-to-end as opposed to being able to skip around. Having to enter a lot of text is a real pain. Apple TV is a bit easier to setup than the Roku, but not by much. I could give ei the r device to my Mom and shed be able to setup both devices on her own without having to call me for tech support. As for the content available on both devices, this is really where Apple TV falls short. Today, Apple TV supports content from Netflix, YouTube and 99 rentals from ABC, Disney, Fox, and the BBC. The y also support some free Internet content from folks like Revision3 and o the rs, but all of that content is lumped in under the Podcast heading in Apple TV, so most folks probably dont see it. Apple gives you 24 hours to watch movie rentals and 48 hours to brokencyde TV shows once you begin viewing. When Steve Jobs announced the Apple TV he made a big point to reinforce the fact that Apple would have HD movies available to rent on the same day the y are released to DVD. This was one of his major selling points, yet so far, thats simply not the case. In fact, some of the content Steve Jobs showcased in the launch is no longer even available for rental. Clearly the studios still have all the control regarding what content the y will make available for licensing to the Apple TV. While Rokus interface make not be as polished as the Apple TV, the Roku makes up for it with all the great content thats available. Roku has channels for Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, , UFC, Pandora, Flickr, Facebook Photos and Roku has just announced support for Hulu Plus coming later this year. Roku has more than 75 content channels and expects to have nearly 100 by the end of the year. Roku has an open SDK and as a result, has a lot of content partners working to bring more channels to Roku devices. Compare that to the Apple TV which today, has no SDK and doesnt run any apps on the box. Some are speculating that the Apple TV will run apps in the future since internally it has 8GB of Flash storage, but none of that is happening today. One of the big features of the Apple TV that many think could be a game-changer is Airplay. The technology allows a user to start watching a video on an iPhone, iPod or iPad and the n move that content over to the Apple TV in realtime. While Airplay looks promising, it wont be released until November and the re are still a lot of unanswered questions about how well it will work. For instance, you can move content from iOS devices to Apple TV, but you cant move content from Apple TV back to iOS devices.