Apple TV’s InSight characteristic is able to tackle Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray

We’ve got a brand new developer beta for tvOS 18 — the software program that runs on Apple TV units — and with it comes our first take a look at a serious new characteristic. InSight is Apple’s reply to Amazon Prime Video’s X-Ray, which gives fast and easy accessibility to who’s in a scene, and what music could also be taking part in beneath.

Apart from some primary consumer interface variations like fonts and design parts — InSight definitively appears and appears like Apple, and X-Ray retains Prime Video’s less-sleek motif — they principally work the identical. Whereas a film or present is taking part in, you possibly can pause or press down (the latter takes you straight to the data) to see thumbnails of the actors on display, together with their actual title (or stage title, we suppose), and the character’s title. Click on by way of one of many thumbnails and also you’ll get extra details about the actor, and simple hyperlinks to different issues they seem in, or have served in another capability. Ted Lasso’s Brett Goldstein, for instance, has film and collection thumbnails, and he additionally has tiles for producing and writing.

And Apple could be very good about the way it handles this. Whereas all of the associated film and collection thumbnails are in the identical type, the place they take you relies on the place the content material is definitely accessible. It may be one thing accessible on Amazon Prime Video, or Hulu, Plex – or another platform that performs properly with Apple’s TV app. (Presumably which means you received’t discover any associated content material that’s solely on Netflix, which stays a holdout.)

InSight additionally hyperlinks you to music that’s taking part in on display. Clicking into it doesn’t routinely open the track, nevertheless it does add it to a “Saved Songs” playlist in Apple Music. That’s properly achieved.

The InSight characteristic is presently solely accessible within the tvOS 18 developer beta, so these not residing on the bleeding edge must wait a bit earlier than it seems within the TV app on Apple TV {hardware}. And it’s at all times potential that issues can be tweaked earlier than from time to time.

However up to now, so good.