The often criticized Apple TV has been a device which I have loved since day one. Recently Apple rolled out a feature to Canadian owners of the device, (something which has been available in the US for some time) the ability to rent movies (some are even available in High Definition) or buy movies right from your TV.

Now this is not just a service which is available on the Apple TV, you can also do use it from within iTunes if you want to watch a movie on your computer, iPod Touch or iPhone (which at this point has to be unlocked to function in Canada for another month!).

Tonight I rented my first movie on the Apple TV. My daughter Emily had an idea that we should watch a movie tonight. As she headed off to her room to grab a DVD that one or all of us had seen many times before I thought perhaps tonight would be a good night to test some technology. So I fired up the Shaw Digital Cable Box and the Apple TV and set out in search of a Video on Demand movie.

The thing that struck me at first was the speed and simplicity with which one could browse through a group of movie posters on the Apple TV, and see all of the movies that are available in a genre, in this case the Kids section. It was so much simpler and more enjoyable to view a big grid of movie posters, than the text based movie list on Shaw Video on Demand.