I agree that all the new features in the new
TV are great, starting by the reduced price. The folks in the UK will have to agree that 100+-20 is significantly less than the price for the existing model. Besides, giving us the option to stream content from Netflix or from other iOS devices is pretty cool. Above all, consuming only 6W is just
AMAZING!
However, there are two things that are a BIG miss:
- Lack of a hard drive or option to connect an external hard drive
- Lack of 1080p
Here are the reasons.
One of the BIG advantages of having a hard drive is to have content such as movies, music and pictures local on the
TV and not depend on having a computer in the house on and available to stream that content. This is actually going
back to version 1 of the TV!!!! This is a step backwards!!! Although Steve said that people do not want to connect their computers to their TVs, this is exactly what Apple is forcing us to do with this new model!!! Otherwise, where am I going to store my multi-gigabyte music and video collection? On MobileMe? Well, that will cost money for sure. More money than having us pay an extra $100 (in whatever currency) for a good-sized hard drive. With this new model, we'll have to make sure a computer in the house, with iTunes 10 is up and running (forget about patching/rebooting in the middle of that).
Within this same vein, although it seems there are users that have problems syncing their
TV with a computer, this is the one feature that has been the biggest selling point at home! We currently download the pictures from our camera into iPhoto (we use Macs at home) and automagically, the latest 10 "events" (photo sessions) are synced to the
TV. No need to keep the computer running for this!! We can put it in sleep mode while we enjoy the slideshows on our TV. This feature is gone. You'll have to keep that computer on now.
As I said, a
BIG step BACKWARDS.
As to the 1080p, as Steve said, the HD revolution is over!!!! The
great majority of the TV sets being sold today are in 1080p. While the quality difference between 720p and 1080p is not too noticeable (I know there will be people that disagree with me on this... just my personal opinion), there is a difference and playing content at 1080p would take FULL advantage of the home theater equipment available today in the market. At the very least, give us the option: $2.99 for SD content, $3.99 for HD720 content and $4.99 for HD1080 content. Don't dumb down the hardware!
Besides, it does not seem the new device will play more content than
TV-specific MPEG4. There are many users that have ripped DVDs or even MPEG2 content that is not natively supported. This is will have to be confirmed once the device actually comes out, but I would be surprised if Apple did officially enable playback of anything else besides their currently licensed content formats.
I currently own an
TV and this upgrade is not appealing to me. I lose more than I gain. I think this may be a good option for new
TV customers, but not for older ones.
Instead of buying the new
TV, I may consider hacking it with ATV Flash or Boxee to get the new features. I may not get Netflix, but I am not a Netflix subscriber. On the other hand, I should benefit from streaming content from many other sites as well as playing all the content I have on my network.
Anyway, those are my 2 cents.
