Now that the dust has settled and you’ve read everyone (Engadget, Gizmodo, Tech Crunch) and their mothers take on the new Apple TV, I thought I’d give my two cents for what its worth. Being an original day one Apple TV owner the news for me today was all about rentals and streaming. Whether it be from our iTunes library, or from Netflix, we’re going to be streaming or renting from here on out. Lets face it, unless Apple introduced a terabyte version of the Apple TV, no form of internal storage would have been enough space. Users would of found a way to fill it up. The content now stays where it most likely originated, on your desktop or laptop computer.

As a father of a 3 year old I can think of a few occasions where immediate access to purchasing a movie or episode of Yo Gabba Gabba directly from the Apple TV came in handy, but those have been few and far between. As it was, purchasing a movie through the Apple TV meant waiting for who knows how long for the content to download. Purchasing from my computer as opposed to the Apple TV doesn’t seem like such a chore. Heck, the purchase can even happen through an iPad or iPhone as well.

Here’s a thought, will purchasing be the only way to get iTunes Extras, and will the Extras be available for streaming?

The one scenario where I can see problems arising regarding streaming is when that main library of iTunes content is no longer present to stream from. With more and more households turning to portable computers your SOL if that laptop or iPad with the main iTunes library decides to take a trip to the local coffee shop. This is where I hope Apple decides to create some sort of Airport media server or that fabled iTunes in the clouds so that your media is always available to stream.

For original Apple TV users who’ve struggled with scrolling through the tons of available content to find that perfect movie title or tv show to download, making the Apple TV a rental only box eliminates a load of extra purchase content to scroll through. This also means that to get a true overview of what movies or tv shows are available, including purchase only titles, you must do your search through iTunes. And lets not forget about Cinemira, I’ll be covering it’s relationship with the new Apple TV in another post.

And what about all this streaming goodness for existing Apple TV users? According to Engadget it looks like your going to have to upgrade to the new Apple TV as it seems Apple has no plans to upgrade existing Apple TV’s. Does that mean the current Apple TV will become valuable for it’s ability to store media locally? Yeah, probably nostalgic wishful thinking on my part.

As I learn more about this new Apple TV and absorb it’s new features I’ll share more thoughts, but for now just enjoy the fact that Apple is paying attention to our now even smaller little hobby.