“It’s time for Apple to get serious about Apple TV,” Dan Frommer writes for Silicon Alley Insider.
“If Steve Jobs wants to make a serious run at owning our living room’s ‘digital hub,’ then Apple TV needs a serious overhaul, ASAP,” Frommer writes.
“Apple TV is too confined,” Frommer writes. Apple should “add a Safari browser with all the plugins you’d need to watch videos from Hulu, MLBTV, NBC, ABC, Fox, etc., listen to audio from Muxtape, Last.fm, Pandora, and other sites that aren’t too directly competing.”
“In theory, this also means that Apple is eventually inviting iTunes competitors like Netflix or Amazon onto its box, since they offer browser-based video services of their own. But better to have to compete for space on your own platform than have a platform no one uses,” Frommer writes.
Apple should add a Blu-ray player to Apple TV. “An Apple TV with an optional Blu-ray drive could replace the DVD player in every living room. An Apple TV without one is a compromise — there just aren’t enough movies on iTunes to make digital delivery a feasible, primary option today,” Frommer writes.
“That’s it. For now at least — let’s not get ahead of ourselves. AppleTV doesn’t need too many features… It just needs to make our TV-watching experience better, by adding as many video sources as possible, in one nicely designed package,” Frommer writes. “What do you say, Steve?”
Full article here.
Maybe one of those “product transitions” that will “reduce margins” that Apple CFO Oppenheimer talked about during last quarter’s financial earning call is Apple TV? In order to keep Apple TV’s price reasonable and also include a Blu-ray player, margins would have to be cut close.
Storage Storage Storage …. I have about 700G of just iTunes Music once i start adding all my movies it’s just out of control … More Storage Please!!!
The Mac Mini does have optical audio out
I would rather buy AppleTV with BluRay than the standalone BluRay player.
He forgot rabbit ears and a beer dispenser.
Apple TV is damn good the way it is. DVR?? I have a Mac Mini for that as well as El-Gato EYE TV for tuning in and recording as well as converting programming to run on Apple TV and my iPhone with a turbo 264. In a post on this site Apple TV was the closest to near Blu-ray quality, better than Cable and better than Satellite as broad band channels get broader actual blu-ray quality will be there without all the extraneous hardware overhead. There is probably a way to offload your library to a time machine although I have not tried that yet. I don’t have cable but I buy cable programming off iTunes like Futurama, Burn Notice, National Geographic and Discovery Channel programming. I figure I save myself over $1500 per year not paying for scores of shopping , religious, and infomercial channels that I did not want. I average less than $30 per month on my home entertainment dollars including music, movie purchases and rentals and show season purchases. I don’t have to have a huge amount of different hardware platforms and set top boxes to support it.
” In a post on this site Apple TV was the closest to near Blu-ray quality, better than Cable and better than Satellite “
Sorry buddy, it’s not even up to OTA HDTV quality.
@ Miss Information
OTA HDTV is 1080i due to bandwiwth concerns. Apple TV’s software has been upgraded to support that resolution. Are you just quoting specs or do you have an actual unit? I have a unit and mine is set to 1080i resolution so what’s your point again? Here is the link which is the source of my argument in my previous post. http://macdailynews.com/index.php/weblog/comments/16383/
2 years ago when Apple TV first came out there were relatively few TV’s for consumers at that resolution so the max resolution supported was 720P. Once Apple started renting movies the software upgrades allowed up to 1080i. I personally don’t see a need for better resolution than that on any set that 52″ diagonal or less.
“Apple TV’s software has been upgraded to support that resolution.”
Sure, but they sell absolutely no media in that resolution.
Upscaling overcompressed 720p content, or playing overcompresssed 1080i or 1080p content if Apple chooses to release it is no substitute for Blu-Ray and high bandwidth 1080p content. It’s still a 720p quality image, just being shown at a different output resolution.
You completely miss the point. Most Hi bandwidth conduits already over compress their HD content and give worse quality than Apple TV. Considering the price of most blu-ray hardware and content for what you get, the average person is unwilling to pay that differential in cost. To add features that maybe only 5% of the population is going to want would really be a stupid way for Apple to do business. I had Netflix for many years and I dumped them. Using the worst standard to transmit your movies and only to a laptop???…Puhleeze MPEG -4 is the open standard format used in Quicktime and runs on any PC, Mac or Linux machine. WMA may down load faster but at the expense of quality that may not be noticibel on the relatively small screen of a laptop, and while you maybe able to rent blu-ray titles from Netflix, the cost is higher and hte bandwidth limitations for streaming are still there. Buying blu-ray titles typically cost 70-200% more thasn their DVD counter parts. Handeling the physically media is a losing cause. Apple TV will continue to improve to the point where there will be little difference. between that and blu-ray and it will be done at a pace the market allows.
“Most Hi bandwidth conduits already over compress their HD content and give worse quality than Apple TV.”
Not so. the bandwidth of OTA HDTV is substantially greater than what Apple TV uses.
Nevertheless Blu-Rays delivered to your door are still state of the art for consumer video quality today.
“Considering the price of most blu-ray hardware and content for what you get, the average person is unwilling to pay that differential in cost.”
The same argument was made for DVD vs VHS. But eventually DVD players stopped costing $1000 and the DVD media price came down. Blu-Ray is already running down that curve.
Blu-Ray players now start at less than the cost of the Apple TV. Give it a few years and they’ll hit the current DVD player price points (which is to say, $25 for a basic model).
“Apple TV will continue to improve to the point where there will be little difference.”
Probably, but given the massive infrastructure investment that will require from phone and cable companies it’ll be years before it gets there for most Americans. For now physical Blu-Ray media is still the best high quality option.
If you don’t care much about quality, as you clearly don’t, Apple TV downloads or Netflix streaming movies will probably work just fine for you.
Netflix is on to a winner with the combo of anything you want delivered next day on Blu-Ray or DVD plus lower quality online delivery for one low fixed price. They probably sold more Roku boxes in the first few weeks than Apple has sold Apple TVs. Over time they too will improve quality and shift to a completely downloaded model. But they’ll already have the customers, because they have a product which appeals using today’s level of technology and network bandwidth.
Apple TV does not have that today because it’s download quality is hobbled and it’s media is just too expensive compared to the competition. If Apple’s not going to change the hardware, at least an all you can watch subscription for about $15/month would go a long way to improving it’s popularity. Throw in all you can listen iTunes music for another $5/month, it’s a winner.
Screw Apple TV, just make the Mac and OS X better.
why Apple doesn’t mix AppleTV with Mac Mini?
What about an iMacTV?
Big screens, Blu-Ray drive, HDMI in/out, Digital TV receiver and a better remote!
“why Apple doesn’t mix AppleTV with Mac Mini?”
Because Microsoft already has that part of the market well served with Media Center PCs. It’s an area where Apple would also be overpriced and not feature competitive.
@miss information.
AppleTV has 1080i output. I have an AppleTV and the menu shows 1080i as its maximum output.
/rick.
“AppleTV has 1080i output. I have an AppleTV and the menu shows 1080i as its maximum output.”
Imagine: You have a 2 megapixel camera. You print the image at 1200dpi and paste it up on 80×100 wall. How many megapixels is the resolution of the image?
By my interpretation, it’s 2 megapixels. The actual quality of the image.
By yours it’s now a 1200*80*12*1200*100*12 or a thousand billion megapixel image. But strangely for such an awesome image resolution it looks like crap. How could that be?
a 720p movie doesn’t become a 1080i movie just because you upscale it and output it at the higher resolution, just as a 480p DVD doesn’t rival Blu-Ray just because you upscale it and output it at 1080p
@@bobchr
Not so. the bandwidth of OTA HDTV is substantially greater than what Apple TV use.
I was referring to Cable and Satellite as was referenced in the article to which link I posted.
“Apple TV will continue to improve to the point where there will be little difference.”
Probably, but given the massive infrastructure investment that will require from phone and cable companies it’ll be years before it gets there for most Americans. For now physical Blu-Ray media is still the best high quality option.
This is already on going with fiber optics from Verizon and WiMax investments via ATT and others. The cable companies are trying to maintain there monopoly on the consumers viewing experience. I see a vast difference in my OTA HD viewing experience and that offered by cable.
If you don’t care much about quality, as you clearly don’t, Apple TV downloads or Netflix streaming movies will probably work just fine for you.
A poor assumption on your part I had already criticized the standard used by Netflix as inferior to the one used by Apple TV and this is true even in music and sound reproduction. Where I depart from your flawed logic is I feel that the measure of differential of quality between what Blu-ray has to offer vs the price point and shelf space clutter in my entertainment center is not warranted for a medium that will become rapidly obsolete in 9 months to 2 years.I already have 3 DVD players (2 of which are also burners) and a number of DVD’s that I hardly ever watch.
Apple TV does not have that today because it’s download quality is hobbled and it’s media is just too expensive compared to the competition. If Apple’s not going to change the hardware, at least an all you can watch subscription for about $15/month would go a long way to improving it’s popularity. Throw in all you can listen iTunes music for another $5/month, it’s a winner.
I wonder if like Miss Information you even have an Apple TV or have even done a side by side comparison to validate what you are taking about. Miss Information failed to clarify whether he was quoting specs or had actual experience. I doubt either of you people have made the investment in the equipment side by side to justify either of your arguments. Also all the post on this sit have clearly stated that people want to own their music and rent their movies. Why would Apple go against market trends? You also seem to forget that Apple has content partners where while they may have significant leverage they can’t just do what they want. BTW Netflix has ways to throttle the amount of movies that you actually receive per month. I know people who have abused the service by copying Netflix DVD’s en masse. I would actually take the time to watch the movies and return them but since I have a life I could only manage to watch an average of 2 to 3 movies a month. Netflix has about 900 Blu-ray titles to distribute to all it’s subscribers. It is not economically to remaster old movies in this format so they have to wait for content to build
“This is already on going with fiber optics from Verizon and WiMax investments via ATT and others.”
Except for true on demand, every show different, even for a small city of a million residents more bandwidth is required than is currently capable of being deployed, even with fiber links. Calculate it out, it’s massive, several orders of magnitude more than entire current US fiber optic backbone capacity.
“I had already criticized the standard used by Netflix”
Yet you didn’t criticize Apple TV. You say it’s not the best but good enough for you. Which shows you only care about quality up to a point.
And by all means rent not buy Blu-Rays. I wouldn’t advocate buying any media, But rental of physical media through a service like NetFlix still remains the cheapest and best quality option today.
And Yes I have looked strongly at buying an Apple TV and done the comparisons. There is no comparison with Blu-Ray. Fortunately for Apple most people’s benchmark is standard def TV or DVD, or Blu-Ray played on a cheap high def set without true 1080p resolution.
The field is wide open. Somebody will make a success of this kind of service. At the right all you can view rental price I might live with Apple’s quality compromises. For now the combination of lower quality and higher media price just isn’t compelling.
Apple should just MERGE the Mac Mini + Apple TV into ONE device with slot loading UBER Drive that reads ALL types of discs.
If you want to you it as a computer…”boom” here ya go.
If you want to use it as a media center…”boom” here ya go.
Make the New Apple Aluminum Wireless keyboard work with this & “boom” it’s done.
New Apple Media Cube = Mac Mini + Apple TV.
“Apple should just MERGE the Mac Mini + Apple TV into ONE device with slot loading UBER Drive that reads ALL types of discs.”
Then they could make it play games and call it the MacPlayStation.
@miss information,
I understand your point. personally, I don’t watch anything in 1080i from the store. I rip my dvd’s to 1080 and they show up magnificently in 1080i. Additionally, Home movies are sent via 1080p and they too are essentially flawless. This takes a lot more time, but the results are worth it.
I really think that you should look at an AppleTv though before making some of the statements that you have made about it. The content on the device is truly amazing. Streaming is second to none. I thought that 150gigs was too little, until I found that I could subscribe to podcasts and have them stream instead of download. The memory savings have been immense.
Again, try one, you might like it.