Apple TV on the road of success ?

Hmm, hard to say.

As things stand, the Apple TV product is something that really just does not appeal to me whatsoever. It left me wondering if Apple had really slipped up with its launch, as there is usually some part of an Apple product that interests me at some level, even if I won't buy it. I was a bit baffled by the Apple TV, however. So, my instinctive reaction is that this is a product that will quietly fade away.

Having said that... There were others who thought Apple TV was a great idea, when it was launched. This leaves me genuinely wondering if I'm missing something. I think that Apple TV is not likely to be a great success as it is, but if more content becomes available this could change dramatically.

There is talk that people are beginning to spend more time looking at content on the internet, such as videos on YouTube, than watching TV. I'm sure this is a slow process when looking at entire populations, but it could represent a shift. It may be that people will increasingly want to choose what programs they watch and when. Cable/satellite operators have some advantages over other forms of TV (eg. recording content on their box for later viewing, pay-per-view TV, etc.), but viewers are still mainly guided by "what's on."

If Apple could launch something major, analogous to the iTunes Music Store and iPod combination, it may tap into a big market: a sort of "TV on demand." That could be a dramatic step, but it may require a lot of infrastructure to do well, and it would certainly require big corporations to be on board.

Sooo... my thoughts are that the Apple TV, if it stays as it is, won't be a big success, but that it could be a big step if Apple put a lot of weight behind it, with lots of new content and new features being provided.
 
I've been using one for two weeks now, and it's favorite Mac device since the original iPod. The potential hasn't even begun to be tapped yet.

No shuffling DVDs or tapes. No more piling around the Mac to view slideshows. When rentals are available, at prices below the local stores, all the better.

Netflix convienance without the wait...perfect!
 
I don't know. I have one, and it's nice enough. Lots of potential, but I think Apple needs to change some fundamental things before it will be a killer device like the iPod. If the changes in that article are correct they'll be on their way.

The TV/Movie studios seem hell bent on keeping Apple from dominating video like they do digital audio sales. We bought the ATV because it was more cost effective to buy a season pass for the 4 or 5 shows we watch regularly on iTunes than it was to pay for monthly satellite. Now a number of those shows aren't available, and we'll be forced over to Amazon Unbox to see them. I'm afraid other studios will follow suit, and if they all abandon iTunes Apple will be at their mercy on pricing to get them to come back.

For movies iTunes really needs a rental option. This would make the ATV a very useful device. I'm happy with Netflix, but I can see the appeal of an on-demand library. There are very few movies that I want to own for all time. If I do, I'd prefer them on DVD so they are maximally portable.

The HD content need is huge too, but I'm wondering how the download size for that would be. I have an Xbox 360 and MS does a pretty darn good job with their HD content encryption. But it's still far below HDTV standards. But if Apple could do something like that it would be a start. I think what they really need is for US bandwidth to increase and be more on par with the speeds that people in other parts of the world get. We kind of get screwed on that.
 
I have an AppleTV and absolutely love it, but I would never, ever recommend it for anyone else. I feel I am in a unique position where it is handy to me because of the way my home theatre is set up, but for most it is would be useless 99% of the time.

@lbj
yes I agree -- having everything neatly organised in one place is great. Because it syncs through iTunes it means you can watch it from any other mac or iPod too. I used to use Xbox Media Center, but it was a pain to have to keep 2 copies of my movies/TV shows; one on my iMac to watch when I"m doing work, and another on the Xbox when I want to watch TV.

If you are outside of the US, there is little-to-no TV available through iTunes, so you are forced to either download illegally, or rip your own DVDs (I have been doing the latter since I bought the AppleTV...slowly getting there!). This requires knowledge of what H.264 is, what bitrate is best, what apps you need to rip/transcode, and a lot of time and motivation. It is just too ahead of its time. Maybe if they supported many codecs like XviD/DivX, WMV, RM, etc. it would be more accessible, but even then it would only appeal to the geeks (and even then only a subset of geeks)

I agree with bbloke; the AppleTV will fade away much like the iPod HiFi. IMO the only thing that could save the AppleTV would be opening up that USB port to 3rd parties and allowing them to create all sorts of cool hardware and software addons. Though even then, I just don't think the mass market "gets it" enough at this point.

and we're forgetting the biggest issue with countries like australia -- downloads. Even if here is Oz they opened up an Australian TV store which allows you to download every TV show in HD for free, it still would not work, because the average person here has a download limit of 5-10GB or less per month. A large portion of people are using phone and internet bundles with Telstra which sounds great on paper, but the fine print reads "250MB downloads per month" (that wasn't a typo -- that was 250 mega bytes!). I go over my monthly limit every month just from DLing podcasts, so I don't have enough to spare for TV shows.
 
We have an ATV and love it, but we are less than pleased with the service from ITMS. We subscribed to The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, but canceled yesterday. The reason was that in the last month, the shows have been delayed by a full day at least three times.

So like most others here: Love the device, worry about the content delivery - both short term and long term.

I think the ATV has loads of potential, and it works fine as a media extender for me, but then again I put in the work of ripping and converting our DVD library...
 
I don't really care about or watch much television, but nonethless IMHO the TV is overpriced. It's really a convenience mechanism rather than a device that does something new... I've had workarounds for everything that it does for a while now. Also, I completely agree that this device has a tendency to force technicality onto unsuspecting non-geeks. While most of us at macosx.com would feel completely comfortible converting a .MOV file to H.264, other people would be dead in the water trying to get their video collections to work.

There isn't enough reason to justify the device when only a small percentage of the market actually downloads their TV shows and movies. DVD's still work, you know?
 
One of the major downfalls is that you have to have all the content on a computer running iTunes. I don't want to have to have 60GB of stuff on my computer just so I can watch it on the Apple TV. If they update it so it has it's own subscription client and make the cost of renting or buying tv shows and movies then they will have a winner IMO.

I don't get this from the article though:
"Seeking Alpha notes that Apple TV is written down in the company's books over 24-months, in order to allow for software upgrades."

Are they talking about R&D for the Apple TV? Because most companies do this especially if they have a large amount spent on it. If they spent $1 billion in one year on R&D they would write it down over multiple years so there's not a huge number on their financial statements. I doubt they actually spent that much on R&D for the Apple TV.

If they are talking about sales then they are probably doing that because they want to even out the sales numbers over each year instead of if the sales aren't as good this year it doesn't look so bad on the financial reports.
 
Qion said:
DVD's still work, you know?
Click to expand...


So do cassette tapes. What's your point? : )



As for the issue of storing large numbers of movies in iTunes, if you option drag a title into iTunes, the original will stay where intended...in my case, an external drive. As long as the external remains connected while ATV syncs the "aliased" movies will transfer to the ATV.

As for having workarounds for every issue, I had workarounds as well. Now I don't need them.

I'm not trying to convince anyone to get one, but for me and my "unique" situation, it is a godsend and worth the money.
 
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