What does a PS3 cost...AppleTV is over priced, however it does what it does rather well.
People asking for PVR or BRD don't really get what the ATV is about, thats fine
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Why Hasn't Apple TV Exploded In Popularity?
- Thread starter BoulderBum
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What does a PS3 cost...AppleTV is over priced, however it does what it does rather well.
People asking for PVR or BRD don't really get what the ATV is about, thats fine
A PS3 with an 80G drive will be $399. You get wifi, 4 USB ports, card readers. HDTV output... and you can even stream from your mac with the right software! I have downloaded720p videos with Vuze that look great on the PS3. Plus you can always get a portable USB drive ( I use a 120G passport) and movies play flawlessly from the USB drive! And if you want to buy/rent, the PS3 store will do that too!
I am a devoted Apple fan, since my first Apple ][ a few years ago, but I know when a product is not worth it! Just because it comes from
does not mean it is the right product.
But if it pleases you and it works for you, great! Go shopping. Me, I will stick with my PS3! and my iPods, and G4, and G5 and still working Apple ][e!
I am a devoted Apple fan, since my first Apple ][ a few years ago, but I know when a product is not worth it! Just because it comes from
does not mean it is the right product.But if it pleases you and it works for you, great! Go shopping. Me, I will stick with my PS3! and my iPods, and G4, and G5 and still working Apple ][e!
Purchasing TV shows? Definately not. The average consumer wants to watch TV (currently anyway) by switching on their TV set and watching. It is a fundamentally passive activity - consumers want their TV content to be delivered to them - not to have to decide what content they want to watch.
I agreed with all of your points except for this one. This is highly debatable. There are plenty of people out there that exactly WANT to decide what TV content they have and pay for only that. This is the reason you see all this push of Ala carte from the cable providers (which they will only do with their dying breath ofcourse). Apple TV as an ala carte tv substitute, IF they had the content (they currently don't), AND the right price (nix on that one too)...and advertised as such, would be hugely popular....
I agreed with all of your points except for this one. This is highly debatable. There are plenty of people out there that exactly WANT to decide what TV content they have and pay for only that. This is the reason you see all this push of Ala carte from the cable providers (which they will only do with their dying breath ofcourse). Apple TV as an ala carte tv substitute, IF they had the content (they currently don't), AND the right price (nix on that one too)...and advertised as such, would be hugely popular....
Average consumers don't know they exist!
Probably because average consumers don't know they exist. When I have guests over and they see how amazing my apple tv is they are floored and want one right then and there. They usually have no idea a device like the apple tv existed in the first place. It'd be nice to see some ads out there. Perhaps a, "Hi, I'm an apple TV. And I'm a media extennnnnnnnnn" okay maybe not but yeah.
Probably because average consumers don't know they exist. When I have guests over and they see how amazing my apple tv is they are floored and want one right then and there. They usually have no idea a device like the apple tv existed in the first place. It'd be nice to see some ads out there. Perhaps a, "Hi, I'm an apple TV. And I'm a media extennnnnnnnnn" okay maybe not but yeah.
Yes, the way that a lot of cable companies, itunes, and others are going is down the path of ala-carte pay-per-view progamming.
But is this what the general, non-technology minded person wants to do at the end of a long day at work? No.
From a marketing perspective, consumers are fundamentally lazy. They don't want to have to think about what they want to watch on TV. They want to sit down in front of the set, and flick through the channels until they find something that entertains them.
You or I might prefer to watch the next season of "Lost" by downloading the entire series from itunes and watching it when and where we want to on our ATV's and iPhones. But the vast majority of the viewing public (I would say in the order of 90%+) wants to watch it the way they always have ("tune in at the same time next week").
Maybe this style of TV watching might be completely replaced by the ala carte style over the next 5 to 10 years, when society embraces downloadable digital media to a greater extent than it has now. But that is not the case at the moment.
The other thing is that in areas of the world outside of the US, the general public is used to getting a lot of their TV content for free (Australia) or close to it (UK and Europe), rather than being locked into cable plans like you are in the US.
It is a pretty hard sell to say to tell people that they have to pay through the nose for the privalege of watching content that they are used to watching (and still can - often in better resolution) for free the same way they always have.
There has to be some kind of an incentive for consumers to change the way they do things. As I said earlier, with the ipod, it directly replaced the walkmans and discmans that people were using with a product that was better on all levels.
If Apple want consumers to change the way the way they watch TV, then there has to be more of an incentive to change than there is currently.
Well, maybe I shouldn't have said "B-movies" but rather "less popular content". I remember Netflix streaming had some good documentaries, too, but my point is that they don't have the blockbuster new releases and the kind of stuff average users crave the most.
Case in point, I haven't even heard of "Inspector Lynley", but I think it may be relegated to the status of "cult classic" rather than mainstream blockbuster. That's why I personally don't like Netflix's selection more than iTunes where I can, for example, rent new releases like "21".
That sucks. I wouldn't buy the Apple TV without the movie download/rental features, either.
I bought my ATV under the misunderstanding that I would be able to access all of the content on my mac through the tv. I had been able to plug my laptop directly into the TV in the past, and use the TV as my monitor, and I had assumed the ATV would allow me to do the same thing only wirelessly.
I was very disappointed to find that only itunes media was accessible, and that it didn't have browser support. I've now used ATV flash to customise my ATV so that I can access all my media without having to convert it, use firefox on my TV with a mouse and keyboard, and plug in an external harddrive. All of which is super cool. I just wish it had come like that out of the box!
I was very disappointed to find that only itunes media was accessible, and that it didn't have browser support. I've now used ATV flash to customise my ATV so that I can access all my media without having to convert it, use firefox on my TV with a mouse and keyboard, and plug in an external harddrive. All of which is super cool. I just wish it had come like that out of the box!
I've got two AppleTV units. They work a wonder for me, but then I have the support equipment to make them worthwhile and it is there that I think you find the reason they're not more popular.
Look at what you can do with AppleTV and then look at the equipment needed to make it 'nice'. By itself, you can buy or possibly rent tv shows, movies and music. Most stores like Best Buy only seem to carry the 40GB model, so by itself, it's pretty darn useless EXCEPT for renting movies because there's not enough space on it for anything else. Plus without a computer to network too, you risk losing any content that you do buy because there's not backup facility without iTunes. So immediately, you NEED a computer running iTunes to network to unless rentals are pretty much your primary interest.
Now let's look at the music equation. Let's say you plan to use it to listen to music. That means you unless you like tinny tv speakers, you need to have a stereo to connect it to. The best thing about music and AppleTV, is that you can stream your entire music collection around the house and create a whole or partial house audio system. But that requires buying stereo equipment to connect it to and if you want it to sound good, it better be quality equipment. I've got three rooms of audio at my house including the THX sub/sat system in my den connected directly to my PowerMac. I've got around $5000-6000 worth of equipment in both my home theater and music-only rooms, which are on different floors (the den is on the opposite end of the house, thus creating the possibility of music that can be easily heard anywhere in the house). I've had this equipment BEFORE I ever heard of AppleTV so it was practically a no-brainer for me (actually I did look into both Sonos and the Squeezebox/Squeezecenter systems before deciding on iTunes + AppleTV), but this won't be true for many buyers out there who would need to buy more equipment to enable a house-wide type of system.
You can view photos with AppleTV. This begs the question about your viewing screen size and type. If you have a reasonably large HD-capable display, this feature is very nice to have, but again, you need some kind of computer to sync the images from. If you have a smallish and/or non-HD screen, maybe it's still better than looking at 3x5s or going to the computer to look at pictures, maybe not. It all depends on location and preference.
Now let's look at the remote. The remote AppleTV comes with is pretty ridiculous looking. It's tiny. I've dropped the darn thing through the seat cushions of my couch more than a couple of times and found it underneath the couch as it's so small, it fits right through the foundation cracks under the cushions. It has very few buttons so it's easy to master, but it's a pain in the butt to use for inputting alphabetical type information. I'm worried about when the battery dies as I cannot seem to get the cover off this thing to replace it. Frankly, they could have kept the same basic controls, but added a mini-keyboard or something for direct input like most remotes have had since the beginning of the remote age and not made it that much more complicated that someone who is under the age of 80 couldn't easily figure it out. Oh, but there's the recent software addition that lets you use an iPhone or iPod Touch 2.x with "Remote" to control some (not all) of its functions. Well, once again, you're looking at an extra outlay of cash (minimum $299 for an iPod Touch) unless you already happen to have that equipment, thus increasing AppleTV's expense ever higher in terms of support equipment.
Then you have the Blu-Ray crowd who likes to point out that AppleTV's HD rentals are only 720P instead of 1080P like they have. Not only that, but the compression level is much higher. I've got a high quality Panasonic 720P projector and frankly, the movie rentals I've watched have all looked better than all of Cable TV's HD offerings, be they 720P or 1080i and you don't see Blu-Ray people attacking CableTV much. But even so, the argument will persist forever because even if AppleTV some day offers 1080P films, they will always be more compressed than a Blu-Ray disc and thus declared "inferior" even if it's way handier/easy for me to select a movie to watch off AppleTV and find it ready to watch generally in under 1 minute on average. The studios are to blame when the DVD is out and they make AppleTV wait another month to RENT it. And as of this post, you cannot buy or rent any TV Shows in HD. And the TV Shows and Movies you BUY do not have Dolby Digital Surround and that just plain sucks so I limit my expenditures to HD RENTALS, personally. I did buy two music videos and their picture quality was somewhere between a bad VCR tape and a so-so DVD on average. The music videos I transferred to AppleTV using Handbrake generally look almost as good as the DVDs they came off of (with a few quibbles here and there in some scenes) so the problem lies with iTunes and their own transfer quality which is often very poor for music videos.
So basically, AppleTV is great if you have the hardware and music library to make it useful. If not, it may represent more expense than value, which is probably why Apple isn't pushing it that hard just yet. To me, it's invaluable as a whole house audio system and the HD movie rentals are nice too.
It could be made a lot better with the addition of Internet Browsing capability (the iPhone/touch remote would work great there) and some trippy visualizer effects would go great with my Pink Floyd collection and the like. It might be nice to have a one-line display on the front panel to show the current song/movie title name and time display without having to bring it up on the monitor or an iPhone/Touch. An integrated card reader would also be a cheap addition make it possible to import/view photos from a digital camera without needing to load them on through iTunes from a computer. And for goodness sake, put a power switch and/or hard reset button on the unit. I shouldn't have to unplug it (which creates a spark virtually every time) to get the thing to reset when it inevitably hangs sooner or later).
Look at what you can do with AppleTV and then look at the equipment needed to make it 'nice'. By itself, you can buy or possibly rent tv shows, movies and music. Most stores like Best Buy only seem to carry the 40GB model, so by itself, it's pretty darn useless EXCEPT for renting movies because there's not enough space on it for anything else. Plus without a computer to network too, you risk losing any content that you do buy because there's not backup facility without iTunes. So immediately, you NEED a computer running iTunes to network to unless rentals are pretty much your primary interest.
Now let's look at the music equation. Let's say you plan to use it to listen to music. That means you unless you like tinny tv speakers, you need to have a stereo to connect it to. The best thing about music and AppleTV, is that you can stream your entire music collection around the house and create a whole or partial house audio system. But that requires buying stereo equipment to connect it to and if you want it to sound good, it better be quality equipment. I've got three rooms of audio at my house including the THX sub/sat system in my den connected directly to my PowerMac. I've got around $5000-6000 worth of equipment in both my home theater and music-only rooms, which are on different floors (the den is on the opposite end of the house, thus creating the possibility of music that can be easily heard anywhere in the house). I've had this equipment BEFORE I ever heard of AppleTV so it was practically a no-brainer for me (actually I did look into both Sonos and the Squeezebox/Squeezecenter systems before deciding on iTunes + AppleTV), but this won't be true for many buyers out there who would need to buy more equipment to enable a house-wide type of system.
You can view photos with AppleTV. This begs the question about your viewing screen size and type. If you have a reasonably large HD-capable display, this feature is very nice to have, but again, you need some kind of computer to sync the images from. If you have a smallish and/or non-HD screen, maybe it's still better than looking at 3x5s or going to the computer to look at pictures, maybe not. It all depends on location and preference.
Now let's look at the remote. The remote AppleTV comes with is pretty ridiculous looking. It's tiny. I've dropped the darn thing through the seat cushions of my couch more than a couple of times and found it underneath the couch as it's so small, it fits right through the foundation cracks under the cushions. It has very few buttons so it's easy to master, but it's a pain in the butt to use for inputting alphabetical type information. I'm worried about when the battery dies as I cannot seem to get the cover off this thing to replace it. Frankly, they could have kept the same basic controls, but added a mini-keyboard or something for direct input like most remotes have had since the beginning of the remote age and not made it that much more complicated that someone who is under the age of 80 couldn't easily figure it out. Oh, but there's the recent software addition that lets you use an iPhone or iPod Touch 2.x with "Remote" to control some (not all) of its functions. Well, once again, you're looking at an extra outlay of cash (minimum $299 for an iPod Touch) unless you already happen to have that equipment, thus increasing AppleTV's expense ever higher in terms of support equipment.
Then you have the Blu-Ray crowd who likes to point out that AppleTV's HD rentals are only 720P instead of 1080P like they have. Not only that, but the compression level is much higher. I've got a high quality Panasonic 720P projector and frankly, the movie rentals I've watched have all looked better than all of Cable TV's HD offerings, be they 720P or 1080i and you don't see Blu-Ray people attacking CableTV much. But even so, the argument will persist forever because even if AppleTV some day offers 1080P films, they will always be more compressed than a Blu-Ray disc and thus declared "inferior" even if it's way handier/easy for me to select a movie to watch off AppleTV and find it ready to watch generally in under 1 minute on average. The studios are to blame when the DVD is out and they make AppleTV wait another month to RENT it. And as of this post, you cannot buy or rent any TV Shows in HD. And the TV Shows and Movies you BUY do not have Dolby Digital Surround and that just plain sucks so I limit my expenditures to HD RENTALS, personally. I did buy two music videos and their picture quality was somewhere between a bad VCR tape and a so-so DVD on average. The music videos I transferred to AppleTV using Handbrake generally look almost as good as the DVDs they came off of (with a few quibbles here and there in some scenes) so the problem lies with iTunes and their own transfer quality which is often very poor for music videos.
So basically, AppleTV is great if you have the hardware and music library to make it useful. If not, it may represent more expense than value, which is probably why Apple isn't pushing it that hard just yet. To me, it's invaluable as a whole house audio system and the HD movie rentals are nice too.
It could be made a lot better with the addition of Internet Browsing capability (the iPhone/touch remote would work great there) and some trippy visualizer effects would go great with my Pink Floyd collection and the like. It might be nice to have a one-line display on the front panel to show the current song/movie title name and time display without having to bring it up on the monitor or an iPhone/Touch. An integrated card reader would also be a cheap addition make it possible to import/view photos from a digital camera without needing to load them on through iTunes from a computer. And for goodness sake, put a power switch and/or hard reset button on the unit. I shouldn't have to unplug it (which creates a spark virtually every time) to get the thing to reset when it inevitably hangs sooner or later).
Can you rent programs and films through your cable and satellite tv providers in the US? You can in the UK. Virgin, the cable company, allows you to watch a wide range of programs whenever you want and a lot of them are free. Sky, the satellite provider, allows you to watch pay-per-view movies that often begin every 15 minutes. (I think you might just be able to download them in advance too). For most consumers this is the obvious choice for renting films. I think it would be hard to convince them that ATV provides anything better in this area.
As for ripping all your dvds onto your computer, I can't see why I'd bother unless I had a massive collection and I wanted to clear some shelf space. Besides this functionality is irrelevant for the average consumer because it's not included out of the box.
The main appeal for me is that it's the best way to get all my music on itunes into my living room, which is why I'm toying with getting one. So for me the tv aspect is secondary. What I really want is an itunes music server that can run independently of my computer. It sounds like this is what the ATV is best at, yet this isn't how it's sold. I'm sure there are thousands of people out there, like me, who have the majority of their music on itunes, but don't have an easy and effective means to get it from their computer to their hi-fi system in their living room. It strikes me as being a massive gap in the market that's just waiting for Apple to fill. I know Forrester research agrees with me: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,45659,00.html
What also struck me is that Apple have 3 very similar looking products that share some common functionality: ATV, Apple Extreme, and Timecapsule. Why don't they just combine them. Something like this would do the job nicely:
http://www.macpredictions.com/2008/03/apple-iserve-with-itunes-server-mockup.html
ATV is clearly not meant to be a DVR. I think the frustration a lot of us have is that we know Apple could make a seriously good DVR if it wanted to. It would be great to have a device from Apple that consolidates the functionality and replaces my DVR, blu-ray player and (why not) my games console. It would certainly get rid of a lot of clutter, but as it is ATV will just add to it. This is what the Xbox-360 and PS3 were supposed to do, but I think failed in this respect because they're only compatible with their proprietary formats. (Also the Xbox 360 is just too darn loud).
Finally, I'm a little hesitant about getting an ATV because I have a strong feeling that Apple (or maybe somebody else) will come up with something better in the near future.
As for ripping all your dvds onto your computer, I can't see why I'd bother unless I had a massive collection and I wanted to clear some shelf space. Besides this functionality is irrelevant for the average consumer because it's not included out of the box.
The main appeal for me is that it's the best way to get all my music on itunes into my living room, which is why I'm toying with getting one. So for me the tv aspect is secondary. What I really want is an itunes music server that can run independently of my computer. It sounds like this is what the ATV is best at, yet this isn't how it's sold. I'm sure there are thousands of people out there, like me, who have the majority of their music on itunes, but don't have an easy and effective means to get it from their computer to their hi-fi system in their living room. It strikes me as being a massive gap in the market that's just waiting for Apple to fill. I know Forrester research agrees with me: http://www.forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,45659,00.html
What also struck me is that Apple have 3 very similar looking products that share some common functionality: ATV, Apple Extreme, and Timecapsule. Why don't they just combine them. Something like this would do the job nicely:
http://www.macpredictions.com/2008/03/apple-iserve-with-itunes-server-mockup.html
ATV is clearly not meant to be a DVR. I think the frustration a lot of us have is that we know Apple could make a seriously good DVR if it wanted to. It would be great to have a device from Apple that consolidates the functionality and replaces my DVR, blu-ray player and (why not) my games console. It would certainly get rid of a lot of clutter, but as it is ATV will just add to it. This is what the Xbox-360 and PS3 were supposed to do, but I think failed in this respect because they're only compatible with their proprietary formats. (Also the Xbox 360 is just too darn loud).
Finally, I'm a little hesitant about getting an ATV because I have a strong feeling that Apple (or maybe somebody else) will come up with something better in the near future.
Why don't I have the Apple TV?
Well... it doesn't play DivX out of the box. I don't listen to music on my tv. I don't use the web to buy movies (cost me more in bandwidth).
Its hdd is too small to hold my movie collection.
It would be VERY easy to correct these faults. Just preload a few more codecs, give it a decent 3.5" HDD and wait for the internet to catch up.
Well... it doesn't play DivX out of the box. I don't listen to music on my tv. I don't use the web to buy movies (cost me more in bandwidth).
Its hdd is too small to hold my movie collection.
It would be VERY easy to correct these faults. Just preload a few more codecs, give it a decent 3.5" HDD and wait for the internet to catch up.
There is a huge section of the computer user world that only uses the PC/Mac for checking email and doing light surfing don't forget these folks make up a huge section of the pie. Not everyone is in to cable tv or even huge movie buffs. Believe it or not some folks still like social and human interaction and don't spend the majority of there time in front of a computer or tv. I admit that I am trying to cut down on my PC and TV time and get back in the game of life
"real human interaction"
These two post demonstrates why
I don't think people don't get the concept, I think people don't care much for the concept.
Yes, but the selection isn't great and the HD quality is often sub-par at best. ATV's video quality is so much better than my cable company's HD On-Demand, which gets blocky any time there's any amount of motion on-screen, whereas ATV's picture quality for HD movies has been better than HDNet on average, which is the highest quality channel on cable.
I'm more concerned about rentals disappearing to "buy only" lately. Almost all the Disney films are now buy only, but it's not just limited to Disney. The Matrix was HD rentable just a couple of weeks ago (not sure when it changed) and now it's listed as buy only, while its sequels are available for HD rental. Something strange is going on at iTunes and they aren't talking about it.
I think there are a couple of NAS devices out there that can act as an iTunes server. As long as they can accept a passcode, they should work. I can access music and photo collections from two or more different computers on the network from AppleTV at any given time. I've got my music collection on my Mac, which is always on and has a backup drive, but I also keep a second backup on my PC in case of catastrophic failure of the Mac or the like.
Using the Mac as a server for iTunes really isn't a problem. I can't be in two places at once and iTunes runs happily in the background regardless, taking up very little CPU usage even when streaming. Both the Mac and PC are connected via Gigabit to my router so bandwidth isn't an issue. In other words, I don't really need an NAS.
Another nice thing about AppleTV versus say an Airport Express even if you're only going to use it for music (right now there is no monitor in my HiFi only room; the ATV unit is purely for music there at the moment) is that an AppleTV unit can access different music at the same time as another unit. Even though AppleTVs are now AirTunes units, you don't have to use them that way. If you have an iPhone or iPodTouch and the "Remote" App, you can control each unit individually instead of the iTunes library (or use the ATV remote itself if you have a monitor connected) and like Sonos, they can then play different music in different rooms. If you select the main library, it can sync all the rooms together or just two of them, etc. to play the same thing at the same time, so it's pretty flexible whereas the Airport Express can only play via Airtunes so it can only play what the main library is playing on the computer.
To me, I bought AppleTV to run music around the house. The ability to show my photos on a 93" HD screen and rent HD movies is more of a bonus feature. I dumped over 350 CDs into iTunes (in both lossless and AAC formats for travel) and it's NICE to select whatever music I want to hear in whatever room of the house at the touch of a button. I've found myself listening to music I haven't heard in years because it was too much bother to dig a CD out for one or two good tracks. Now, it's just a touch of a button to retrieve them.
Having had mine since launch (in the UK) i can confidently say i would still be been delighted even if i had paid twice that..........it's flipping awsome..a few TB of converted movies & tv shows helps too
You can send me that remaining 200 pounds if it makes you feel better..
Apple keeps taking my money!
The reason I haven't got one is that I keep spending on Alum iMacs, ipods, iphones, Time Capsules, and still haven't gotten around to replacing my old low def, narrow screen TV with busted inputs. If ATV worked with old TV's I'd be there...but it gives me something to look forward to...
The reason I haven't got one is that I keep spending on Alum iMacs, ipods, iphones, Time Capsules, and still haven't gotten around to replacing my old low def, narrow screen TV with busted inputs. If ATV worked with old TV's I'd be there...but it gives me something to look forward to...
Abigs HD Multimedia Drive 160GB I brought now I have sold my hacked apple tv. The Abigs play MKV files & another files without encoding nice
People still miss the point. Sure, i can see why you want DVR functionality, etc. But thats not the point. Just follow me for a second here.
Everyone agrees that an iPod is a million times nicer than a CD discman with a huge carrying case of CDs. Its so nice in fact, that the iPod has become a household name.
Now shift for a second from the portable devices and lets go back to where a lot of other music listening goes on: my living room.
The AppleTV + iTunes has replaced my 300 disc CD changer on my stereo and AV system. No more sifting through CDs and burning new discs of content that I download. I just scroll the the list right there on my TV and choose what I want (all in HD, with album art intact). It brings the greatness that is iTunes/iPod to my main living room stereo.
If you're into music and you listen to music at home, what's your alternative? An iPod dock sitting on my stereo rack? Then i have to walk up to the thing and spin the dial on a little bitty screen to play music (which is somewhat akward when its sitting on a dock). Or how about Airport Express? Nice, but now i've got to go to my main computer to play music, or keep a Macbook in the living room as a remote.
AppleTV is to my living room as my iPod is to my car.
All this without even mentioning all the TV shows and movies that i can download online. I know some of you are against pirating and whatnot, but think of it this way: the AppleTV is basically your "ThePirateBay" player right on your TV.
Everyone agrees that an iPod is a million times nicer than a CD discman with a huge carrying case of CDs. Its so nice in fact, that the iPod has become a household name.
Now shift for a second from the portable devices and lets go back to where a lot of other music listening goes on: my living room.
The AppleTV + iTunes has replaced my 300 disc CD changer on my stereo and AV system. No more sifting through CDs and burning new discs of content that I download. I just scroll the the list right there on my TV and choose what I want (all in HD, with album art intact). It brings the greatness that is iTunes/iPod to my main living room stereo.
If you're into music and you listen to music at home, what's your alternative? An iPod dock sitting on my stereo rack? Then i have to walk up to the thing and spin the dial on a little bitty screen to play music (which is somewhat akward when its sitting on a dock). Or how about Airport Express? Nice, but now i've got to go to my main computer to play music, or keep a Macbook in the living room as a remote.
AppleTV is to my living room as my iPod is to my car.
All this without even mentioning all the TV shows and movies that i can download online. I know some of you are against pirating and whatnot, but think of it this way: the AppleTV is basically your "ThePirateBay" player right on your TV.
If they put a small display on the frotn to show whats playing then it really could replace my CD as main music device in my living room.
Don't want to turn my TV on to see what's playing.
Plus, too dammed expensive in the UK.
Don't want to turn my TV on to see what's playing.
Plus, too dammed expensive in the UK.
The whole 'living room computer multimedia hub ecosystem' thing was sort of a technology in search of a solution. I think Jobs realizes this, hence the 'hobby' term. 'Niche' might be a more accurate way of describing it. A good niche, but a niche nonetheless.
It's not that it isn't genuinely useful for some people, as you can obviously see in this thread. But there are a lot of technical constraints (upfront hardware costs, bit rate of downloaded content, other hardware requirements), and the actual benefits to general consumers is somewhat questionable.
A DVD player costs $40, and you can Netflix or drive 2 blocks to your local Blockbuster. That's a real low barrier entry, and the system has worked pretty good for a while now.
It's not that it isn't genuinely useful for some people, as you can obviously see in this thread. But there are a lot of technical constraints (upfront hardware costs, bit rate of downloaded content, other hardware requirements), and the actual benefits to general consumers is somewhat questionable.
A DVD player costs $40, and you can Netflix or drive 2 blocks to your local Blockbuster. That's a real low barrier entry, and the system has worked pretty good for a while now.