Why Hasn't Apple TV Exploded In Popularity?

[fivepoint]

The only reason the AppleTV is appealing to me at all, is because I can rip DVDs of content onto the item and have all of my movies in one place.

THE PROBLEM, is that this process takes way too much time, is far to technical, and isn't feasible for anywhere NEAR a majority of consumers.

 

[MacLadybug]

Here's why I haven't bought one...

#1 - cheaper and more convenient rental program with Netflix. Thanks to Netflix, we've stopped buying DVDs.

#2 - hadn't messed around with my DVD collection and figured that the Apple TV wouldn't store them. Not sure how to do that.

I have a Pioneer Elite Carousel that holds 300 DVDs. I don't want to store all 300 on my computer, that would eat up the hard drive. So what are my options? Do you store them on the Apple TV device? If the rental program was the same or similar to Netflix and I had a good understanding how and what to do with my DVDs, I'd be the first in line for one.

I'm open to suggestions, just give me the instructions too. Thanks.

 

[dbwie]

movie rentals

When I had digital cable with video-on-demand, I didn't really have the need for an AppleTV for movie rentals. I also had an Airport Express to stream music to my stereo. I had much of AppleTVs functionality through a conglomerate of other devices. Now that I have ditched digital cable and sold the Express, the AppleTV product is great for me.

 

[JBaughb]

as mentioned earlier. I would just be happy with an unlimited iTunes subscription service for movies and tv shows. Id even pay up to $30-40 a month for it.

Also, id like more HD podcasts. I enjoy the 5 or 6 that I watch on a regular basis but more is better!

 

[bacaramac]

First off, I love ATV and think it is a great Hobby for many. At first I bought it for its coolness, but have soon realized how great it is for movies/shows.

I think the best thing is related to kids, it they want to watch a movie they can without going through DVD's and then DVD menus.

I also think it would help ATV take off if you could rip DVD's to computer the same way you can with CD's for music.

I am soon planning on getting an ATV for the Bedrooms, Family and Media rooms. It would also be nice to have a mac mini as a server for all ATV's and free me up from having to use my iMac to do this work.

 

[ChrisA]

..
So why do you think it hasn't become mainstream yet?

The true cost of renting a movie is the price in the iTunes store plus the cost of the ATV device. When you divide the price of the ATV by the number of movies watched per year movie rental becomes expensive unless you are the person to watch 50 a year.

What Apple needs to do if they want this to go mainstream is offer a subscription model where if you sign up for two years you get the set top box (ATV) free. Kind of like what they do with the iPhone were if you agree to a $2,400 contract you can have the iPhone for only $199. But they'd need a lot larger library to support a subscription service. I explained this to my wife and her immediate reaction was "Who'd want to pay $250 before they could rent their first movie?" I think most people think like her.

Currently my wife and kids find that the local public library has the best selection of movie titles and they are all available free. They have an on-line reservation system too. You can select a title and they will pull it and keep it at the front desk for you. They send an email or automated telephone notification when the movie is ready for pickup. Hard for Apple to compete with that.

That said, I may still buy one. But not before it will do 1080p. I don't want to buy a 720 capable unit only to have to upgrade it later. I have no use for Hollywood movies. I'd use the ATV only to put my own digital images and video on my Sony 1080 TV set. I'd use the ATV the same way I used my old 35mm slide projector.

 

[emegmac]

The true cost of renting a movie is the price in the iTunes store plus the cost of the ATV device. When you divide the price of the ATV by the number of movies watched per year movie rental becomes expensive unless you are the person to watch 50 a year.

The ATV is more than just a rental device. I keep all my movies on it. It has saved me money by not having to buy the same disney movie 10 times because my kids scratch them all up. Now they just push a button and pow the movie starts playing. Now I load the movies on my hard drive, and keep all the kids movies in the car to watch on the road. One movie to buy.

 

[belunos]

It doesn't appeal to me because the 360 got here first, and does pretty much the same thing

 

[atszyman]

Here would be a thought, of course the movie studios would absolutely hate it but why doesn't some company like Apple come up with an online storage system that keeps track of your movies for you?

Of course you'd have the problem of losing your entire collection if the company were to ever go bust, but if it were all digital (let people even scan the bar codes of their DVDs to add the digital version to their collection).

When a new higher resolution format you could upgrade your collection all at once, probably for a per-movie fee but once you buy one copy of a movie you'd be future proofed at minimum cost rather than $10 for a SD DVD now, another $15 when it comes out HD, another $20 with the next greatest thing... Instead $1-2 per movie and you instantly get the resolution that best fits your new TV. On the go, you can access your collection via the internet and download to your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other internet enabled device so your entire collection would be available everywhere. You could also set it up to be able to loan movies to friends and make them unavailable to yourself like when you lend your friend a DVD.

The lack of being able to market the next new format might cause the movie studios to balk a bit but they could actually make more money as people upgrade their entire collections rather than just a few discs with every format change. Of course the other issue is how the company offering the service is going to make money, I don't know how many people would be willing to pay just for storing the movies they own, but if the service was tied to a store where the movies can be bought as well as stored then it may be possible with no subscription fees since you only need to store each movie once and then make sure that those who own it can access it when they need it.

If this service existed for the TV I'd go get it in a heartbeat and start adding my DVD collection. The hardest part would be keeping people honest and not a bunch of friends using the same DVD to add it to all of their collections, of course the same problem exists with CDs in that I can loan my friends CDs and they could rip them into their own iTunes.

 

[Tilpots]

*
TV Tuner=Live TV....am I wrong?

For the big networks which most get free over the air, yes. But think sports on cable like ESPN, or national news like CNN, or weather like the weather channel...

 

[The Phazer]

I think the real reason it hasn't taken off is because the TV Networks and Movie Studios are dragging their feet and are reluctant to jump into the digital video distribution market. NBC is a prime example. They pulled out of iTunes and tried to go it alone and failed miserably. These execs don't see iTunes as a valid distribution model.

If they did, they wouldn't fight Apple tooth and nail over every little restriction.

How has NBC "failed miserably"? Hulu in a year of US only access already makes more money than YouTube ever has, and continues to show considerable growth ahead of opening up to some international markets.

There are a lot of TV networks that would like to try providing timed-expiry rentals supported by adverts. They're relatively easy for programme producers to rights clear with third party contributors like writers and the RIAA and can make money. It is worth noting that the networks very rarely have complete copyright control over any programme they make - they're required to fit in their licences for the music they use from the RIAA, or their deals with the Writers Guild (remember the writers winning the writers strike? They control a lot of this now as a result).

Plenty of networks worldwide are already trying this model - for instance all 5 major UK broadcasters do. And when they go to Apple they get the short shrift, because Apple isn't interested in licensing Fairplay's DRM out to third parties to put around their content, and won't distribute it through the iTunes music store because there's no fee for them to take a cut of. So they have to go to Microsoft who will quite gladly sell them MS DRM, even though it isn't compatible with Macs or iPods and is buggy as hell, because there's no better solution.

The issue here is Apple's intransigence.

Phazer

 

[princealfie]

Hulu only makes more money than YouTube because NBC cooks their accounting books just like the way they cooked up the Olympics for the world to make the host country look better than it really is...

 

[macwall]

if there was a way to watch Hulu-style content on Apple TV with ads I would love it. if the integration between Apple TV and iTunes is a lot closer than I would love that as well. and of course if it's a DVR.....

 

[paduck]

The ATV is more than just a rental device. I keep all my movies on it. It has saved me money by not having to buy the same disney movie 10 times because my kids scratch them all up. Now they just push a button and pow the movie starts playing. Now I load the movies on my hard drive, and keep all the kids movies in the car to watch on the road. One movie to buy.

For me this is a primary motivation to getting an Apple TV. The kids always want to touch the DVD's and CD's. The iPod solved the destruction of CD problem. I think Apple TV will save me on the DVD's. They listen to music a lot more than they watch TV though, so I am waiting to see the next revision. We just replaced the 19-year old TV so I have just added the capability to even use Apple TV.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

Yes and...

Well up until last week in Australia it was a combination of price and lack of video content.

Now it's lack of marketing, ignorance of it's existence and the fact that downloading one rental SD video is going to knock out 80% of the population's monthly download quota. Stupid greedy backward thinking arsewipe telcos.

Amen to that brother. And i would add that the device in Aus is at a ridiculous price when compared to the States. It's twice the price, despite the recent dip in the Aussie dollar.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

The true cost of renting a movie is the price in the iTunes store plus the cost of the ATV device. When you divide the price of the ATV by the number of movies watched per year movie rental becomes expensive unless you are the person to watch 50 a year.

What Apple needs to do if they want this to go mainstream is offer a subscription model where if you sign up for two years you get the set top box (ATV) free. Kind of like what they do with the iPhone were if you agree to a $2,400 contract you can have the iPhone for only $199. But they'd need a lot larger library to support a subscription service. I explained this to my wife and her immediate reaction was "Who'd want to pay $250 before they could rent their first movie?" I think most people think like her.

Can't quite agree with you on that one. No offence to your wife or anyone who thinks like her, but when you rent any film, you have to pay a lot more usually to have any device that will play it. That's been the case since the invention of VHS. Players back the were in the thousands.

 

[MrCatMan]

It will only really take off if you were allowed to import your own DVD's and there was sufficient content.

At the moment it is only for real fans who have the technical means to rip their films and have the hard drive space to do so.

I have had mine for a week and I love it. I'm buying films I already own as I have not yet upgraded my set up.

I currently have G3 Imac too slow and only 80 gb HD.
I also have G4 Powerbook that is 100 gb HD but has not got the processing power to get through handbeaking a film in under 48 hrs!
I have a intel MacBook that has 120 gig but is full up with music. This is quick enough to rip a film but I've filled it up. I can't be arsed connecting a portable drive to it as I use it as a portable machine.

To make it work for me I am going to replace the G3 Imac with a new 20 inch with 320 gb but for storage I am going to buy a 4TB Drobo .

I can't see the man in the street being bothered with the storage requirments
Also I'm based in the UK so the content isn't there.

Still worth it for me even if its for a simple interface for music and photos.

 

[Consultant]

It doesn't appeal to me because the 360 got here first, and does pretty much the same thing

No, the interface isn't as intuitive in the 360.

In addition, the 360 is one LOUD MOFU.

Apple TV is silent.

 

[trip1ex]

I posted why I don't have one. What would it take for me to buy one?

Well actually all it would take is for movie rental prices to fall in line with prices that I can rent DVDs for.

$1/night or something comparable to what Netflix offers. And really prices should be cheaper since there is no physical media.

 

[blackpond]

I enjoy our tv but do wish there was more content. At the same time, anyone comparing the tv rental service to a $1/night Redbox is kidding themselves. The last time I visited a Redbox it didn't have 1,500 titles to chose from and the one title it had that interested me was out of stock. I never had an 'out of stock' issue with digital purchases or rentals.

Additionally, I would like to see free ad supported content.

 

[aaquib]

Can't quite agree with you on that one. No offence to your wife or anyone who thinks like her, but when you rent any film, you have to pay a lot more usually to have any device that will play it. That's been the case since the invention of VHS. Players back the were in the thousands.

Yeah, but everybody already has DVD players, so it's not a strong argument for everybody. Apple is trying to pull the consumers watching movies on their DVD players to switching to the tv. Charging $230 doesn't help when most consumers already have a setup working perfectly. I think once the tv gets to a mainstream price of $99, and Apple starts marketing it more, you'll see a significant lift in sales.

 

[motulist]

It just does too little. For me anyway. It can't play all the movies and TV shows I've ripped and downloaded in non-iTunes formats, it has no optical drive to read all the media I have stored on optical discs, it can only stream youtube and itunes content and not hulu or netflix, etc. It just can't do nearly all the things I would require a media machine to do. Sure, it can do some of the things I want, but if I have to hook up my Mac to do those other functions anyway, then it completely negates the purpose of the atv.

 

[dynaflash]

No offense to any of us, but frankly the users of this forum have nothing to do with why the atv has not exploded in popularity. The people it needs to attract for that kind of distribution have no clue how to even use this forum, much less how to configure another solution to do what the appleTV does.

Look to the iPod's early days and its success now and you can answer this question. It's not about us geeks at all. Its about joe mainstreet and grandma and grandpa. Its about readily available content, period. Its about the average junior high student wanting one and showing mom and dad how easy it is to do what they now do with dvd's. Its about marketing (its fair to say that the atv does not enjoy quite the same marketing budget that the iPod does/did ). The atv really doesn't revolutionize the set top media player any more than the iPod revolutionized the mp3 player. But, the iPod was easier to use and more importantly it became easier to get your content and put it on the device. Imho that was the key.

Just my .02 .

 

[gcmexico]

No offense to any of us, but frankly the users of this forum have nothing to do with why the atv has not exploded in popularity. The people it needs to attract for that kind of distribution have no clue how to even use this forum, much less how to configure another solution to do what the appleTV does.

Look to the iPod's early days and its success now and you can answer this question. It's not about us geeks at all. Its about joe mainstreet and grandma and grandpa. Its about readily available content, period. Its about the average junior high student wanting one and showing mom and dad how easy it is to do what they now do with dvd's. Its about marketing (its fair to say that the atv does not enjoy quite the same marketing budget that the iPod does/did ). The atv really doesn't revolutionize the set top media player any more than the iPod revolutionized the mp3 player. But, the iPod was easier to use and more importantly it became easier to get your content and put it on the device. Imho that was the key.

Just my .02 .

*
well put...I must agree some ATV commercials would be sweet

 

[Donar]

No offense to any of us, but frankly the users of this forum have nothing to do with why the atv has not exploded in popularity. The people it needs to attract for that kind of distribution have no clue how to even use this forum, much less how to configure another solution to do what the appleTV does.

But even here people give suggestions what would make them consider the aTV.
I'm not into itunes and drm media, so itunes integration is no big deal for me: But the lack of 1080p and having the thing to hack to see more formats is a show stopper for me. Maybe i will get myself a Popcornhour instead to stream the media which resides on my Synology NAS, don't know.