“Apple again quietly added more content to its popular yet lightly promoted Apple TV set-top box yesterday, with new offerings from Disney, the music video giant Vevo, The Weather Channel and Smithsonian,” Mark Rogowsky writes for Forbes. “Coming just two months after the device received an upgrade that brought HBO Go and Watch ESPN, the continued content rollouts signal a new-found aggressiveness around TV for Apple, which had been moribund for quite some time.”
“What the new content doesn’t yet show is Apple’s hand. The $99 AppleTV has likely crossed the 15 million sold mark by now, but faces new competition from Google’s $35 Chromecast and Roku’s popular boxes,” Rogowsky writes. “But competing for sales of low-priced television add-ons is not an end to itself, but rather a means for a larger strategy. If that strategy is a jigsaw puzzle, we can barely see the frame at this point.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Is the Apple TV growing on you? – August 28, 2013
Apple TV adds Disney Channel, Weather Channel, Vevo – August 27, 2013
Why Apple TV is a cord-cutter’s gateway drug – August 14, 2013
Apple adds HBO GO, WatchESPN, Sky News, Crunchyroll and Qello streaming content to Apple TV – June 19, 2013
Yes Apple TV has to get good now. Starting with making airplay reliable and have better reception.
Really? I’ve never had any problem with AirPlay.
Neither have I.
When I send music from my iPhone 5 to any of my three Apple TVs, music is interrupted when I get more than about 10 feet away from the Apple TV. I have much less but occasional hiccups when sending music from my MacBook Pro or Mac book air. My wifi is way overkill so the signal strength of the network is not the problem (I have an AirPort Extreme tower, AirPort Extreme old pizza box, and airport express current pizza box throughout my not so big house).
I have speakers throughout my house all playing from one source, usually my family room Apple TV. I want to be able to play music from my phone and hear it uninterrupted as I walk throughout my house with my phone in my pocket.
If a solution exists for this I will employ it. But after much troubleshooting and beefing up my network strength, I have concluded that airplay just isn’t bullet proof, especially using an iPhone as the source. I love Ape and I tell people Apple products “just work”. But I can’t confidently say that about airplay
Maybe he has a depth of perception problem seeing he has only one eye.
Airplay is very dependent on your wireless network and if your wifi is having issues I would 100% say that this is where your issue is. I like others here don’t have any issue with air play and I’m running iOS 7 Beta on all my devices including the apple tv with no issues.
Rome was not built in a day. 😉
I like to say, “Rome wasn’t built out of hay”…makes people do a double take. hehe
I think the government needs to install a 3rd party to make sure the AppleTV doesn’t infringe on anything. Ever.
I’m voting for putting a third-party monitor in every person’s home on Apple’s dime, including room and board. Just you try and infringe on those poor, decrepit content providers like NBS/Comcast and Time-Warner! Those guys need protecting (and tax breaks – let’s not forget those) by our government!
In Soviet America, you don’t watch the government. The government watches you!
I have installed several tv’s at various locations and all but one are used solely for airplaying presentations from iDevices. One I have set up for showing slides from a shared photo stream. A bit of a drag because of the severe limitations in photo stream, but in the end it works flawlessly. Each tv is worth its price for what it does.
Paul, do you use large flat-screen TVs with the AppleTv in these installations? Are these for retail use, or in corporate (meeting room) settings?
I think it’s a great idea. Frankly, most video projectors are absolutely horrible. A large flat-screen LCD TV mounted in a meeting room is really affordable these days for businesses, and an AppleTV is even more so. The resulting image quality is outstanding, and can really improve a meeting, not to mention make video conferencing easy and affordable.
The biggest stumbling block I see is – get ready – stupid Windows. A company like mine is still tethered to the old world of Dells, Windows and PowerPoint. I am the sole Mac user in my business of 50 employees. People are either too dumb or scared to make the jump, even to use iPads for sales. They are still using Outlook instead of Evernote and Dropbox.
Beige box Luddites.
> Paul, do you use large flat-screen TVs with the AppleTv in these installations?
A mix of small and large consumer models, not the really big corporate ones. Apple NL has those installed at its HQ and store and those work just as good.
> most video projectors are absolutely horrible.
Agreed. Colours are never the same ;-). But for my own mobile presentation set I searched long and settled on an Acer H7531D (the H7532BD is its 3D successor) for its great colours and DLP for dark backgrounds (fab for astronomy talks). I get to places where there may be no presenting infrastructure at all, or whatever is there may not be accessible for me. So my mobile presentation set consists of an Airport Express, linked with UTP to the tv, speakers linked via optical fibre directly to the tv. The projector goes on a light tripod which makes me independent of tables etc. and it is much easier for aiming. The auto-keystone is a great extra. No doubt there are others out there that are equal or better, but this is what I got.
In all I just need one 230V and one UTP socket with DHCP. If the latter is unavailable I use my MacBook Pro to route the WiFi to ethernet. It all fits in a 20Kg suitcase and a 10Kg backpack, with room to spare.
> stupid Windows.
I grieve for you 😉
Hello NFL Sunday Ticket
Yes yes!!
If the Blackout policies went away I could completely migrate from cable
How does this affect Sunday ticket? You still have to have Direct TV and my complex doesn’t allow for Satellite dishes
Give me access to the shows without the need to be connect to the Cable or Satellite Cartels and then it will be perfect! Love our AppleTV!
Frog in a sauce pan. Can’t turn the heat up too fast else the TV industry will jump out. Look what happened to music retailers when iTunes knee capped the high street and other online services. TV doesn’t want to be caught in that kind of squeeze and apple can feel it. So they turn the heat up slowly. Watch the frog Cook. Pun intended.
Apple has now pushed the button. Things are set in motion. In a year (or less) and we’ll look back at this early phase of the next revolt and chuckle.
Chromecast is hardly a competitor against the Apple TV. It is a piece of hardware with no upgradability. What you buy is all you get. $40 wasted in my opinion. Although Roku is better, they barely have 2% of the online TV market compared to Apple’s hobby at over 50% market share.
So apparently “competition” for Apple means “anyone selling anything anywhere that may have some of the same basic functionality as an Apple product”. The Chromecast is about as much a competitor tithe AppleTV as the Gameboy is competition for the PSP.
I think it’s even more interesting considering that the Disney and DisneyXD channels offer LIVE viewing of the content. This is the first channel to offer a mirror of a broadcast channel.
Otherwise the only new channels that are worth a damn are ESPN and HBO2GO. I might include Hulu+ (although not a new channel) but for a paid application there are too many unskippable commercials for any reasonable person to consider watching.
The iTunes tv app is gone.
As of this morning that is was there yesterday after updated.