Apple today announced that the new Apple TV software update, which allows users to rent high definition movies directly from their widescreen TVs, is not quite finished. Apple now plans to make the free software download available to existing Apple TV customers in another week or two.
MacDailyNews Take: We will rent no movie before its time.
Apple TV’s software update will allow movie fans to rent movies on the iTunes Store directly from their widescreen TV. With iTunes Movie Rentals and Apple TV, users can just click a button on their remote to effortlessly rent movies from a catalog of over 1,000 titles by the end of February, including over 100 titles in stunning high definition video with 5.1 Dolby Digital surround sound, with no computer required. DVD-quality iTunes Movie Rentals are $2.99 for library titles and $3.99 for new releases, and high definition versions are just one dollar more with library titles at $3.99 and new releases at $4.99. Purchases downloaded to Apple TV are automatically synced back to iTunes on the user’s computer for enjoyment on their computer, all current generation iPods (iPod classic, iPod nano with video, iPod touch) or iPhone. Apple TV easily connects to a broad range of widescreen TVs and home theater systems and comes standard with HDMI, component video, analog and optical audio ports.
The new Apple TV software will be available as a free automatic download to all Apple TV customers within two weeks. Apple TV, which includes the Apple Remote, is available from the Apple Store, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers for a suggested retail price of $229 for the 40GB model and $329 for the 160GB model (US and Canada). Apple TV requires an 802.11g/n wireless network or 10/100 Base-T Ethernet networking, a broadband Internet connection and a high definition widescreen TV. iPod games will not play on Apple TV. iTunes Movie Rentals are available in the US only.
More info about Apple TV here.
MacDailyNews Take: Lop some more off the share price for this boo boo.
Man, I’ve been anxiously waiting for this….come on Apple! Stop giving us dates you can’t meet!
Keyword “seems”, as in it “seems” I’ll have to wait a tad longer for HD movie rentals…
unhappy camper
Yikes… Apple should start building in extra time when promising dates. This just gives MS lovers an opportunity to say “APPLE IS JUST LIKE MICROSOFT! APPLE MISSES DEADLINES TOO!” Better to underpromise and overdeliver.
I certainly hope they deliver the iPhone SDK on time. It’s too high profile a release to push back.
@erk
Why are you unhappy? Would you rather have an unfinished buggy product like Vista than a stable polished software? I say take your time Apple. I’d rather have a polished product than some half assed piece of crap. You know like Zune/Vista/HTC… among others.
Promises, promises, promises.
You just know that the engineers are scrambling to make this work right, because for the streaming rental service to succeed, it must be flawless.
How many of these ‘delays’ have there been during the past 12 months? Compared to the previous 12 months?
I thought so. Steve had better pay attention to this. This practice is so MSoft-like; so Dell-like; so un-Appe-like.
He won’t like the reason he’s on more magazine covers this year…
We have to wait a whole WEEK or even TWO? That’s just insanely harsh, right after THIS disappointment:
http://gizmodo.com/349673/rumor-smashed-windows-7-not-coming-in-2009
The definition of surreal… I’m listening to Carly Simon singing “Anticipation” and reading this article.
It’s not the delay so much that annoys me, per se; it’s making a date that you don’t deliver on.
I’m glad that they’re taking the time to get things right, but I was so hoping it would hit this week. I’ve already rented three movies that I wanted to watch on my Apple TV. Oh well, that’s what I get for not being patient. I guess I’ll just hook up my iPod to my TV for now.
1-2 weeks is like Microsoft’s 1-2 years?
I’ll have what the trolls are smoking
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I thought Steve said “middle of February” for Apple TV during the Keynote !
So its not late at all
Fine. Take the extra time and get it right.
Hmmmm, I have to wonder about this. Remember when Vista was pushed back for a year to ….a…….a……..tweak a few things (read drop a bunch of stuff)???
I wonder if they actually never delivered Vista at all. Maybe they knew they needed a new OS release so they just stopped working on Longhorn, created a mini-me (ME like) version of XP with some “must have” features and released that as Vista. And now they are just continuing on working on the original Longhorn and maybe adding a few small features (plus the ones that they had planned all along.
Could it be? I mean, it would say that they took 10 years for Longhorn, not 5-6, and this whole Vista mess is like it is cause they scrambled it out from XP + DRM and anti-pirate features.
(Insert twilight zone music here) “You have just taken a short trip ……. into the Twilight Zone.”
en
You lives are all so meaningless that you have to throw a fit because you have to wait two more weeks for something that you didn’t have in the first place? And, oh my god, if it was delivered on time and it had issue, man what would be said then?
There are larger issues in the world people then having to wait two weeks to download a HD movie for all the hi-tech couch potatoes in the world.
Read a newspaper, get involved for god sake!
They are adding support for the Zune Social store.
NOT
A few weeks for QA to completely restart after few minor bugs were discovered kind of late is not an unreasonable delay. Longhorn/Vista was delayed for what years! because Microsloth was too lazy to start putting it’s parts together before they even discovered that it’s parts weren’t compatible with other parts and there was no way to compile all the code together that generated a even slightly stable OS product. Then all the code was so, brittle that fixes for compatibility so a stable OS product wasn’t possible in any reasonable amount of time. So, all the original code was scraped and they started over using the Windows 2003 server base and kernel code and basically just built a plus pack around it to get the final Vista out the door, then they even hosed that by adding so much bloat and poorly coded add-on that it’s almost not a usable product on all most all of the systems that had been labeled as Vista Ready, and if it was an older system forget about Vista being stable. Then their is the whole issue of systems still being sold with Vista per-installed that aren’t really able to run Vista because they crash or are so slow that your 5+ year old XP system looks like a stable speed demon in comparison.
Steve, just hire some more people. These missed software deadlines are becoming a rule rather than exceptions. And although it is better to release well-working software instead of buggy, the more often this happens the more it becomes unacceptable.
It’s not lickable enough yet.
Comment from: meow meow cry meow meow
Are you trying to insinuate that cats are pussies? I have an 18 pound dog-fighting cat here who would like to explain to you what it means when he meows.
There are larger issues in the world people then having to wait two weeks to download a HD movie for all the hi-tech couch potatoes in the world.
False dichotomy. People can enjoy renting movies and “get involved” by reading a newspaper. And seriously, read a newspaper? WTF?
“Steve, just hire some more people.”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Throwing more people at a late software project it likely to make it even MORE late.
> Steve, just hire some more people.
Ummm… that’s what Microsoft does. It doesn’t work, and here’s why:
http://tal.forum2.org/mythman
> These missed software deadlines are becoming a rule rather than exceptions
Fascinating random blather. Please list all of Apple’s software releases for the past 10 years, mark the ones that were “late,” and show me a trend. I’ll save you time: software development runs late sometimes it’s nothing new. Not for Apple, not for any software company. And it’s not the “rule” for Apple. It’s the rule for Microsoft.
To Ryan:
BINGO.
“damn, Damn, DAMN!” – florida evans
get the software right add some buffer in those release date targets…
10.5.2
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