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I completely disagree with this: “• Offer a monthly subscription plan a la (gulp) cable…”
I am an AppleTV owner and I have used it to replace my Satellite Service. With Satellite I was paying $50+a month to watch. You end up with a whole lot of reruns most of the time so you end up paying to watch things you’ve already paid to watch. I got the AppleTV to get away from the “Subscribe to rewatch shows you’ve already watched” model. Now, though it is costing me a bit upfront I’m looking at long term savings with my AppleTV because I only have to pay to watch a season of a show once and once I’ve got the show I can rewatch it to my heart’s content without having to pay to see it again. That’s the real benefit to getting the AppleTV the freedom to control when what you are paying to watch.
Still, they need to get HD content in the iTunes store, otherwise the device will never really seem worthwhile to the consumer.
This writer has no clue…. He doesn’t see the big picture. The market is not ready for this type of technology, but Apple is positioned well and completes the circle of devices.
Again no clue….
I do have to say that Steve wanting to dictate pricing to studios is idiotic.
Remember free market system?
The TV should be a storage leader and be able to play anything my Mac can. As it is, it looks like an extension of iTunes, i.e., made for and not for me.
Look, Jobs has been downplaying the AppleTV because the major content providers are alreadying scared to death about Apple.
The AppleTV is a great device and I love it! But Apple hasn’t gone out of it’s way to promote it, or enable it to do everything it clearly can do. This is a Trojan horse. As other internet to TV devices come and go, and fail, Apple is building up a lot of experience and technology and will be ready to go full blast once the time comes.
Meanwhile they are a little more focused on controling all portable audio, portable video, and now mobile phones. When they are ready, they’ll takeover everyone’s television too.
Add an Apple branded USB .mp4 encoding PVR device and AppleTV sales will take off like a rocket. Same device can connect to your Mac as well. A new icon for Front Row (Recordings?)
An HD capable version is another winner.
I use Apple TV to buy all the tv shows on which we normally need to wait a couple of years here in Europe. I achieved that by creating a paypal account with a US address and my own creditcard. Then create an iTunes account with the paypal account.
Besides that I like to watch video podcasts like diggnation & dl.tv on my 50″ Full HD Plasma set.
It’s a measure of Apple’s success these days that any product that does not blow the sales roof off is quick to be labelled “flop” by writers such as this.
Apple is not an idiot company. They’ve shown over and over that they know what to do with almost all their products (the only exception has been the Cube), so if they had wanted Apple TV to have iPod-sized sales, they would have configured it that way.
Let’s look at the facts. First, you need to have a hi-def TV to use the device. Well, sales of HD sets are growing, but I think still not at a mass market level. These things are relatively expensive and there is simply not enough, affordable HD content to justify the expense for many people.
You also need a fairly well-equipped, more recent computer, preferably a Mac, to use it effectively. This though is not as big an issue. Still, not too many people who own older computers are going to rush out to replace them just to use the Apple TV.
But look three, five years down the road, and HDTV is probably going to become the new normal – and when that happens, Apple TV will be ready and waiting to take its place as a mass-market device.
This one is meant to be a slow burner, a sort of guerrilla product put out there ahead of its time. If it wasn’t, Apple would have promoted the heck out of it. As it is, Apple seems perfectly satisfied with the way it’s going.
Most of the posts on this thread are from those who already have it, and are perfectly satisfied with it. This positive word-of-mouth seems for now largely sufficient for Apple.
“simply not enough, affordable HD content to justify the expense for many people.”
What planet are you on, most markets have free over the air HDTV stations, say 20 of them in any major metropolitan area.
“still not at a mass market level”
HDTVs cost about $215 for an entry level model, How much further do you want them to drop to be “Mass Market”.
“Most of the posts on this thread are from those who already have it, and are perfectly satisfied with it”
Most of the satisfied posts are from dumb fanboys who have never seen a TIVO, Playstation, XBox or Media Center PC.
I dunno, at the risk of being flamed, I do think that the apple tv suffers from Steve’s hatred of TV. It should have been a DVR, folks, they could have re-invented that whole way of getting content. And say what you will, when I looked at the picture on an HDTV set, it looked crappy. Maybe it’s just me, but I have an HDTV to watch HDTV.
Perhaps Apple will save the day when they support HDTV downloads and let users download content directly from the box, but the AppleTV as a middleman for content is just irritating. I used my Xbox 360 to get the Heroes premiere in HD, and it looked awesome. Of course, Apple and Universal are fighting, so we won’t be seeing THAT on AppleTV anytime soon.
AppleTV is due for an upgrade. I fear that Apple is going to hang it out to dry given the relative lack of attention it has been getting.
anyway, just my opinion.
-m
We’ve got an AppleTV in the den and it’s great, we use it almost every day. I’m actually thinking about getting a second one for the bedroom (after the iPhone purchase).
We don’t have to worry about conflicts in recording shows, just download it from Apple. Plus, all of my Blue October concert videos can go from the computer to the TV.
Sure some improvements could be made, but as it is, it does what Steve said it would do and it does it well.
~M
Wow look at all these comments…. Do you really think that it is a flop? Seems a lot of people sure do like thiers.
Wow look at all these comments…. Do you really think that it is a flop? Seems a lot of people sure do like thiers.
It’s a “flop” simply because it hasn’t been the kind of million-unit blockbuster the world expects from Apple.
People who have them do love them, but the market appeal IS limited. It’s going to take some work to get AppleTV into the mainstream, where non-HD sets still have the majority and network bandwidth is limited (if available at all).
HDTVs cost about $215 for an entry level model, How much further do you want them to drop to be “Mass Market”.
The problem is an HDTV is discretionary, you don’t NEED to get one to live. The mainstream will adopt HDTV as older units fail, and maybe as an indulgence.
HDTV is the future, no question. But it’s going to take a while to get the critical mass that can pull HD-only devices like AppleTV into the mainstream as well.
Too bad none of this changes the fact most of today’s programming sucks, HD or not. Maybe Jobs and Pixar could change that as well…
Apple should do a deal with TiVo to make TiVo content playable on AppleTV (and the Mac and iPod). You can now do it with third party software on the Series 2 and soon on Series 3, but it’s not convenient. Apple and TiVo should make it an easy, smooth process. They should also make iTunes DRM content play on TiVo. Also, they should look into a deal with Amazon Unbox. License the DRM to Apple so they can provide content. Other things Apple should do are reform the unit to take normal desktop hard drives so the capacity can be 1TB+. They should provide a much better remote that can control the volume on your TV. They should also either add a composite (RCA) jack or if possible upgrade the software to allow one of the Component jacks to act as a composite connector. Everyone has a TV in their house that can use this jack and not HD. Since music doesn’t benefit from HD, and since most of the existing content on iTunes is SD, why the hell did they require an HDTV? Add composite and people can also buy second AppleTV units for bedrooms where they haven’t upgraded to HD. They obviously need to allow purchases to be purchased from and downloaded to the ATV directly. They should also provide a way to synch your iPod to your AppleTV. They should also let you connect your iPod and play the content from it on the AppleTV. Maybe they should consider a TV version of Safari, along with adding a wireless keyboard, even if it was only enabled on an HD TV. This would create an opportunity for TV Web apps, like looking up movies on IMDB.
I forgot a few other wishlist things:
Make AppleTV the hub for your home theater. Create addons for DVD/CD Player (for playback, but maybe also for ripping), and HD optical. My fantasy device would be an addon that had the ability to read/play HD DVD, Blu-Ray, DVD, and CD. Will never happen.
@ AbdullahInDreamland:
You were doing fine until you said “Most of the satisfied posts are from dumb fanboys who have never seen a TIVO, Playstation, XBox or Media Center PC.”
I looks like you’re unfamiliar with Apple TV. TiVo requires a subscription and the games boxes are just that: expensive, noisy, big, and ugly that require you to use game controllers as TV remotes. No thanks.
it’s not a failure. i plan to buy one within the next year. easier than hooking up my MB to my TV when i want to stream photos / movies / music ….
It’s perfect for out kids’ programs. With a DVD you have to wait forever to go through the FBI screen and all the other crap. With Apple TV you just select and play. Our kids love it! We don’t use broadcast television for them anymore. They have their favorities like Little Einsteins or Blue’s Clues. Also, I enjoy watching the Daily Show on the big screen when I want it. The You Tube is nice, but it’s a novelty ~ I don’t care much about it. I do want the capability to purchase straight from Apple TV. This is the future. That guy who’s naysaying it obviously never tried one for any amount of time!
NO SUBSCRIPTIONS – I REPEAT, NO SUBSCRIPTIONS… Unless of course we can continue to pay as we go. I will not even think of subscribing to anything that requires a subscription – even if it is an Apple product/service.
Since we cancelled our DishNet. service last month I’ve been noticing something, I think we’ve all got our collective heads in the proverbial sand – Producers, Distributors, Consumers.
We cancelled our Dish service to begin converting over to online services for our TV viewing, like iTMS. We had already begun to download shows and watch them from iTMS, and were getting ready to implement TV, but between the time we cancelled Dish and were on the verge of ordering the TV we discovered that some of the TV networks were offering their own shows on their own web sites (with some interesting attempts at interactive ads), and some of those shows were the ones that we wanted – and the video quality was perceptually as good as Dish SD. But it didn’t end there, my wife, being the incredibly resourceful person that she is also discovered that services like VEOH and tv-video.net often provide the balance of the TV viewing we were doing with Dish, and ready to convert to TV for. Now I’m not so naive that I don’t understand the questionablness of the abilities provided on VEOH and tv-video.net – but there you have it. (Can anyone say bittorrent?)
Now combine this with the desperate sounding phone calls I’ve been getting from Dish reps. about “…what happened to make you leave us after all of these years…”, and I think that what I see actually happening with traditional TV watching is a paradigm shift change that, in and of itself, is happening so fast and is so yet-to-be-defined, that none of us (producers, distributors, consumers) really understand what’s happening or where we’re going to end up before it all fish-tails back into someone’s control [if it ever does].
We’re all on the next frontier of media entertainment production and distribution and no one has even a clue what that really means for either end of the delivery pipe, and TV is just one of a plethora of devices and services that scrambling to become the defining device and/or service that does what iTunes has done for music, and the rest are trying to figure out which one to follow. We’re all in this gynormous and unwitting market test that doesn’t even know yet what it’s final goal is (other than for a few people to get really rich…).
I don’t see TV’s apparent failure as a failure, simply a step in an organic step to, to… what we don’t know yet.
I love my Apple TV, I hate reading all the people complain that they don’t want to spend the money on an HD TV. Yet I would guess that over half the people complaining have a LDC Monitor that has DVI input that is not be used. or spend $300.00 on cheap 22″ wide screen LCD Monitor. My Apple TV is connected to a monitor using a HDMI to DVI Cable and the picture is better then on a HD TV.
I have not personally tried it but I hear that you can use a DVI to VGA connector to get the picture on a standard VGA Monitor or to even convert the VGA to SVideo. Using some VCR you and covert the RGB Component Video to Composite, SVideo, or to a Co-ax signal.
Apple TV is NOT a flop… media extenders in general are not selling very well, Steve knew this when he made the product..
Apple TV is selling MORE units than any other Media Extender on the market…
its a fact JACK!
My beloved Apple TV $299
Canon 5D Digital Camera $2995
50″ DLP HDTV $2495
Being able to show photos to all my friends when we entertain, PRICELESS!
(But they always seem to end up watching YouTube after that anyway).
Add a DVD slot and I’m sold.
Yes, TV doesn’t offer what many people want from a video device like this, but in all fairness, TV isn’t advertised like the iPhone campaign. What the heck does everyone expect? The technology isn’t quite where it needs to be either to attract a lot of buyers. Where’s the true HD, and what do we really need to be able to get video input wirelessly from our computers and the Internet?