Rumor has it they are taking a loss on these items.
I agree that Amazon VoD on the TiVo works quite well.
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Apple Introduces Updated Apple TV with Netflix Integration, TV Show Rentals
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Rumor has it they are taking a loss on these items.
I agree that Amazon VoD on the TiVo works quite well.
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
IMHO the missed opportunity continues to be (ever since the 40 GBTV was introduced) is a simple tie in to the Time Capsule/Airport Extreme. No need to support generic NAS or DLNA or anything like that.
"You want local always-on storage? Just use your Time Caspule or connect a drive to your Airport Extreme."
B
No argument. Those that want that feature would have got what they want. It would be just a software implementation, so it wouldn't have required new hardware or added hardware cost. Apple would have had a desirable added benefit to tout, and it probably would have added some enticements to why buy a Time Capsule too. I believe that's win:win in every way.
FWIW. I own an HP Mediasmart precisely for this reason, I outgrew my 500 GB Time Capsule, and it (generally) works fine. I never had much luck with the Media Collector feature though so I just manage content manually.
Given the recent revelation that the iOS Remote app was written by one (apparently very busy) guy as the reason it has not been updated for the iPad yet, it seems perfectly reasonable that Apple doesn't have enough resources to do something like this.
B
re: How is the new way superior?
It's not so much that it's "superior" on any technical level. It's the idea that by eliminating the hard drive inside the AppleTV and some of the complexity, they now have a unit that's much cheaper and 4x smaller in size!
In my own situation, I can now spend $99 for one of these and literally strap the thing on the bottom of my DLP projector I have mounted on my ceiling downstairs, and have a self-contained setup. Currently, to watch movies on my projector, I have a long VGA video cable running across the room to a Mac Pro system running the Plex software, and the "Remote Buddy" shareware program I had to buy to support bluetooth remote controls, so I could use a Playstation 3 bluetooth remote control I purchased separately, to control it from the couch.
With the old AppleTV, the cost and larger size kept that from really making a lot of sense.
It's not so much that it's "superior" on any technical level. It's the idea that by eliminating the hard drive inside the AppleTV and some of the complexity, they now have a unit that's much cheaper and 4x smaller in size!
In my own situation, I can now spend $99 for one of these and literally strap the thing on the bottom of my DLP projector I have mounted on my ceiling downstairs, and have a self-contained setup. Currently, to watch movies on my projector, I have a long VGA video cable running across the room to a Mac Pro system running the Plex software, and the "Remote Buddy" shareware program I had to buy to support bluetooth remote controls, so I could use a Playstation 3 bluetooth remote control I purchased separately, to control it from the couch.
With the old AppleTV, the cost and larger size kept that from really making a lot of sense.
Yeah, it's too bad there isn't component hookups, my television lacks built in HDCP to play the protected content that would flow through the HDMI. Adapters seem to be crappy and unreliable except for http://www.hdfury.com/, but this is too expensive for me.
I don't begrudge Apple though, I understand why they went the HDMI route with this new version. Such a shift away from a hard drive and HDMI-only also suggests to me they will not update software on the old ATVs since the paradigm has shifted so much from the previous version.
In this arena I think Apple understands how limited its ability to "change the game" really is. You've got to get into the pit with all the networks, movie studios, etc... and fight it out on their turf. That Steve only came back with ABC (that was a gimme) and Fox shows just how hard it is to secure deals with these guys. I mean even perennial loser NBC is holding out on Apple.
I'm not sure which movie studios are on board, though at $5.00 a pop I'm sure most are considering that's pretty much the going rate for a HD rental these days.
I wasn't expecting much from the new
TV. However I thought we'd end up with something unique which would set this device apart from others. That we didn't really surprised me.
Don't get me wrong the price is attractive. I already have a single HDMI connection going to my projector. All my media devices get plugged into an AVR and from there just the video gets sent to the projector. Size of the new ATV just doesn't mean much in that situation. Plus it allows me to not have to have my MBP open/on to play movies (current ATV). To each their own. Maybe the next revision will be able to pull video from a TC backup (since my TC is always on).
i don't know apple, i'm not impressed right now. we'll see though. but my first reaction is that i'm not getting one
I love how people say "rip off" when what they really mean is "more than I would like to pay."
That would be correct if Amazon was not SELLING the same shows for the same $0.99. Compared to buying a show for $0.99, renting it from Apple is definitely a rip off. Do you agree?
A good point is made here (and one very relevant to a lot of 'average' people)...
Wireless... I can now shove one of these up behind my wall mounted TV that IS NOT CABLED with HDMI or Component from my other gear because it's a long way away and I'm not about to start ripping my walls apart (and I'm married, so my wife goes spaz if I trail cables up the wall)... and VOILA, I have streaming HD that's better than I get from my cable box, a nice interface that actually works. Oh and streaming music and photo's and slideshows that don't look like total *****...
All with no wires!
WOO HOOOO!
Wireless... I can now shove one of these up behind my wall mounted TV that IS NOT CABLED with HDMI or Component from my other gear because it's a long way away and I'm not about to start ripping my walls apart (and I'm married, so my wife goes spaz if I trail cables up the wall)... and VOILA, I have streaming HD that's better than I get from my cable box, a nice interface that actually works. Oh and streaming music and photo's and slideshows that don't look like total *****...
All with no wires!
WOO HOOOO!
In this arena I think Apple understands how limited its ability to "change the game" really is. You've got to get into the pit with all the networks, movie studios, etc... and fight it out on their turf. That Steve only came back with ABC (that was a gimme) and Fox shows just how hard it is to secure deals with these guys. I mean even perennial loser NBC is holding out on Apple.
I'm not sure which movie studios are on board, though at $5.00 a pop I'm sure most are considering that's pretty much the going rate for a HD rental these days.
I wasn't expecting much from the new
Im still not seeing how $5 a hd rental is a deal when I can pick up a BD disc at one of multiple Red Box locations within a matter of minutes, the maybe max 10 minute total round trip is not worth and extra 3.75$ to me.
Didn't read the whole thread, but I'm sure some people share my sentiments...
The lack of a hard drive on these makes it close to useless for me. I have two of the older Apple TV's in my house right now with ATV Flash installed so that I can hook up external storage, use Transmit to FTP content onto the internal drives, play more video codecs, etc. I'm sure the new hardware in these will help a bit, but streaming sucks. Fast forward and rewind controls lag severely and playback is not ideally smooth. I want hard copies of TV shows and movies stored on the device itself. I will stick with ATV Flash for the foreseeable future.
The lack of a hard drive on these makes it close to useless for me. I have two of the older Apple TV's in my house right now with ATV Flash installed so that I can hook up external storage, use Transmit to FTP content onto the internal drives, play more video codecs, etc. I'm sure the new hardware in these will help a bit, but streaming sucks. Fast forward and rewind controls lag severely and playback is not ideally smooth. I want hard copies of TV shows and movies stored on the device itself. I will stick with ATV Flash for the foreseeable future.
I'm not impressed with the pricing either, but I'm not surprised. A $5 HD rental isn't any better or worse than other competitors out there. VOD services for cable, PS3, etc... are all priced at about that level. In some cases less actually.
Whenever cost of rentals gets discussed someone always brings up Red Box, but why stop the comparisons at Red Box? I could go to my local library, which has a vastly superior selection of content when compared to Red Box and BB for that matter, and get everything free. Including many premium cable shows. I can even keep them for days at a time. Don't get me wrong, Red Box is a good service, but its limited selection makes it kind of a niche product in its own right.
You guys need to understand that when it comes to this kind of stuff, its all about the content providers. They undercut apple through other services contracts because they have always disliked Steve's belief that if you make content cheaper, you will sell way more of it.
Reading about how these companies operate and thing is fascinating and scary at the same time.
A good point is made here (and one very relevant to a lot of 'average' people)...
Wireless... I can now shove one of these up behind my wall mounted TV that IS NOT CABLED with HDMI or Component from my other gear because it's a long way away and I'm not about to start ripping my walls apart (and I'm married, so my wife goes spaz if I trail cables up the wall)... and VOILA, I have streaming HD that's better than I get from my cable box, a nice interface that actually works. Oh and streaming music and photo's and slideshows that don't look like total *****...
All with no wires!
WOO HOOOO!
Honest question. Are you saying that your wall mounted tv has nothing plugged into it at the moment because all the gear to plug into it is far away?
Currently have an 'old' TV .. I've had it pretty much since release.
Initially I went to the hassle of converting all of my ripped movies into iTunes and it was pretty reliable bar some networking issues that went away when I changed my router to an AEBS. Wife was happy that things 'just worked' but I was annoyed that I had to convert stuff all the time into iTunes and that my iMac had to be on running iTunes all of the time. A particular pain seeing as I run Windows on it quite a lot for work stuff.
I then decided to install XBMC on theTV and build a cheap media server to stream everything to it. No more converting media, no more having to worry whether iTunes was running somewhere. Downside is that, like anything that's been hacked to work, it wasn't 100% reliable and it was kind of a pain to keep music / photos (which I still kept on the iMac) in sync with the server/XBMC combo.
Like hundreds of others it seems what I really want is to be able to have one central place to store stuff thatTV will happily stream from .. movies / music / photos but that also interacts seamlessly with my iMac. For example I want to be able to dump some photos into iPhoto and just have them copied to my central server automatically ready for the TV to pickup. Same for music and movies.
I cannot be alone in this, and apparently they 'listened' to feedback ?!?!
So what do others do to achieve this same deal? If I stopped being cheap and bought a Mac mini server would this work any better for me? Can my iMac do the autosync of photos / music thing to the server anyway? I know I tried this before with scripts but the iPhoto database doesn't like being moved about much and iTunes got upset from time to time as well doing the same.
Monty
TV .. I've had it pretty much since release. Initially I went to the hassle of converting all of my ripped movies into iTunes and it was pretty reliable bar some networking issues that went away when I changed my router to an AEBS. Wife was happy that things 'just worked' but I was annoyed that I had to convert stuff all the time into iTunes and that my iMac had to be on running iTunes all of the time. A particular pain seeing as I run Windows on it quite a lot for work stuff.
I then decided to install XBMC on the
TV and build a cheap media server to stream everything to it. No more converting media, no more having to worry whether iTunes was running somewhere. Downside is that, like anything that's been hacked to work, it wasn't 100% reliable and it was kind of a pain to keep music / photos (which I still kept on the iMac) in sync with the server/XBMC combo.Like hundreds of others it seems what I really want is to be able to have one central place to store stuff that
TV will happily stream from .. movies / music / photos but that also interacts seamlessly with my iMac. For example I want to be able to dump some photos into iPhoto and just have them copied to my central server automatically ready for the TV to pickup. Same for music and movies.I cannot be alone in this, and apparently they 'listened' to feedback ?!?!
So what do others do to achieve this same deal? If I stopped being cheap and bought a Mac mini server would this work any better for me? Can my iMac do the autosync of photos / music thing to the server anyway? I know I tried this before with scripts but the iPhoto database doesn't like being moved about much and iTunes got upset from time to time as well doing the same.
Monty
No offense, but you are clearly not an average consumer, hence not the target audience for this device.
I think we need to all step back for a second and realize that we are forum tech nerds that now far more about technology than your average joe. Apple makes devices for average joe who wants simplicity.
There is absolutely no proof of this whatsoever. Steve Jobs being major shareholder (and director) of Disney/ABC, it's hard to believe that ABC would offer a better deal to Amazon than to Apple.
I use Redbox and I like it. But there are disadvantages to Redbox as well. The selection is limited to mainly newer titles. The number of copies is low. You have to physically pick up and return the movie. Pretty much the only advantage to Redbox is price.
The nice thing about online rentals is that you don't have to worry if someone beat you to the redbox and rented the last copy of a movie that you wanted to watch. Is that worth $3.75? Probably not.
I guess you really have to figure out what fits your lifestyle better.
It has coax and composite. It could also have RGB.
The entire world wasn't invented in the last half hour you know...
DVR is so old, why record stuff when I can stream it whenever I want to. No hardware to fail, no drives to fail... The days of channel surfing are numbered IMHO and having to record something because its not on when its convenient to watch.