“Apple has been, and continues to be, quite secretive regarding the number of Apple TVs that are in circulation. Apple neither discloses a total unit sales figure for the device, nor does it announce the amount of revenue it receives from Apple TV sales. All we know is that Apple currently uses the subscription method of accounting for Apple TV revenue, much like it does with the iPhone,” Andy Zaky writes for Seeking Alpha.
“But instead of allocating a separate line item for the Apple TV on its financial statement, Apple simply records the revenue under one line item called “iPhone and Apple TV”—leaving the relevant observer completely ignorant as to both the monetary and market impact of the device. This has led many Wall Street pundits, investors and financial analysts to fully understate the potential influence the Apple TV might have on the video market,” Zaky writes.
“For all we know, the Apple TV could be making considerable ground even as I write this article. Last week, Apple announced that iTunes has become the world’s most popular online movie store as it sells and rents over 50,000 movies per day or a little over 18 million movies per year. That’s with a catalogue of only 2,000 movies. With a huge customer install base for movie downloads already set in place, the Apple TV 2.0 can already be taking off,” Zaky writes.
Zaky writes, “Yet, while Apple has made significant inroads in its campaign for occupancy of the living room with its Apple TV Take 2, the Apple TV still has a long ways to go from being the perfect alternative to DVD players… Knowing the genius of Steve Jobs, Apple is probably working on most, if not all of them:”
• Where’s the TV Tuner and HD-DVR?
• Wireless Syncing and Streaming with the iPod Touch & the iPhone.
• iTunes Expansion, DVD Extras, Subscription Services and HD Content.
• Maybe a Blu-Ray Player?
• Allow DVD Ripping in a DRM Protected Format.
• Better Remote Control… A touch screen one perhaps?
Much more, including discussion of each of the above bullet points, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Carl” for the heads up.]
Want a touch screen remote for Apple TV? Just buy it for your iPhone and/or iPod touch from Apple’s App Store, right?
I actually own the 160 gig version. I didn’t buy it, mind you, one of my vendors gave it to me as a gift.
Anyways, while I like it and think that it’ll be really nice, I don’t really use it that much. I have a netflix account, and that’s much cheaper than renting a movie for 4 bucks off of Apple TV.
But I’m still glad that I have it.
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I don’t get why people want the Apple TV to have a TV tuner and DVR. Doesn’t everybody who has an HDTV already have a TV tuner and DVR from their cable company? Why would you want two different DVRs and TV tuners hooked up to the same TV?
I received an ATV for my birthday and just hooked it up last month as I don’t have a wide screen TV. Found a 480i converter with an S-Video output and it works like a charm.
I haven’t yet done any hacks, but the ATV would be even better in you could play multiple format types without a hack. In the meantime I’m wearing out my copies of Handbrake and Visual Hub.
Another improvement would be for a true power saving mode. My ATV stays very warm even when ‘off.’
I have two AppleTVs – one in family room, one in bedroom – I love them….of course I also have a Apple file server running that stores all my movies, music, and tv shows.
I’ve almost given up watching regular tv….I just watch movies or tv series I purhcase. Just bought ROME though iTunes…loved it. Thinking of getting Deadwood now.
I love my Apple TV, but also realize that it can be better.
My List
-On/Off Switch
-Built-in divx support, .avi, .mkv, .mpg
-Built in weather, RSS, news feed
-Organization tool with itunes, folders, PLAYLISTS for movies!
-iphone-esk user interface
-Less abundance of itunes store links, one button to take you to the itunes store. I have to go to movies, and all the way down to “My movies” sounds microsfty
I know some of these can be hacked in, but I dont have time to enable SSH and crap. GIVE ME ical, contacts, calculator
The Roku Netflix Player is a much better deal than the Apple TV. Until Hollywood removes the ridiculous restrictions & high pricing that it is placing on the Apple TV movie content, Apple TV will never take off.
reeed,
I have an HDTV without a pay TV service. It has a built in TV tuner, so I’m set there, but a DVR would be nice.
leaving the <u>relevant</u> observer completely ignorant
Where did this pretentious git learn English? Correspondence school?
I really dislike reporters who try to sound more intelligent than they really are, only to write so poorly that they come off as idiots.
Question for those who have an Apple TV, does it play music video play lists???
The reason I’m asking is that Frontrow doesn’t, I’ve bought a bunch of Music Video’s from iTunes and enjoy watching them, right now that takes plugging my laptop into the TV and using iTunes visualizer to play through a playlist of music videos. If I try opening that same playlist in Frontrow I can only play one song at a time, if I try to use the “shuffle” option it throws an error, if I just start playing a video it will go back out to the playlist view once the song is done and won’t go on to the next one.
I’m not going to buy an Apple TV if it can’t play a music video playlist but I can’t find any documentation on it that actually states that it does. Short of going to an apple store with my laptop and connecting a display model to my music library I have no idea if the Apple TV will work for me or if I’ll have to get a Mac Mini to plug into the TV…
If anyone with an Apple TV and a few music videos in your iTunes library could check on that for me I’d be really grateful!
For me the question is not “Can it replace the DVD?” , it already has, but “Can it replace cable? . Use over the air for local channels and purchase the TV shows though iTunes.
Most of his complaints could be solved with a EyeTV device and the iPhone or Touch.
EyeTV has HD DVRs that work brilliantly with a Mac, and will allow streaming to your iPhone or Touch.
EL GATO TV has a feature to send the programing to the iPhone via web page. Apple TV should have this feature, I fount it very useful.
Add a SDR, it will suddenly becomes a game console and much more. Remember, ATV also runs on OSX.
“… the perfect alternative to dvd players”? I’m never going to see TV as an alternative to a dvd/blu-ray player, and I would never expect Apple to have that as a goal for the TV.
Along with the “retarded_baboon” I also wish that TV would support divx, mpg, avi, etc. (Even though I for one wish .avi would go away, but that’s another thread.)
I also wish that the TV would allow playback of music and videos from other inhome computers without having to import the media into iTunes first.
Sorry, it should be SDK (software development kit), not SDR.
For me its not only mostly replaced my DVD player(I’ve converted my entire 300+ DVD library to ATV format so I can watch any movie with the press of a button) but it has also replaced my cable tv service.
I spend about 30 bucks a month downloading a few shows and rent a few movies via Itunes store which is great. I also subscribe to Netflix, the 2 dvd at a time for ten bucks so I’m spending about 40 bucks a month which is WAY less than my cable service was.
I think the Netflix player would be a good addition to the ATV, since you can’t most new movies or TV shows from the netflix streaming box, but you can get them from the ATV. And the benefit to the netflix box is that you can get a lot of older content without paying any more.
And then once a month I’ll have people over and pony up the extra cash for a high def ATV rental and my friends are pretty amazed….then they see my instant access via ATV to my entire DVD collection, my music library, and my photo library and they are sold!!
The main issue with the Apple TV for me (I have the 160GB) version is that here in Canada only a small portion of the movies are for rent, especially the latest hot releases. They want you to Buy which I will never do as movie content is not music. I may listen to music over and over but I only watch a movie once. Unless more content becomes available for rent it is back to the video store 🙁
I like the TV, don’t personally have one because I use a headless MacBook 2.0 GHz as my media center with an EyeTV Hybrid tuner connected to my HDTV. Moved all my DVDs over to iTunes using Handbrake (retaining AC3 sound {yay}), and for any movies I rent I have cut out Blockbuster and the likes…. RedBox and it’s 1.00 a day fee works great for me. With a RedBox location at my local grocery story that I visit often, also across the street from my wife’s place of employment…. I have never paid more than a days rental fee. I get 4 movies for what BlockBuster charges for one (4 something + tax). RedBox selection is the only drawback I see…. but that is not even an issue for me really.
I guess I would just like to see the price of rentals from iTunes come down, and HD content available to iTunes and not ONLY TV, then I would get on the iTunes movie rental bus too. But for me, RedBox is just not inconvenient enough to spend the extra 3 bucks to get it from the iTunes store. And of course… if I don’t get to watch the RedBox movie in the first day… there is always handbrake.
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The Dude abides.
Two Words – sort of
AppleTV SDK
It would rule the world!
Holy crap @Jeff, you’ve just about sold me too. I have about as many DVD movies as you do and the thought of having them “online” all of the time sounds very appealing. Maybe I’ll go price a big hard drive and an ATV after work today.
What about surround sound, 5.1 and/or DTS? Is that preserved in your online movies?
While Nokia is making big noise in only one aspect of our digital domain even with the latest Symbian foundation move, and Sony and Wii hope to Trojan Horse a slew of other products and service into our homes with their consoles, and Google just wanting to insert itself no matter what platform with SAAS plus ads, the real battle for the complete, total, media home and digital lives is still gearing up between Apple and MSFT.
I use Apple Tv all the time. I get Netflix and rip them using Handbrake. and a 100 mbs ISP connection, I got a Quad Core, so it only takes about 45 min, plus with all my own dvds ripped, I have about 400 movies, but about 10-25 weren’t rip-able using Handbrake, so I have access to more. Then with Eye-tv and Turb0.264 I record The Simpsons, Law and Order, and other things you can’t get on iTunes.
Everyone is always impressed with my set up which I can access about 2,600 movies at the click of a button. I want to get my parents one for Christmas, but they have a satalite modem which is really slow, and they barely use their MBP at all.
Apple TV is still very much an on-going experiment. Apple is apparently proceeding with extreme caution to keep it a viable platform for the future of media delivery into the living room.
We love our Apple TV. We use it all the time to watch all kinds of programming, and when we’re not watching, we have our photos floating by as a screensaver while we stream music via iTunes radio to the stereo speakers. Absolute Bliss!
What’s always interesting to me is to see when kids play with the ATV. When they discover for the first time, what it can do, they are amazed into slack-jawed wonder. Kids are the future and they dig Apple TV.
Stay tuned for more good information. . .
I have the 40 gig ATV, and generally speaking, love it. But it certainly could be improved.
The killer addition to it, in my view, would be Safari. Given that 95% of all TV is now available (streaming with ads) for free on the various network websites, this would allow you to watch virtually any TV show for free. I think people would still buy full seasons from iTunes- but it might disrupt the purchase of single episodes.
I find the Movies/TV rent/buy experience to be VERY poorly organized via ATV- there should be 1 screen to go to to find ALL newly-added movies or TV series, instead of having to wade through every genre, every week, to be sure you haven’t missed something. There is NO “all movies” screen that is comprehensive – many titles appear one place but not another where they should- it’s pretty frustrating. Even the search is not comprehensive- it will miss movies that you know are there, if you search by actor or director. This is the most un-Apple part of the experience, IMHO. I would love to have a “favorites” section for movies (like they provide for podcasts and TV shows), where you could save titles you might want to rent later- given the amount of stumbling around you have to do, screen after screen after screen (“which genre did I see that movie in, was it for rent or buy-only”… etc etc) Browsing is not so great when you have no way of remembering what you’ve found, or where you found it.
I confess to feeling like there is a bit of sleight-of-hand going on- that this “un-comprehensiveness” is in fact by design (currently) , to make it less glaringly obvious how weak the overall selection of titles is. After all this time, the selection of movies is still just skimming the surface, and that is disappointing.
That being said, it is a joy to be able to rent movies from the couch, and to discover new and interesting titles or directors ( the trailer for Guy Maddin’s “Saddest Music in the World” may be the best trailer ever- Jeez, I hope the movie is as good – have this and “Cloverfield” waiting to watch) . I download TV torrents with Azureus and convert with iSquint- that is a labor-intensive way to get content for ATV, but it works.
I just wish the movie content wasn’t so hit or miss.
Monkeyboy has it…
ATV’s glaring rental problem (besides selection, which is coming slower than I expected) is organization. Dozens of movies are listed under the wrong genre, searches for actors rarely bring up all the movies they are in, and there is no good way to mark movies as ‘maybes’ to come back to later. Perhaps a tie-in to IMDB or Rotten Tomatoes is called for here.
Once you find a movie, however, the experience is powerful and flawless. With FIOS (if you’re on the fence, get FIOS – it beats cable like a cheatin’ bitch), it takes about fifteen seconds and a measly three bucks for the movie to be ready.
Instant gratification with miniscule effort. My personal motto.