“With the Apple TV now shipping, the question remains: will people want one and, if so, what will its impact on the market be? The question is whether Apple will rise to the top, or be swamped by the existing solutions,” Bryan Gardiner writes for PC Magazine. “Can it carve out a niche?”
Gardiner reports, “Unsurprisingly, vendors of existing products don’t think so. In fact, Jeff Binder, senior director of Motorola’s Connected Home Solutions, said the Apple TV unit might very well turn out to be what he characterized as a ‘dud.'”
“‘It’s orders of magnitude less interesting than the iPod,’ he said of the new Apple TV. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if it would be a big dud, frankly, but it will give [Apple] a lot of knowledge. They’re an innovative company; they’ll learn from their mistakes.’ When asked if Motorola was worried that Apple TV would challenge (or move in on) the set-top box market, Binder didn’t seem too troubled. ‘I don’t really think [our set-top boxes] compete with it at all,” he said. “I’m a big fan of Apple in the computing market…but just generally really I don’t see it as a competitive product. It’s a pretty nifty gadget, but it doesn’t change the way we watch the television. It’s different than how the iPod changed the way we listened to music.’ Binder went on to say that there are three keys areas where Apple TV fails: as a PVR (personal video recorder), in HD (high definition), and its lack of support for video on demand,” Gardiner reports.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple TV also fails as a major league pitcher, but it doesn’t try to be one, either. Ditto for the PVR. HD can be turned on at the iTunes Store level (when both bandwidth and content providers’ comfort becomes more plentiful) and, indeed, Apple TV is capable of HD (1080i) right now. Apple TV does not lack support for video-on-demand (quite the contrary) – it’s just not being used by Apple beyond movie trailers and short clips right now.
Over a year ago, in January 2006, Technology Review’s Daniel Turner astutely asked, “If Front Row can stream movie trailers from Apple’s website, why not whole movies?”
And, just two days ago, Walt Mossberg wrote in his Apple TV review, “Apple TV’s most important limitation is that it can’t stream much video or audio directly from the Internet — yet. The capability to go directly to the Internet, bypassing the computers in your home, is built in, but is initially being used only to fetch feature film trailers and short preview clips of popular songs, TV shows and movies sold on the iTunes store. Apple TV also won’t allow you to buy media directly from the iTunes store. You must first download content from the Internet or iTunes on a computer, and then Apple TV will grab it from the computer and play it on the TV. In its usual secretive fashion, Apple refuses to say if or when this direct-to-the-Internet capability will be expanded. But we fully expect Apple to add the capability to stream or download a variety of content directly from the Internet, and that this new capability will be available on current Apple TV boxes through software updates.”
Gardiner continues, “Michael Gartenberg, vice president and research director at Jupiter Research, takes a different view, saying that comparing Apple TV to other solutions likes DVRs and is actually unfair. ‘It’s like being in the market for a car, and comparing a Toyota Prius to the Sequoia,’ Gartenberg said. ‘If you’re looking at the Prius, you’re certainly not considering the Sequoia. I just don’t see [Apple TV] as competing with those products at all. What this is really about is leveraging the platform that iTunes has become…getting that content to the most important screen in the home: the TV. If you’re a part of that ecosystem, this is product form you,’ Gartenberg said.”
Full article here.
We can smell that Motorola lackey’s fear through the Internet. It’s a rational fear. 110 million iTunes users and counting. 110 million. Surely, he can see that there’s more to Apple TV than immediately meets the eye. Apple’s future moves are going to be very exciting in this space!
MacDailyNews Note: Apple TV specs:
• Video formats supported: H.264 and protected H.264 (from iTunes Store): 640 by 480, 30 fps, LC version of Baseline Profile; 320 by 240, 30 fps, Baseline profile up to Level 1.3; 1280 by 720, 24 fps, Progressive Main Profile. MPEG-4: 640 by 480, 30 fps, Simple Profile
• Audio formats supported: AAC (16 to 320 Kbps); protected AAC (from iTunes Store); MP3 (16 to 320 Kbps); MP3 VBR; Apple Lossless; AIFF; WAV
• Photo formats supported: JPEG, BMP, GIF, TIFF, PNG
• Enhanced-definition or high-definition widescreen TVs capable of 1080i 60/50Hz, 720p 60/50Hz, 576p 50Hz (PAL format), or 480p 60Hz
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