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What happened--Apple's bastard child?
- Thread starter Frisco
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Why would upgraded hardware get people to buy it? That doesn't offer anything that isn't available today. Its all about the software and services.
DVR - would get me to buy it.
Blu-Ray player - would get me to buy it
Larger HDD - would be very nice
FW800 - would be extremely nice
Apple sells hardware, first and foremost. Improve the product, the "software and services" will follow.
I know that question wasn't directed towards me, but I think the digital copy with DVDs is a great idea. I'd just like to see it a little more wide spread. I'd even buy blu-rays if they came with HD digital copies, and I don't own a blu-ray player (yet).
I don't care if it's got some DRM connected to it if it's iTunes compatible.
I don't care if it's got some DRM connected to it if it's iTunes compatible.
Well, it's apparent that the AppleTV will be embedded into LCD TVs. It could be that they are purposely fading out the stand-alone box because of this.
I doubt it. Why alienate all the existing TV's?
I'd REALLY like to see Blue Ray (as long as it's backwards compatible) as this will solve most everyone's needs. You already have to use HD hook ups (HDMI or Component) why not just add Blue Ray? Maybe the form factor will be the current Mac Mini.
This seems like a very logical next step along with a much bigger hard drive...
I bet that Apple sees Blue Ray as competition. Not to mention that Blue Ray is already expensive - it would have to be a major loss leader.
If I was a betting man, I'd almost put money they are letting Apple TV linger while developer support for iPhone gets built up, and then sometime in the future they will release a Apple TV SDK to allow iPhone developers to very easily port their game for larger screen sizes (aka the Apple TV)
Then with the connection of a iphone, itouch or maybe even the future tablet, you can start having a interactive gaming device on the TV. And since they already have some pretty heavy gaming companies working with the Iphone SDK, switching to the Apple TV would be pretty natural and you would have a light learning curve and thus a flood of cheap games and apps.
Talk about immediately catapulting the Apple TV.
If I were Apple, this would be my next step in their somewhat sudden entry into the Gaming industry and seriously making the Apple TV, the ipod for your tv.
Now, if I was a dreaming man. I would say in a few years theyll launch an iphone with a front facing camera, have the ability for the Apple TV to have an attached web cam and youll be able to make iChat calls between iPhones, Wifi connected iTouches, internet connected Apple tablets, Macs, Apple TVs, hell launch iChat for windows and let Windows people enjoy the fun too. Make a facebook/myspace app too and youll strike gold. (This is the only way I'd ever get use out of the front facing camera it seems like a ton of people want on the iPhone), and while im dreaming I'll throw out Netflix and Hulu, both of which I bet will never get ported to the AppleTV.
Honestly, I would use my AppleTv a hella lot more if it was just simply more reliable. It hangs up more than it works, but that may be only mine
Then with the connection of a iphone, itouch or maybe even the future tablet, you can start having a interactive gaming device on the TV. And since they already have some pretty heavy gaming companies working with the Iphone SDK, switching to the Apple TV would be pretty natural and you would have a light learning curve and thus a flood of cheap games and apps.
Talk about immediately catapulting the Apple TV.
If I were Apple, this would be my next step in their somewhat sudden entry into the Gaming industry and seriously making the Apple TV, the ipod for your tv.
Now, if I was a dreaming man. I would say in a few years theyll launch an iphone with a front facing camera, have the ability for the Apple TV to have an attached web cam and youll be able to make iChat calls between iPhones, Wifi connected iTouches, internet connected Apple tablets, Macs, Apple TVs, hell launch iChat for windows and let Windows people enjoy the fun too. Make a facebook/myspace app too and youll strike gold. (This is the only way I'd ever get use out of the front facing camera it seems like a ton of people want on the iPhone), and while im dreaming I'll throw out Netflix and Hulu, both of which I bet will never get ported to the AppleTV.
Honestly, I would use my AppleTv a hella lot more if it was just simply more reliable. It hangs up more than it works, but that may be only mine
I like the digital copies, but my point was more about using the collection you already have. I've written in this forum about it before, but I'll write it again in a condensed version. Of all the music on the average ipod user's ipod, only 3% of it was purchased via itunes. The rest was from that person's own ripped collection (and before people say P2P, this study was conducted several years ago by Apple to an anonymous sampling of ipod and itunes users, and P2P content was excluded). Once apple offered an easy and seamless hardware/software experience to manage their 300 CDs, the ipods flew off the shelves, and the rest is history.
An AppleTV is no different. It's just an ipod that connects to a television and manages a person's video collection. Enable people to take media they've already purchased and place it in a more manageable interface, and you've got the next ipod. Enable them to also shift it to their ipod touch and iphone, and it's even better.
Digital copies are great, but I'm not buying what I already own, again. "You've Got Mail" isn't going to look any better on Blu-ray. What I want to do is take my entire collection I already own, and place it at my fingertips to use as I see fit. I have already done that, but not everyone's cut out to rip and encode. And that's where Apple can move in and yet again revolutionize the game. Blu-ray uptake isn't taking off as well as the Blu-ray consortium wants you to believe, simply because people are a) tired of buying the same movie again and again b) many movies aren't going to look markedly better and c) those blue DVD cases aren't cheap, and the economy isn't looking great right now.
Blu-rays aren't as cheap as DVDs are and in this budget-conscious time, it makes alot more sense for the large movie-buying masses to grab 4 DVDs in the bargain bin for $20, as opposed to one for $30.
The last thing that I think alot of people are miffed about is portability. People over the last few years have sunk money into a DVD player for each room, a DVD player for the car, and a portable DVD player for when they are out of town, and they can buy one DVD for all of them, or limit themselves to playing their Blu-Ray in one, maybe two locations where they can afford players. This is another place Apple can step into and say, "Hey! Feed your disks into the itunes media center, give it some time to encode them, and then play this movie via your computer, apple TV, ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or plug a cable into your ipod/ipod touch/iphone and play it on a television." The Real / MPAA lawsuit will determine what happens there, but I think Apple has enough sway to approach the MPAA and DVD consortium and convince them that with the right copy protections put in place, this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Holla!!
An AppleTV is no different. It's just an ipod that connects to a television and manages a person's video collection. Enable people to take media they've already purchased and place it in a more manageable interface, and you've got the next ipod. Enable them to also shift it to their ipod touch and iphone, and it's even better.
Digital copies are great, but I'm not buying what I already own, again. "You've Got Mail" isn't going to look any better on Blu-ray. What I want to do is take my entire collection I already own, and place it at my fingertips to use as I see fit. I have already done that, but not everyone's cut out to rip and encode. And that's where Apple can move in and yet again revolutionize the game. Blu-ray uptake isn't taking off as well as the Blu-ray consortium wants you to believe, simply because people are a) tired of buying the same movie again and again b) many movies aren't going to look markedly better and c) those blue DVD cases aren't cheap, and the economy isn't looking great right now.
Blu-rays aren't as cheap as DVDs are and in this budget-conscious time, it makes alot more sense for the large movie-buying masses to grab 4 DVDs in the bargain bin for $20, as opposed to one for $30.
The last thing that I think alot of people are miffed about is portability. People over the last few years have sunk money into a DVD player for each room, a DVD player for the car, and a portable DVD player for when they are out of town, and they can buy one DVD for all of them, or limit themselves to playing their Blu-Ray in one, maybe two locations where they can afford players. This is another place Apple can step into and say, "Hey! Feed your disks into the itunes media center, give it some time to encode them, and then play this movie via your computer, apple TV, ipod, ipod touch, iphone, or plug a cable into your ipod/ipod touch/iphone and play it on a television." The Real / MPAA lawsuit will determine what happens there, but I think Apple has enough sway to approach the MPAA and DVD consortium and convince them that with the right copy protections put in place, this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Holla!!
How are you going to game with the ATV remote? Even if they released a controller it would be IR based which sucks for gaming. There's always the unused USB port, though.
I've long maintained that the missing piece of Apple's home integration puzzle is a centralized storage unit. Right now, everything is based off your iTunes media collection which is stored on a single computer. Having a server based option opens it up to multiple computers and allows for the AppleTV to stream without the computer being on with iTunes running. Apple has the Time Capsule, but that is a backup device, not a media server. It wouldn't be too difficult to add that capability though. And they should allow you to plug in a USB drive to backup your server (or send it across the network to something else). You can get devices that will be iTunes music servers, but none that will stream to the AppleTV. The key, and it probably isn't too difficult, is to make sure the centralized server can add content from multiple sources simultaneously and then serve that content out. Apple would probably want some sort of parental controls so that your 16-year-old's R movies aren't available for your 6-year-old without password or something.
Apple probably has some concerns about user-upgradable servers. It goes against their closed system approach. If you look, in almost every device they sell the user cannot upgrade the hard drive or the battery. That probably gives them feature and quality control, but means you have to make some important sizing decisions on the day of purchase or incur a big expense to do an official upgrade down the road.
The killer app for AppleTV is something that will allow it to cheaply replace cable. Call it an unlimited content subscription fee for on-demand TV. If Apple could take just a small percentage of that revenue and send everything else to the content providers, that could be a successful business model. I bet cable would hate that - especially if the product was coming over their high-speed cable Internet lines. Apple is doing ok with on-demand movies, although a partnership with someone like Netflix might help.
A great additional feature for iTunes would be the ability to simultaneously stream different content to multiple Airport Expresses and AppleTV's. I know you can only do one song via AirTunes to one or more Airport Expresses at a time. I think you actually can do multiple AppleTV video streams. It would be nice to do several songs to different Airport Expresses at the same time.
Honestly, I just went to newegg and opened up their "Video Cards" section and picked the lowest price card that appeared to have a large number of reviews and DVI out, which for me was a Powercolor Radeon 2400HD for I think $24. Soundblaster audigy 7.1 low profile was $35. Don't remember the sepcifics of much else. The PC has multiple fans that are speed-controlled by temp sensors. Most of the time it's silent, but yes, sometimes the fans do come on... not sure if there's a cheap workaround so I just keep the volume turned up on my 7-channel Klipsch stereo
Yes indeed paduck.
The current iTunes/Apple TV setup is ok if you have one computer doing most of the streaming. Once you have content from say 3-4 Mac/PC that want to share content then you have these islands of storage that become difficult to manage. The Enterprise has been dealing with this stuff for years which is why NAS and then SAN have become the dominant storage platforms trailing direct attached storage.
The home user needs this at a scaled back level. Most people don't realize but the Marvell chips that power the Time Capsule are the same chips that run multibay home NAS from some home storage vendors.
The current iTunes/Apple TV setup is ok if you have one computer doing most of the streaming. Once you have content from say 3-4 Mac/PC that want to share content then you have these islands of storage that become difficult to manage. The Enterprise has been dealing with this stuff for years which is why NAS and then SAN have become the dominant storage platforms trailing direct attached storage.
The home user needs this at a scaled back level. Most people don't realize but the Marvell chips that power the Time Capsule are the same chips that run multibay home NAS from some home storage vendors.
That's why I suggest keeping the OS on a small SSD and allowing a user changeable harddrive - I think the public could cope with pulling a flap, pulling out a drive, putting in the new one and closing the flap (the OS then takes care of all the formatting). This assumes they don't go with the central server.
I think we have to watch the MPAA vs Real case now. If Real win, I think we could start to see commercial rippers. I mean Apple lets you rip CDs in iTunes, but what about copy protected CDs - ripping them would break the DCMA (or whatever you Americans have). Imagine a device marketed as being able to rip store you current collection on disk (and serve it out to multiple computers and ipods/iphones) as well as being able to rent and buy a new generation of HD films. How about if iTunes converts other formats to m4v (as it offers to do when you try to import a wma track)?
In fact, BluRay has that managed copy thing coming so Apple may introduce BluRay when that feature is ratified to allow making digital HD copies to stream.
My suggestions for Apple to promote Apple TV sales:
That is all.
- Provide subscription-based rentals of TV programs in iTunes
- Make 1080p standardized on AppleTV
- Lower the price
- Allow for external hard drive support
That is all.
They really need a built in dvr that utilizes all the patents apple has, not to mention an app store and better hardware.
Better hardware is a must. I'd like to see how an app store for Apple TV would work. I can't picture how it would work. But as far as what the Apple TV can play and it's expandability, it's lacking. It only plays certain formats. It really boxes you in to their standards.
Like mentioned, it could be through a iPhone, iPod, etc.
Take the new Apple Remote interaction with Apple TV for example.
Obviously things as they are now cant work, they would have to release new hardware.. the point is they have a game developer network now.. porting it to larger screen somewhat painless..
The inactivity of Apple TV probaly means... its about to be killed... or they are planning something huge with it and will do maintenance updates
One question I have is this: I keep hearing about DVR, DVR, DVR, but how would that work?? Right now, I have DirecTV, and I can only use DirecTV DVR boxes with their service. I don't get it. Apple would have to start their own TV service in order for the DVR to be any effective and I simply would NOT trust Apple to keep that going for long or be as competitive.
The DVR thing is a pipe dream. For those of you on OTA TV service, fine, it would work, but that number dwindles each and every year.
The DVR thing is a pipe dream. For those of you on OTA TV service, fine, it would work, but that number dwindles each and every year.