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January 19th, 2007
"My experience has been that creating a compelling new technology is so much harder than you think it will be that you're almost dead when you get to the other shore."
-- Steve Jobs
There is a strong sense in the industry that the Apple iPhone will become a wild success. The most insightful article I've read on the matter comes from Time Magazine -- "Apple's New Calling: The iPhone." In the final paragraph of the article, Time quotes Jonathan Ive and provides one of the most profound and insightful conclusions about Apple that I've seen since Macworld.
When our tools don't work, we tend to blame ourselves, for being too stupid or not reading the manual or having too-fat fingers. "I think there's almost a belligerence -- people are frustrated with their manufactured environment," says Ive. "We tend to assume the problem is with us, and not with the products we're trying to use." In other words, when our tools are broken, we feel broken. And when somebody fixes one, we feel a tiny bit more whole.
And that, in a nutshell, is how the Apple TV will shatter the best hopes of Comcast, Time Warner, DIRECTV, and Dish Network, to name a few. To be sure, they'll all still be around in five years, but they will never achieve the growth and dominance they seek.
Allow me to explain.
The HDTV Industry In Denial
The HDTV industry in this country has some serious problems, problems that are similar to the mobile phone industry. Namely, some basic human needs have become both subverted and overwhelmed by technological greed and meddling.
In the case of mobile phones, the simple human need to communicate with another person has been turned into what amounts to, to put it politely, testosterone poisoned executives whose intention is to nickel and dime Americans to death. Each customer is a revenue stream to be entangled in an ever increasing need to push buttons. Perhaps text messaging your vote during an NFL game is the ultimate example of that kind of titillation, but the end result is a system that's broken. The iPhone will succeed, to everyone's eternal amazement, because it fixes something that's dramatically broken.
The iPhone will make us feel more whole.
Similarly, in the case of HDTV, we have many symptoms of a movie and TV industry that is going to get a lot more broken before it gets whole again. Here are just a few examples.
- Dish Network partners with Lionsgate films. Fragmentation.
- DIRECTV wants to become your Apple TV substitute. Fear of Internet TV.
- Disney has struck a side deal with Comcast. Covering their bets.
- HD DVD may get the jump on Blu-ray because the adult film industry is embracing HD DVD. Sony is clueless.
- Motorola hopes to do for home TV what Apple did for the mobile phone. Hope is not a strategy.
- Netflix wants to deliver movies directly to your Web Browser. Fear of Internet TV -- and Blockbuster.
In other words, all the players are in a panic, everyone is circling the wagons, everyone wants to strike a deal that secures their position no matter what. No one has a vision, and if they did, they couldn't execute it because of the scratch-your-eyes-out competition.
Let's look at just a few of the problems Apple can address.
The cutoff date for analog TV transmissions in the U.S. is February 17th, 2009, a mere 24 months away. Yet the vast majority of consumers are still having a hard time understanding High Definition TV. I asked a salesman at a Best Buy store in Denver how much training they get on HDTV before they hit the floor. The answer: "Zero. Get out there and sell!" The general technical confusion, retail indifference, and carrier dirty tricks, in turn, demoralizes customers about the prospects for a happy experience in the management of their video library and viewing experience. If you doubt that, reflect on the Sears experience selling iMacs a few years ago.
Apple can't solve most of the industry's problems, but they can deliver on an easy-to-use system managed by Apple in all phases from purchasing through delivery to archiving and display. Apple can help their customers enjoy the content instead of struggling to deal with the pandemic in the industry. Customers are frustrated over their options, the quality of the equipment, and constraints that don't serve their needs. The biggest problems Apple can bypass are:
- Both the software and the hardware of set top boxes that include a DVR, from any carrier, are widely criticized as crappy. The Ethernet ports, if they exist, are crippled (for now). And if you buy an external, high quality TiVo-like DVR, you're locked out of the integrated pre-program mode from the carrier's channel guide. So says Walt Mossberg.
- The HD DVD, Blu-ray war has customers thinking about...neither. Combo players are maybe a year away and will be grotesquely expensive. Hard disks are cheap and can be backed up. As I understand it, if you scratch your Blu-ray disc, the industry wants you to buy a new one.
- So far, the quality of the HD players and media have been generally unspectacular. So says Widescreen Review Magazine. HD discs are priced unrealistically.
- Lots of vendors would have you pay for and watch TV and movies on your computer, but most customers want to watch them in the living room on a big screen.
So where are we? Selecting an HDTV is hard, but the prospect of selecting a carrier and being subjected to their peculiar rules and constraints fills the bucket of frustration. Content providers abuse their customers with excessive DRM and the carriers mass produce the cheapest set-top DVRs for mass consumption possible. There's no funding or vision for something like Apple TV's software. Exclusive industry agreements make getting all the things you want impossible. You can't get the content you want on the display device you want, when you want it. Does that sound like a broken system? It does to me.
If It's Broken, Apple Will Fix It
Right now, all the attention is on the iPhone because mobile phones are so badly broken, and they're so tightly wired into our lives. So that's where the biggest pain is right now. But after Apple fixes the mobile phone industry, the HDTV industry is next on their agenda.
There is no such thing as infinite choice. The movie and TV (and Internet video) industries are going down a rabbit hole of undisciplined and extravagant choice. Each company who is a player has intentions of dominating a niche and establishing themselves in the market. Each player has visions of glory, but only a few will succeed because that's the way customers are. They tend to preferentially chose and that simplifies the market. And when the customers don't do it, mergers designed to eliminate irritating competition help things along.
The Macintosh, the iPod, and the iPhone form a coherent ecosystem. That ecosystem is stable and has a vision. As Jonathan Ive said of the iPhone, it fixes your problems and makes you whole. Apple will provide choice with coherence, DRM with grace, and content management that's a joy instead of a nightmare. And they'll do it with Mac OS X, AirPort, and Apple TV.
There is no doubt in my mind that I would rather have a Mac Pro with a terabyte of storage under my desk with a consumer class 2 TB external RAID 5 (they're coming) as my ultimate high-quality DVR. I'd rather transmit this content to an Apple TV, well engineered to drive my HDTV than be subjected to the lowest bidder, lowest common denominator, el cheapo set-top DVR that comes from the rusted racks in the Comcast warehouse. Or pay DIRECTV $300 for one and find out later, Oops!, if I want a great new feature, I have to buy a new one.
There is also no doubt in my mind that the collective minds of all the content providers and carriers will never be able to build a reliable content management system that is a joy to use. Intel Macs, Mac OS X and iTunes are better systems for managing personal video content than any software that's going to appear on a set-top box. Period. Without Apple, the HDTV customer in 2007 will be relegated to selecting the least of many evils, and they won't be very happy about their choices.
Apple TV is just the first of many products in that line. Like the iPod, it will get off to a slow start. There will be endless competing products and services that appear as if they'll relegate Apple TV to obscurity. Pundits will predict that Apple will never get a toehold in the industry. But in a few years, when the dust settles, the HDTV and video experience will greatly benefit from Apple's fix-the-problem skills in the same way they fixed the personal computer, its OS, the MP3 player, and the mobile phone.
The TV and movie delivery system in this country is now fragmented, fundamentally broken, and all too self-serving. I'm going to go with the company that makes me feel whole again. So will you. So will millions of others.
John Martellaro is a senior scientist and author. A former U.S. Air Force officer,he has worked for NASA, White Sands Missile Range, Lockheed Martin Astronautics, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Apple Computer. During his five years at Apple, he worked as a Senior Marketing Manager for science and technology, Federal Account Executive, and High Performance Computing Manager. His interests include alpine skiing, SciFi, astronomy, and Perl. John lives in Denver, Colorado.
Hidden Dimensions Archives.
Observer Comments
... but I love what Apple has done with Apple TV - and I want one. But there is one issue that concerns me - it's QuickTime only (from what I've heard).
What about other formats?
Div X for example.
When Apple introduced the iPod they allowed for both AAC and MP3. Why not open it up to other formats - even just a little?
We all see that QuickTime is a superior format but I think, in order to seal the deal with the masses, they need to open up the market just a little.
This may not settle well with the film and television industry but it will - in time. It did for the music industry.
... we still can't buy a single movie or one short episode of any TV show outside of USA, so what can we stream through Apple TV? Our own home made movies? If anything else, how do we get those into iTunes? Maybe the next version should have something similar to how the music library works when you first opens iTunes; it will sweep through your entire hard drive looking for music, adding it.
Maybe it is about time Apple should resolve this situation, outside USA?
Fri Jan 19, 2007 6:22 pm Subject: Not the movie industry's iPod
QuoteGuest wrote:
... but I love what Apple has done with Apple TV - and I want one. But there is one issue that concerns me - it's QuickTime only (from what I've heard).
Worse: it is mp4-only. After all, QuickTime can read Divx and flash videos and all sorts of formats with the help of free plugins like Perian.
There are a few big problems with the AppleTV. The main ones are:
1. Poor format support. Why not let me simply stream video from my computer, so that anything I can play on my computer I can also play on my TV? 802.11n has the bandwidth necessary for this.
2. Poor output. AppleTV only supports 720p. That's a lot better than DVD-resolution, but it's not the max. People moving to HD want real HD, and that's 1080p (or at least 1080i).
3. Lack of selection. You're stuck playing iTunes downloads or other videos encoded as mp4. It won't play nice with your current library of DVDs.
These three factors make the AppleTV at best an addition to your current media delivery methods, and in no way a replacement. This is in great contrast to the iPod, which made portable CD players spectacularly obsolete.
I do agree that the AppleTV is the first in the line. There may one day be an AppleTV that is a hugely successful, market-changing device — but that AppleTV will be very different from today's. Today's AppleTV does nothing but try to tie people to iTunes, which is basically what every other media delivery company does (and what this article berates them for). Apple is not the savior of the industry people make it out to be. It's just another player adding to confusion.
Remember, the iPod worked with what you already had (CDs). It tied everything together. That's what made it great. The AppleTV doesn't tie anything together. It tells you "screw your current media (e.g., DVDs) and buy the same content again from us!"
With the prevalence of DRM, there's only so much Apple — or any company — can do here. Even DVDs have DRM, and while it's trivial to circumvent, it's still illegal, so no company can officially support it. That's the big difference between video and music. I can rip my CDs legally. iTunes makes it easy. Apple can't even try to do the same for video.
QuoteGuest wrote:
This may not settle well with the film and television industry but it will - in time. It did for the music industry.
There's your reason. The problem is that music sharing had become widespread BEFORE MP3 players become big. The music industry was trying to woo people into buying online music and they had to draw them AWAY from stealing to do so. So they knew that MP3 players had to play all the stolen music if anyone was going to buy them. Once they had an iPod they could start trying to sell online music, but they had to let them play their stolen stuff or they wouldn't have sold.
No one in the industry would ever admit that, but it had to be a factor.
The movie industry got a head-start, however, because of the larger sizes of movies. They had more time to plan.
Yes, people steal movies online but not nearly as many as music. The movie industry doens't HAVE to cater to them like the music people did with the iPod.
So they can tell Apple to make sure Apple-TV is locked down like they want or they'll pull their music off the iTunes store.
And Apple has to listen. It's legal in the U.S. to rip a CD to your iPod. It is NOT LEGAL to rip a DVD. So Apple has that leverage with the music industry...if the music labels get uppity Apple can just close the iTunes tore and tell people to just buy CDs and put them on their iPod. They'll still sell iPods.
But with movies they HAVE to have them on the iTunes store if they want to stream stuff to Apple-TV. The movie studios have much more leverage because of this.
QuoteMikuro wrote:
2. Poor output. AppleTV only supports 720p. That's a lot better than DVD-resolution, but it's not the max. People moving to HD want real HD, and that's 1080p (or at least 1080i).
lol - "Real HD?"
Why's that? Because there's something else better out there?
You do know that 1080p isn't nearly the max quality out there for motion pictures, right? I guess that makes it "Fake HD" too, huh?
Please stop harping about a the "need" for 1080p (or 1080i)
720P is has the same resolution as 1080i - this may not seem to be true but it is - interlace kills the vertical resolution in the image and reduces it by .7 and is therefor no better than 720p - Interlace SUCKS.
1080P in not broacast by any stations in the US.
Get over it.
720P is the format of choice at this time.
LOL. I'm going to stop subscribing to evil cable so that I can get my content from where now? I missed that little detail. Where are my TV shows going to actually be coming from? Am I and "millions of others" going to be paying $2 to the iTS for each episode of a show we want to watch? So what is it comes over IP instead of cable. There has to be some huge company somewhere actually making all of this content available.
I like the interesting mix in the article though. The whole "fight the evil wealthy corporations" thing but then talking about how you'd gladly spend $4k on a computer just to act as a DVR. I definitely see myself and millions of others doing that! Fight the power!
As others have mentioned, it's MPEG4 only. Unfortunately, broadcast HDTV is MPEG2 so it can be used with your Mac and product such as Elgato's EyeTV Hybrid. I have to think this capability is comming from Apple, but right now they don't want to irritate the Hollywood Studios. If I could use my Mac with my EyeTV Hybrid to record high def content and watch it on an HDTV through AppleTV, I'd buy both an HDTV and an AppleTV, but for now I'll stick with my Series 2 Tivo and standard def tv (and use my 20 inch display and EyeTV Hybrid for things that I really want to watch in HD such as sports).
I'm on the fence about AppleTV. This time around, I'm not going to be a pioneer (you know what they say, the pioneers take all of the arrows!), but wait until the review come in. First of all, I have the original MacBook (not Core 2 Duo) and - wouldn't you know it - just bought an AirPort Base Station to replace an old one that crapped out on us (Apple just released a new, faster AirPort Base Station). If I'm out of the house with my MacBook in tow, my wife will only be able to watch media that the AppleTV has cached and that it can obtain via our AirPort Base Station. I'm also curious about the various choices in the Settings menu; for example, when playing music, will AppleTV have an iTunes-line visualizer (which I would love), or will it just flip an album cover back and forth like it shows on Apple's website? I'm also curious how well things will work with a slower (non-802.11n) wi-fi network.
I'm a big Apple fan, but let's face it. Apple TV is not THE solution.
As currently designed, Apple TV is nothing more than a way to draw you further within the iTunes Store ecosystem.
Our choice right now is to get nickeled and dimed by cable companies, or submit to an Apple monopoly over limited content.
Now, if Apple TV becomes a more versatile video device, I'm totally buying one. But not as its current design as a mere extension of the iTunes Store.
I see this "apple tv" thing and I have no idea what I would do with it. ATV appears to me as simply a device to play content from the ITMS on my tv.
I don't want that.
You see, what I really want is a better way to deal with the content for which I have already paid. Maybe I'm missing something, but it looks to me like ATV won't record like a TiVo, won't stream the content back to my computer so I can record it, or even accept most of the content I already own.
I buy very few songs from iTunes. Instead, I purchase (not steal) CDs and rip them. The audio quality on iTunes is too low for anything but audio books.
The TV is a slightly different issue, I am already paying for a massive amount of TV content every month with my internet tv service. However, my provider decided to go with some wierd "Amino" set top box that is incompatible with every DVR we tried. Now they want to charge us monthly for a used pos TiVo box. Heck, a cheap windows media center pc deals with existing tv content better than anything apple makes at the consumer level.
I guess what I want is a better TiVo, not a new way to buy the same content twice.
Sounds like most of you can't see the forest because of the trees.
For me the future is the "Podcast." Eh? you say. Think about this. Podcasts are free. This content is the "new airwaves" that local, national and global networks will rush too with their content all before 2009 (commercials included).
NPR has already done it with their "Sciences" episodes and most networks are podcasting their news. This is the direction where Apple TV is going. That's the vision.
Apple takes baby steps introducing their "product vision" to consumers. Many don't make the connection until it's infornt of them.
In 2009, Americans will have to move from analog to digital, not high-definition, TV. There will be plenty of non-HD programming floating into home, as digital TV. Your piece makes it sound as though in 2009, everyone will be moving to HD transmissions. That is flat out wrong. Check the facts. It's digital, not HD. High definition TV is a subset of digital TV, and most Americans will still view their shows via a 4:3 screen, not the 16:9 of HDTV.
Not sure what that means for your premise, but it's a basic issue you should have gotten right.
Just as a thought, why can't the set-top box be MP4 only, and rely on iTunes/Quicktime for re-encoding anything that's different into the format for which the player is optimized?
For my part, I prefer to wait until I can get a set-top controller that supports the top resolution of the screen, but I think this is a great first product. Also, the UI will make controlling the stereo so much better than is currently possible that it'll be a big plus. You can't mean that apple-TV doesn't support Apple Lossless like AirPort Express, do you? On-the-fly encoding into ALC (Apple Lossless) was a great feature of the Express, but there wasn't really a UI for controlling this from your couch; you needed to fiddle with the computer to make it work. Bleh.
Take care!
QuoteSmall White Car wrote:
lol - "Real HD?"
Why's that? Because there's something else better out there?
Yes, obviously. I'm surprised Apple doesn't want to offer the best that's out there.
Quote720P is has the same resolution as 1080i - this may not seem to be true but it is - interlace kills the vertical resolution in the image and reduces it by .7 and is therefor no better than 720p - Interlace SUCKS.
I agree, interlacing sucks. But 1080i is higher resolution than 720p. Lower vertical resolution, but higher overall (1920x1080/2 > 1280x720). The only reason I think anyone would consider 1080i is that many HDTVs use interlaced displays. 1080p is the best there is and the best there will be for quite some time.
Do people need it? Of course not. But then, people don't "need" HD at all. They don't need TV and movies at all. This is a luxury market, so needs are irrelevent. Again, people want the best there is. That's the driving force behind HD. And it's because so few companies are delivering that in a simple way that HD will probably not catch on until it's forced on everyone.
I have no doubt that the next version of the AppleTV will support 1080p. 720 is temporary, just like 320x240 was temporary for the iPod (and people said the same thing about that that they say about 720p now). But as it stands now, it is what it is, and it's not impressive. Right now, it'll only sell to Apple fanatics one way or another (for the three reasons I described). Since those are also the people who will probably be willing to buy version 2 or 3, too, I don't think it's a bad strategy for Apple, business-wise. But that doesn't make the product, as it is, any more impressive.
Sat Jan 20, 2007 12:18 am Subject: I felt good reading the empassioned and exceptionally though
At some point, hopefully sooner than the feb 2009 cutoff date for analog TV, Apple iTunes will become a compelling alternative to your cable/satellite company. I believe that's Apple's vision.
To do that, Apple has to provide substantially what the cable companies provide plus something extra (i.e., watch what you want when you want it, or timeshift without the hassle of pre-selecting and recording) for either the same cost or very slightly more than what the cable/satellite companies charge.
The current set of hardware and services falls short of that today. So I have to conclude that more, much more, is coming from Apple. I agree that ad-supported broadcast TV can easily become podcasts (with ads embedded). But some of the cable channels (who earn revenue per subscriber) and movies will cause Apple to turn to netflix-like subscriptions, where you're limited to how much you can auto-pre-sync to your AppleTV. Combine this with Google's fiber and data center fixation (see www.pbs.org/cringely article) and Eric Schmidt on Apple's board, and you can see a semblance of this future.
As for the 720p vs. 1080p, most TVs being sold today are 720p, so Apple supports it. Apple will add in 1080p for this Christmas, when they can still maintain the same price and margin.
The thought that something's missing is true for the iPhone as well. The big vision there is not only can you view what is on the Internet (and iTunes) whenever you want, but you can view the content that you own digitally whenever you want and wherever you are. Can you imagine the AppleTV streaming its contents onto the Internet/cellular to reach the iPhone? So again, there's more, much more, to come from Apple.
I don't think anyone has mentioned it, but the MP4 limitation of AppleTV is not exactly a limitation of the device, but a limitation of iTunes. I can play all sorts of movie files on my Mac, but if I drag any of them to iTunes to be categorized, they need to be either Quicktime Movies or MPEG4 movies. Since Apple is using iTunes to organize things at the computer end for streaming and management, there's your main limitation. Whether the AppleTV COULD play another filetype should it get there, I don't know, but iTunes isn't going to put it there.
One could convert all their media to MP4. Probably not exactly something you want to do a lot or you'd want done in the background or overnight. Sounds like a good opening for an application developer: a tool that converts video files from a drop folder to MP4 and puts the files into iTunes or onto the AppleTV for watching while you're off sleeping or at work or whatever. 
Mu Airport Express blew out a few months ago. I'd buy an AppleTV to be able to stream my music and Internet Radio once more and give me the chance to play around with the video, too. Improvements will definitely come as the market hammers out its issues.
While I am torn on Apple TV (nice product, but not sure if it is nice enough for my to purchase one) I am confused by all of these complaints that you can't play different formats on QuickTime. One person mentioned the free plug-in perian. There is also Divx (free), Flip4Mac (free), and countless others (many free). I can, and do, play all kinds of different file formats in Front Row and it has worked flawlessly. h264 has been the highest quality by far and my preference, but I am certainly able to view others. While there may be a few odd ones that don't work, I have yet to run across a format that I can't play in QuickTime.
I agree with your conclusion. I have been waiting for this box since iPhoto came out. Just having the ability to easily stream home video and photos from the home computer network to the TV makes it worth the price. I have an Eyehome which was supposed to do this but it's horrible to use and it just sits in my Entertainment cabinet unused. As usual there are many devices out there that have better specs than AppleTV but, as you mention in your article, they just don't work well.
Sat Jan 20, 2007 3:37 pm Subject: Missing the big picture
I think a lot of people are missing the big picture. The AppleTV is not an either/or option. No one is saying that if you use an AppleTV, you must abandon DVD's or broadcast or anything else. The AppleTV adds something new to the mix -- the ability to stream your computer-bound content to your big screen, nothing more. If I rent a DVD from Blockbuster or NetFlix I can still play those if I have an AppleTV wired in; but if I happen to purchase a TV episode from iTS (which I can't do from a cable company), I can watch that too. Why do people always assume that the selection of one component eliminates all the others?
> Why do people always assume that the selection of one component eliminates all the others?
Because we want it to. I don't care to own a cabinet full of media devices. Right now my 20" iMac is my TV. If I can get one box to connect it to a bigscreen TV and that's all I need for everything video, perfect. If not I'd almost rather not own a TV.
Front Row is good, if only it had a fast-forward/rewind control (vs. just chapter skiping). The best part is that I can play all my DVDs or any other video content on my computer. I like the idea mentioned above of streaming from the computer to the AppleTV. The one downside is, I don't want to run upstairs to put a DVD in my computer to watch it downstairs. Maybe I'll still need a $40 DVD player too. (Or add one into an AppleTV, that would be nice.)
About buying episodes on iTMS, I don't like that $2/show either if I'm just trying to watch TV. I'd buy only movies (which come out to be a bit cheaper than a DVD), and maybe episodes that I already knew I liked. For example, I DO like buying a whole season of my favorite series.
So the use of an AppleTV could be (eventually)
-iTMS content (movies, favorite episodes)
-podcasts
-TV recorded on the computer via ElGato, EyeTV, etc (normal tv watching)
-DVDs if they include a DVD player (that way they avoid ripping issues)
I'm all for eliminating extra devices and service fees. I plan to never pay for a land-line telephone. All VOIP and cellphone only.
So I want my video experience to be similarly simplified.
I think the "problem" is that the iTV is an expensive solution that relatively few people need. Most people want DVD and TiVo like capabilites. How many people are going to pay a few hundred bucks to play shows they bought on itunes when they have already paid for them via their normal content? Yeah, streaming the home movies would be nice, but again, it's just too expensive, when iDVD will burn the thing to an inexpensive disk and they can show it on the dvd player they already own?
Apple expects people to pay today to solve a problem they don't have.
Sat Jan 20, 2007 8:32 pm Subject: Steve Jobs and Time
This article is so Apple fanboy. There's almost nothing that's based in reality. Get rid of the cable companies? What?
Xbox 360 is coming out with support for IPTV, which is interactive TV, delivered over broadband. It's got speed, interactivity and regular TV content.
Here are some of the comments I've been reading about Apple TV:
http://www.allpvr.com/blogs-buzz-about-apple-tv/
Your comments are shortsighted. The article looks to the future, as Apple is doing. Content of Demand (COD) is the future, and Apple is trying to get their ducks in order early. Note the development of the iPod, Apple TV is moving in the same shoes. Start slow, develop the market.
1018 i or p will come, so will other codecs. They DID put an HDMI port on it, didn't they? That's hardware, soft- and firm- ware will change other aspects of it's performance too.
In the meantime it really IS a way to begin to pull customers inti the ITS for content. Some news providers are beginning to put video podcasts on the ITS for subscribing by customers, and the number of other video content is skyrocketing.
It won't take too much more time before people can dump cable and just buy it as they watch it.
Content on Demand - look for it.
I have posted this comment on other forum already, but I'll just repost it here:
So, fact remains that AppleTV practically only plays back content from iTunes Store. Yes, you could rip your own content to iTunes, but that's marginal at best, and you lose such things as subtitles. So practically, AppleTV only plays back Apple-blessed content, while your existing content (that stack of DVD's you have) will not play back. Compare this to the iPod. When iPod was released, it played back all mp3's you had. What would have happened to the iPod if Apple had said "Your existing music will not play back on this device, you need to get your content from us in order to use this device". iPod would have been a flop. But as things turned out, you could use the iPod to replace your old mp3-player or your cd-player. Or you could use it to take those mp3's on your computer with you, regardlesss of their source. AppleTV does not do any of that.
So now we have a new device from Apple. Stylish and easy to use. But your existing content is useless with it. You need to get your content from iTunes in order to really use the device. Do I have to re-purchase my movies from iTMS, just so I could watch them on AppleTV?
Add to that the fact that it's quite easy to buy something to replace something that you already have. But to buy something that serves similar purpose to an existsing device, yet does not replace it, is a very difficult thing to sell. The sales-pitch of AppleTV is basically "It does more or less the same thing as your DVD-player does, but it does not replace your DVD-player.". So why should I buy it? If I could replace my DVD-player with AppleTV, I would buy one, and I wouldn't even have to think twice. Right now, it would just be another media-playback device in addition to my DVD-player and DVR, while not really replacing any of those devices.
I think that Apple miscalculated badly here. And the most puzzling thing is that, they ALMOST got it right. They kept on talking how AppleTV has Front Row-like interface. But Front Row plays back DVD's, AppleTV does not. They said how this is the "new DVD-player". But it's not "the new DVD-player", since... well, it's not.
Instead of requiring the user to re-purchase their content or live with even more complex stack of components, how about working with the user's old content and actually simplifying things? Yes, the AppleTV-DVD might not be as good as "real" DVD-player, but for 95% of people it would be "good enough".
How could they get it so wrong? They snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They were so close of releasing a truly killer-product, and they opted to release a product that is not. Had they included DVD-playback in there, they could have "smuggled" tons of those devices to homes, devices that could play back iTunes-content out-of-the-box. The market for iTunes would have gotten pretty darn big. But as things are right now, people are going to look at AppleTV and ask themselves "I have a handful of movies/tv-shows from itunes (or none at all), but I also have tons of DVD's. Why should I buy this piece of equipment just so I could watch the few movies I got from iTunes?". Apple basically ignored the existing install-base of DVD, and that install-base is HUGE.
I still think with the HDMI, the Apple TV will be better for the average home user. Most home users are not ‘advanced’ enough to install a full Mac in their home theater. The lower price is also an advantage.
http://www.applehdtv.net
joost
http://www.joost.com/
The IPod business model is based on stealing music. Why does that make Apple so "visionary"? I would love to see what happens when you drop that I phone. &