“Apple Inc. forges into new territory and takes on a new pack of competitors next month as it begins to sell its Apple TV set-top box,” Ellen Lee reports for The San Francisco Chronicle.
Lee reports, “Available in February for $299, Apple TV is a set-top box that can wirelessly beam music, photos and videos from your computer to your living room television and home entertainment center.”
“Over the past five years, people have downloaded 2 billion songs, 50 million television shows and 1.3 million movies through the iTunes online store. They have also transferred untold millions of tunes from their CD collections to their computers. They’ve then used iTunes to organize all of it and move it to their iPod so they can take it wherever they go,” Lee reports. “As Apple’s logic goes, why not make it possible to move the same music and movies into the living room?”
Lee reports, “While not novel — consumer-electronics-makers have already been selling similar media adapters and television set-top boxes for the past few years — Apple TV is poised to help consumers truly access their content whenever and wherever they want it. It could also energize a new way for people to get their entertainment fix, downloading it via the Internet instead of buying DVDs. Apple Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs went so far as to call Apple TV the ‘DVD player for the 21st century.'”
Lee reports, “With an already developed following from the iPod, Apple TV starts the race with an edge. Apple also has an advantage with its Apple retail stores, where its employees can evangelize the concept to customers. And it has a reputation for making products that are easy to pick up and use. According to Gene Munster, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, the Apple TV is the best-selling product on Apple’s Web site, which has begun taking orders.”
Full article here.
Related articles:
Apple TV beats out iPod, hits top spot on Apple Store sales chart – January 19, 2007
Report: first batch of 100,000 Apple TVs to ship this month – January 11, 2007
Steve Jobs moves to control the living room with Apple TV – January 10, 2007
Analyst Bajarin: Apple’s iPhone and Apple TV are industry game changers – January 09, 2007
Apple premieres Apple TV: movies, TV shows, music & photos on your big screen TV – January 09, 2007
Not if the show I buy off of iTunes have a lower resolution than a DVD player.
Not now, maybe v2.0
Until this thing can do at least 1080i, and there’s actual HD content available to be played on it, AND Apple offers a subscription-based movie rental service…then it’s not.
Isn’t downloading something onto your Mac then beaming it to this box so you can watch it on your TV an extra step to watching TV? Who needs this thing?
A quality answer would be appreciated. Give me one and I’ll place my order pronto!
I have 3 laptops in my household (iBook, PowerBook and MabBook Pro). They are constantly in and out of the house. I need a dedicated home server that stores all of my music and movies. The content should always be there just like the ATV is always there. I don’t want to go looking for content only to realize that it is on a hard drive that’s out of the house.
I think ATV is great, but it will only be its best when it becomes a true “data” hub, not just a passthrough hub.
Also, I’m not sure I want another box unless I can REPLACE one with the ATV (can’t replace the DVD player, can’t replace the ReplayTV, can’t replace the cable box, etc.)
One more thing…until I get the older hardware off the network (802.11b/g), adding an ‘n’ doesn’t make sense since the whole thing will slow down to match the older stuff.
CONUNDRUM
The main reason I’ll wait is that there must be a way for itunes to support 5.1 surround. Otherwise, why bother using your widescreen TV… which is probably attached to your $1000 + surround system?
Sorry no dice.
Don’t want to waste half my time converting my vid files into mp4.
MDN word: behind
As in the Apple TV is slightly “behind” the digital times.
Not if your local iTunes store doesn’t even sell movies or TV shows. I might get it as a convenient way of getting my music to my entertainment system but a replacement for DVD’s it is not.
Unless it’s because of DMCA concerns or MPAA requirements, I have a simple question for Apple:
Why not give us a proper standards compliant and uncrippled UPnP device?
Can’t record live TV? Come on, Apple. That’s the FIRST feature you put in one of these, not something for later on.
Bandwidth is the issue. Even though fast-moving TV like sports is currently better with 720 because it is encoded quicker, the future of 1080 streaming and processing in time to get sports, etc. displayed on your computer is what everyone’s mindset is. My cable modem is 3, and I average 2.7, but I see that DSL now advertises 6, with hopes of getting 5, and I heard that cable can send 5 if the stingy execs would give it at a decent price.
I believe Apple TV will take off when the bandwidth increases at a decent price. How do people expect Apple to offer HD streaming if most people can’t stream it. I think it has a great future, but it will take time to get off the ground.
@MadMac
One of the reasons AppleTV has a harddrive is that it allows people with older hardware..ie 802.11b/g..to sync there video content to the TV without having to stream it fluidly with “n”.
whoops, not on your computer, but on your TV. Brain fart.
Apple needs to roll out a movie rental service before I will consider one of these.
Right now, Netflix is still the best deal going, and they have announced a download service to augment their regular DVD rentals, at no extra charge.
Why would I want to BUY these movies from iTUNES when I can rent them for much less on Netflix?
The problem I have with AppleTV is iTunes and the poor support for AVI files. iTunes uses Quicktime and Quicktime just doesn’t handle AVI files as well as MPlayer.
I know this is a 1.0 product, but when Quicktime/iTunes can handle all types of media then I will wait on this one.
I’d rather have a small Mac Pro with a Blu-ray drive. That would kick it!
When it supports full 1080p HDTV, when it can stream full resolution audio and video from my upsampling DVD player and a Blu-ray player to my 1080p HDTV and to my hi-fi, THEN it’ll be the DVD player of the 21st century.
Until then, it’s a technology experiment.
MDN magic Word: MAKE it so!
Nice machine, but I’ve got all that technology already, and with region-free dvd players to boot.
MadMac: You only need to get 802.11b off your network. g doesn’t slow down n.
Some of you have it right. the Apple TV is about positioning. It’s not 1080 because it would choke the stream…taking way too long to download. It’s also not 1080 so a smaller hard drive can be used. While you can likely see the difference between 720 and 1080 on your set (depending on what it is)…sitting 12 feet from the set reduces your visual acuity to the point where the difference becomes essentially meaningless. Hi Def TV has actually been around since the mid 80’s in labs, on tv industry show floors in demonstration, and in some specialized applications…so it’s been a regulatory issue that held it up. In those early days I saw an Hitachi 1 inch tape machine displaying 1600 x 1200 video that was so clear I wanted to reach into the screen. Still, when I stood 12 to 15 feet away from other lower rez sets…they looked great too.
Too many differences between downloaded movies and DVD content to be an early adapter on this. First of all, no bonus features? No mini-documentaries?? I love those.
An even bigger concern: My wife is hearing-impaired, and needs captions/subtitles to enjoy movies. THERE ARE NO CAPTIONS ON ANY VIDEO MATERIAL DOWNLOADED THROUGH iTUNES!!!! And yes, I know I’m shouting. For 30 million Americans, that means there’s nothing they can watch. It’s a major problem with all online video content (not just iTunes, but all the network sites, YouTube, Google Video, et al) and will hopefully be addressed by some business or government group.
Member,
Hearing Loss Association of America
think of the AppleTV as a kind of 40GB iPod with video – except that it syncs wirelessly to your iTunes library and connects to your TV via HDMI or component video instead of having it’s own display. from iTunes point of view, that’s basically what the ATV looks like.
that’s the basic useage model, the assumption is that you already use your Mac to gather content and it’s all there. True, v1.0 is missing some things but I think it’s a chicken & egg situation with iTMS content and the delivery/display method.
I have to agree this is a turkey. Possibly worse than that awful overpriced set of speakers known as iHiFi.
Doesn’t do 1080i, the tech specs list 720p at 24fps only, not the 60fps used by the Disney HDTV broadcasts, and only supports h.264 video, so your own movies and videos have to be re-encoded before they can play through the Apple TV device.
Boo. Needs to be more flexible: Their slogan is “If it’s in iTunes, it’s on TV.” But that’ bogus, because iTunes uses your installed QuickTime codecs. So Apple TV should as well (automatically synchronize codecs or whatever).
The HD content may be coming to the store (here’s hoping), but without support in the hardware for real HDTV resolutions and framerates, this thing is just a poser.
Gobble, Gobble, Apple TV. Show me the 2nd Gen.
I purchased a DVI cable for $15.00 and it does the same job. Apple sales this device in Canada where we can only buy music video’s. Seems like a lot of money to watch your music video’s on TV.
I wish Apple would give people what they want rather than telling people what they want.
This is a mass-market device. The large majority of people who purchase this are not looking for PVR or DVD players. This is for the average person who has a computer, buys shows/movies on iTunes and wants them viewable on their home TV. That’s it. This is not a gadget-lovers component. This isn’t for the people who have all the latest and greatest video equipment, this is for all the normal people who buy Apple products because of their ease-of-use. Some people don’t want a PVR, and probably have a dvd player already. All of these added extras will inflate the price. This is exactly what someone said above, it’s essentially an iPod that isn’t mobile that can sync to your computer’s library. Apple *is* giving people what they want, it’s just that most people don’t need/want all of the extra bells and whistles that make products harder to use.