When I heard that YouTube videos were going to be available on AppleTV I didn’t think much of it. YouTube videos look bad enough on my computer screen, why would I want to watch them on my big TV? I also heard that only select videos would be available so, who cares…

Well, I ran the software update on my AppleTV the other day and the new YouTube interface is fantastic.

You don’t have to download the videos. You stream them directly from the internet. Browsing is very similar to the YouTube site but you can do it right on the TV with the Apple remote. The video actually looks OK. My understanding is that YouTube is re-encoding all the videos on the site from flash to H.264 so the AppleTV can play them. That sounds like a huge-crazy-insane job to me but hey, it’s Google, they’re the guys who think driving all over the world in black vans to take pictures of every single street is doable.

You can search via an on screen “keyboard” with the remote. I hate this type of interface (I call it “Ouija board“) but it’s better than having no search at all. You can also log in with your YouTube user name and access your favorites. This is all a really impressive first step. It’s what TV of the future is going to be.

Check out this episode of Don McAllister’s video podcast Screencasts Online for a video tour of the YouTube/AppleTV interface.