“Compared to the high profile sales of iPhones, iPods, and Mac computers, shipments of Apple TV are barely registering. Pundits present rival media boxes as potential “Apple TV killers,” but the entire market segment seems to have little life in it yet. Here’s what’s holding the market for downloadable videos back, leading up to what Apple can do to shake up the market and why it is unique in being able to disrupt how the world watches video,” Daniel Eran Dilger writes for RoughlyDrafted.
“Despite its advantages of being linked to iTunes and the iPod, Apple TV faces three difficult barriers that also affect every other comparable device on the market, including several products that have already failed while trying to sell movie downloads through a set top box,” Dilger writes.
• Lower quality downloads don’t look very good on HDTV sets.
• Studios want DVD-like profits from higher quality downloads.
• Video downloads are big, and require fast network access to deliver.
Much more in the full article here.
If its main purpose is to drive paid video downloads from iTunes….
Daniel Eran Dilger Rules…..O K!!!
…then it ain’t enough?
Hairy has a new 42″ tv and 160 Gig Apple TV, just came back from Vietnam with his digital pictures and movies. The display of pictures on the tv via the Apple TV impressed Hairy’s dinner guests no end…PC people couldn’t get over the way the pictures display on their own at random.
To-day Hairy went to the library and selected ten DVDs. No charge, except in municipal taxes. Hairy has the Apple TV for his home movies, pictures, and itunes collection and the convenience of using the Apple remote instead of those multi-button remotes that come with tv sets and cable boxes….Hairy can’t live without his Apple TV, and this is just after two weeks.
TV video looks great. Standard or HD video on a 52in HDTV. Only the very first videos that iTunes offered were substandard.
I agree with the fact that movie studios want too much money, but movie rentals help alot. TV shows are fairly expensive, since we rarely want to watch them over and over. Compared to cable or even Netflix.
Most people have Broadband these days. And most Broadband is fast enough. 3.0 or faster…
barriers hold back, not up
i think there is only one reason holding it back, which is content. i have a pretty average 6Mb dsl flatrate here in germany (30 euros a month) and movies rented from the store start after roughly 30 seconds. quality is like dvd on my 42″ plasma, no issus here. the only reason i more often go to the local store to rent movies is having no selection in german and having only a small selection on the U.S. store. so again: it’s only the movie studios being afraid of the paradigm shift. as long as they hold back the content the apple tv won’t fly.
I’m waiting for Apple & the TV Studios to figure out how to rent a whole TV season.
I own an appleTV and love it. The quality of video and audio are excellent. I’m running it on a 42″ LCD at 720p w/ home theater audio setup. I would have to say that the only opinion that makes sense is that:
“Studios want DVD-like profits from higher quality downloads.”
I want AppleTV but I have older TV set and ATV will not work with it.
Other than that, I would love to have it for pics, music and home vids, no rentals necessary.
Duh, duh, and no duh!
What holds back Apple TV is Apple crippling the machine–it is a nice piece of hardware ruined by lousy software that purposely limits its usability.
I thought that was what Sony does, not Apple.
1) No way to install additional codecs. Want to play divx files? Tough—even though that is the format most people’s video files are in. Want to play shn or flac files? Tough.
2) No directory-level network sharing or file browsing. Everything has to be done through iTunes. I have a 500 GB drive filled with TV shows and movies converted over to mp4s. Why the hell can’t I just plug the drive into the AppleTV’s USB port? Instead, I have to have computer running iTunes, plug the drive into that, load the movies into iTunes, and then stream then to the AppleTV. That makes a lot of sense.
3) I have an old 500 MHz G4. iTunes is a complete dog-slow nightmare on this machine. Firefly media server, on the other hand, is nice and quick and is fine for streaming files to various Macs. But NOT the AppleTV since the AppleTV is purposely crippled to connect only to iTunes using a combination code, so to limit the number of machines it can stream from. Absolutely retarded.
4) It would be neat to see what developers could come with as for applications running on a TV set, maybe we could finally get some of the things seen on sci fi movies. Gee, I wish someone would make a box loaded with a real, powerful operating system, maybe even a UNIX derived operating system, that could plug into a big-screen TV. Maybe even a UNIX derived operating system with a well-regarded set of development tools and object-oriented development libraries. Oh, you mean Apple did that? Good thing they locked the OS up so that all it can do is run a version of Front Row.
Sure, you can do some things by hacking the thing, either breaking open the box or following obscure directions involving USB key drives, but of course then Apple does is wipe out the hacks with the next software update.
I’ve had the AppleTV since the day it was released, and it is just a lower-specced Mac Mini intentionally crippled almost every way possible by Apple.
@Jim – TIV
If you think about it… lots of times im sure you have heard in person someone running ahead and someone yelling “Hey, hold up” which is the same as wait up… So really it does make sense for them to say hold up instead of hold back. Either can be used because either or are correct.
Most Youtube videos look like shite on my 50″ Plasma, but iTunes rentals look pretty darn good via my AppleTV, even the standard definition ones.
In my opnion, content is still holding back AppleTV, as well as versatility. The AppleTV should be like an iPod touch for my big screen (Hello Apple, the internet is rich with media that I would like to view on my big screen).
Unfortunately, it is nothing more than iTunes for my HDTV, and not even a good copy of iTunes at that. If you have ever tried to navigate AppleTV, you know what I mean.
Dilger need to get a better TV.
My whole family all my friends love our Apple TV. Not one of the three things he mentions is really the issue. People (the general public) are not quite equiped for it yet. Here is what I have found:
1. A large portion of the public still don’t have HDTV’s and some of those who do have poor quality sets.
2. A large portion of the public don’t have 802.11 “N” wireless connections yet. A lot of the public have wireless homes but they are using older wireless systems and don’t see a need to replace it because their internet works just fine.
3. Lack of knowledge and money.
Yes I have a incredible entertainment setup at my house but it wasn’t cheap. To do it right here is what it could cost you.
1. HDTV ~ $1000-$3000 (depending on choice).
2. 802.11N ~ $99-$180 for Airport Express/Extreme or equal.
3. Apple TV ~ $230-$330 depending on hard drive (choice?).
4. Cables ~ $50-$150 for good cables.
5. Surround Sound ~ $400-$1500 (depending on choice).
6. Hi-speed internet connection ~ (assumed you already have)
You can’t really piece this together and do it right so you have an expense of around $3000-$4000 dollars or more depending on your choice.
That is why it’s not selling in huge numbers. How much of the general public really has that kind of money to invest now days with the price of gas, food and still pay their bills.
Next year things will change when all the broadcasts will be HD. That still doesn’t mean people are going to go running out and buy HDTV’s. Their old stereo’s work just fine and their wireless systems still run websites fast enough so why upgrade.
The general public is just not ready for the “Jetson” life style.
Please forgive spelling and grammer, I was typing as fast as I could.
Only 15% of all TV’s in US households are HDTV’s…
Apple is addressing only 15% of the market with Apple TV.
Apple’s market reaches only 37.5 million HDTV’s, vs. the 250 million overall TV’s out there…
Not being able to address the additional 212.5 million TV’s with a solution is a problem…
Even if Apple were to sell 1 Apple TV for every 5 HDTV’s sold, we are talking about 7.5 million Apple TV’s sold, or about 1.5 million per quarter.
Apple will not say how many have been sold, but per quarter might be more like 500k – 750k or so… Not a huge deal.
Thus, Apple is addressing probably 10% – 15% of all HDTV’s sold at present with an Apple TV. That’s a decent connect rate for a new device and technology, but nowhere the reach it could have if Apple did one simple thing:
Deliver an analog video output port!
Of course, Hollywood won’t allow this, because they think standard folk will suddenly pirate and share with everyone on the planet (stupid is as stupid does).
Thus Apple is forced to continue it’s current path with HDTV’s only.
Apple TV’s will truly take off in sales when WiMAX is introduced into the box, and Apple hooks up with ESPN, TNT and other networks. When Apple can offer ESPN for $3.99 or in HD for $4.99 a month al-a-carte, or any network you wish without a lame cable or dish package to sign up for, Apple will dominate.
DVDs looked great on my 27″ HDTV. When I got a 42″ HDTV last black Friday, DVDs looked bad, blocky, and I just couldn’t watch them anymore. I even purchased and returned an upscaling player that didn’t help improve the picture. I’ve been holding out for an inexpensive BluRay player but it is taking too long. I decided to purchase an Apple TV about a month ago. I was interested in being able to pipe music in to my surround sound as well as rent movies. The first movie I rented was HD and although it took quite a while to download over my 1.54mbps Motorola Canopy wireless connection the picture was phenomenal on my 42″ set. Then I rented a standard definition movie and it turns out to look great too and the image is smooth unlike DVDs. I hope that Apple TV keeps gaining momentum and gets more feature and options. It is also great with gas prices being up and living in a rural mountain area. I can grab a standard movie and start watching it in about 15 minutes. The only really irritating issue is the having to complete watching a movie in 24 hours. I have already had to stop watching one to respond to a volunteer fire call, return and need to go to bed, return from work the next day but have another activity that ran out the clock before I could finish the movie. Doh – Let’s try seven days please . . .
Let’s skate to where the puck will be, not has been.
Add ABC.com, Hulu (Faux & NBC) & CBS.com ad supported to Apple TV in a manner similar to YouTube. That way people willing to put up with ads get a form of Internet protocol TV. It’s a quick way to add a ton of content to Apple TV and would move quite a few units.
P.S. Time-Warner & Comcast are in the process of putting bandwidth and monthly volume caps on their residential accounts. They have been sending out changes to the terms of service, which most have not read and probably threw away. This could kill Apple TV as an iPTV device.
Just thought you might like to know…
“barriers hold back, not up”
Because that would make them ‘brariers’…..
Anyone with more nerve and money than me try one of these yet?
http://www.macuser.com/apple-tv/easy_apple_tv_hacking.php
well, crap, as of like right now it’s unavailable. Sins of witches!
This guy’s 3rd point about the lack of bandwidth is correct. I’m in San Francisco with Comcast cable broadband (avg ~ 6-8 Mbps) and it’s still too slow for downloading movies.
Until our home connections are fast enough to enable almost “instant-on”, none of these devices will be very successful.
I have an Apple TV. It’s a fantastic device for listening to my iTunes library, looking at my iPhoto pictures, and watching the very few TV shows that I have purchased. It is mediocre for renting movies because the network is too slow. It’s not the device. It’s the network!
I would also like the ability to play multiple language tracks, similar to what many DVD’s now offer.
“This guy’s 3rd point about the lack of bandwidth is correct. I’m in San Francisco with Comcast cable broadband (avg ~ 6-8 Mbps) and it’s still too slow for downloading movies. “
whaa?!?
i get 3Mbps and aside from a 45 second to start the film it works flawlessly.
maybe comcast is throttling down the stream?
Who does Dilger blame for AppleTV’s lack of success? Not Apple. No, it is your fault as a citizen for not willingly and gratefully subsidizing the technology for instant entertainment with more intrusive local, state, and/or federal taxation.
“(Immediate access to HD quality entertainment) is unlikely to change until <strike>the government begins</strike> the public taxpayers begin seeing the need to <strike>serve citizens</strike> raise their taxes rather than just making it easier for corporations to make money.”
That’s it, Dilger the cretin, governmental responsibilities to “serve” the nation include preserving life, liberty, and immediate access to HD episodes of “The Simpsons”. Strangely, I and over 200 million other citizens must have missed that part of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Frankly, I see no “need” to give my taxes to corporations such as Apple, NetFlix, or Microsoft. Do businesses like Apple, NetFlix, or Microsoft not make enough profit that citizens “need” to fill their coffers with our tax dollars?
This begs the question, “Why did Apple devote time and money to launch AppleTV when so many technological obstacles and barriers to instant entertainment pre-existed?” Dilger conveniently fails to address why Apple and others engaged in business endeavors that he argues were destined for failure because the technological prerequisites for success were conspicuously missing.
Another thing, Dilger the moron, how is it that certain groups that deliver entertainment products to your home should be guaranteed a certain fee (i.e Apple, NetFlix, and Microsoft) but the studios who produce the entertainment you want are exempt from charging a fair profit? And what gives you the right to arbitrarily determine what is a fair profit?
Dilger, you’re simply an imbecile and so is anyone else that agree with your dimwitted ranting and rationalizations.
I get 7 megs down, and when I rented a hi-def movie, it was ready to start in less than two minutes.
The popcorn wasn’t even through popping…..