Several Apple TV users have reported a new addition to the menus of their devices, with the new option bringing Genius recommendations for movies and TV shows in their libraries. Curiously, early reports noted that rather than carrying a correct menu title, the movie option carried the name "ATV.Menu.MOVIE.GeniusItem", suggesting that the new feature may have appeared prematurely. Apple seems to have fixed the issue, however, with the menu option now showing properly as "Genius".
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Improperly-displayed (left, via @cthielen) and properly-displayed Genius option for Movies on Apple TV
Despite the strange display of the menu option, the feature does appear to have been functional since its initial appearance yesterday, with users being able to access Genius recommendations for their content.
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Genius recommendations for movies and TV shows have been offered for some time in iTunes itself through the iTunes Sidebar, but those recommendations have not been available on the second-generation Apple TV. Genius recommendations are also available through the iTunes app on iOS devices.
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is a "key" used by developers to specify a text resource. The system would look up this unique "key" and find the correct text for the user's locale (language and location) preferences. By default, if the system can't find the text resource, it simply hands back the key that was passed in. If developers used readable text as their keys, that works fine, but since Apple's obviously using developer-centric keys, to more easily identify the exact resource, it displayed something not quite legible.
"ATV.Menu.MOVIE.GeniusItem"
is a "key" used by developers to specify a text resource. The system would look up this unique "key" and find the correct text for the user's locale (language and location) preferences. By default, if the system can't find the text resource, it simply hands back the key that was passed in. If developers used readable text as their keys, that works fine, but since Apple's obviously using developer-centric keys, to more easily identify the exact resource, it displayed something not quite legible.
The "strange appearance" of the key provides a namespace to differentiate similar keys used elsewhere. Had they used "Genius Item" as a key, they would run into collisions with other keys that would also be named "Genius Item", say for a Song Genius Item.