Does the Apple TV have a built-in web browser?

No.

That said, it's trivial to add one with a jail broken aTV.

Why Apple hasn't added its own Safri web browser to aTV is a mystery.

Note that, if you happen to have an iPad 2 (or the new iPhone 4S), you will be able to Airplay mirror everything on your iPad2's screen to the Apple TV, such that you see your iPad2 screen on your TV. This includes Safari on your iPad 2. In my view this is the ideal solution, sine it is much easier to navigate the web on the iPad's web browser than using your remote and the CouchSurfer web prowser you can install on the jailbroken Apple TV.

. . . but of course, it requires you purchase a new device.

Paul Quade wrote:

That said, it's trivial to add one with a jail broken aTV.

Why Apple hasn't added its own Safri web browser to aTV is a mystery.

not really apple have always gon for rather then providing an mediocre unpleasant feature cutting it altogether

and if you have ever typed in text using the appletv's how we wrote our name in the high score in 80's arcade machines way you should know that doing that for web browsing

on a 40" something tv with a resolution that would require the reader to be very close to the tv to read it

and the pain of the millions of different plugin like flash and java and..... that the atv would not support

would make a browser on an atv a mediocre featre

I travel all the time. The Appletv would be a perfect traveling companion if it had a browser. I don't need it for much, but I desperately need it to log into a hotel's wifi. In most hotels, this failure renders the device useless unless I tether it to a router. AirPlay works with a functioning wifi. You can't get to the wifi without the browser. For this purpose, the Apple tv, on it's own, fails me - something I don't usually say about apple products.

Thank you for making this point. This is quite shocking that Apple TV is not able to be used on WiFi that requires browser confirmation.

I would like to use Apple TV but this will make it unusable a percentage of my time.