I hate to be a bit of a downer on this, but as a long time Theater View user I want to give my honest reactions to this new paradigm:
Graphically this is looking very slick, but I really miss some of the information that the old system showed, and the navigation behavior seems a bit "funky" to me now, with the changes being counter to "cursor-only" navigation.
I think the biggest issue I have with the new system is the elimination of the "always present" breadcrumb path. With the old system, the breadcrumb path was present at all times as I drilled in. With the new system, the path is only visible if I specifically navigate to the line above the main list, at which point the breadcrumb path appears. I'm not sure why this is the case given that the space isn't being used for anything else -- why not let the breadcrumb path remain visible? I understand the desire to keep things "clean looking," but not at such a noticeable expense of ease-of-navigation. The result of the current behavior is that at any given moment, one cannot just glance up to check where they are, which is something that I do ALL the time.
Checking your location really requires the full path, not just the current spot, and this is now kind of a pain when using a simple "cursor navigation" remote. I strongly feel that the presence of breadcrumb path is something that should ALWAYS be visible so that when an album is playing, I can instantly not just the album name, but the Genre and Artist as well.
Next, I discovered that in my navigation, I really never end up using the upper bar. It therefore strikes me is that more functionality was lost than gained. The new system no longer supports wrapping when scrolling upward, which was a highly useful feature. I used to be able to jump to the end of a long list by hitting "up" from the top of the list, but this no longer works. Also, it is now less easy to quickly navigate to the "all" category since this is no longer at the top of the list. Holding down the "up" button now puts me to the top bar, at which point I have to scroll back down two spots in order to get back to the actual list. Scrolling "down," on the other hand, wraps to the "All" category, which is inconsistent with the "up" scrolling behavior.
I also miss the ability to quickly navigate to "Playing Now," which used to be visible in the left hand menu when playing an album, and therefore quite easy to access. It now takes some actual navigation to get to the PN screen.
I'm curious -- are the people who like the new the top bar using simple "cursor navigation," or are they using a mouse? I think that most people who need to use Theater View in a Home Theater type environment will be using simple up/down/left/right navigation.
Overall, I find the new system rather "unpredictable" in many ways, with a left or right navigation move taking me somewhere I honestly wasn't expecting depending on whether I'm on the list or one of the upper bars. With the new system I sometimes end up backing up one or more levels accidentally. This is something that really didn't happen with the previous paradigm -- navigation was always quite intuitive, I was never "surprised" by where I ended up, and up/down scrolling/wrapping was consistent in either direction.
All that said, the horizontal main menu is certainly very pleasing, and I'm not against the "upper bar" in general -- I simply find that the current navigation behavior is not as intuitive as the previous system, which leads to "surprises" in where I end up. In my personal use I find that there was a net loss in overall functionality.
Larry