Apple Selling Apple TV Near Cost?

[cyclotron451]

price drop in the UK?

there was actually a "price drop" in the UK. A couple of days after the Steve Show, and the US price drop and mention of the Software Upgrade, I was looking to buy the reduced 40GB. It was still dear @ 199 pounds. I submitted a bug report on the Apple TV , mentioning the bug "that it was too expensive", hence no-one in the UK/EU would consider it. Co-incidentally , the next day the UK refurb Apple Store started selling 40GB Apple TV 1's. I missed them. At 7h30am the next day there was stock again, (BTW, the refurb store considers them an "iPod"!) Anyway I got my order in @ UK£135 , a whopping 33% discount. Nice.
As usual , when the box arrived there was no sign of it being returned stock, I'm just waiting for the firmware upgrade then will start playing.

________________________________________________
forgot to mention that I also use a Mac Mini 1.25GHz G4 on Tiger as a HTPC, excellent machine

 

[liberty4all]

ATSC going MPEG-4/H.264 - new life for future Apple TV?!

ATSC (digital over-the-air antenna HD/SD broadcasts) is going MPEG-4/H.264 (current ATSC tuners are MPEG-2) -- this could be new life for a future revision of Apple TV?!

ATSC replice to my email:

"With regards to your questions on MPEG-4: because MPEG-4 standardization is currently being worked on in subcommittee groups and is not a finalized standard, we do not include information in our FAQs. ATSC typically does not include information on work-in-progress on the front page of our website.

However, you are welcome to refer to our Candidate Standards, which discuss MPEG-4 in length, online at http://www.atsc.org/standards/candidate_standards.html

MPEG-4 is discussed in Candidate Standard CS/TSG 659r4 and CS/TSG 658r3 on that website."

 

[rstansby]

Monthly service fees add up, some people prefer to avoid them.

I wonder if they kept economies of scale in mind, probably not. AppleTV still overpriced in Europe! And everyone who has digital TV gets a thing like AppleTV for *free*

Wow in America we have to pay a monthly fee for digital TV, plus an added fee for the DTR. It must be great living in europe where they give you that for free

 

[jettredmont]

I can say I wasn't all that surprised at the price drop at MacWorld for the AppleTV - my wife picked the 160 GB one up for me at Costco about 2 weeks before Christmas for $329. I was shocked because 1) it was being sold at Costco, and 2) it was $70 off Apple retail, which was lwer than even the Black Friday price and totally unknown for Apple products at a retailer. So was this a sign of things to come?

For what it's worth, my local Costco has them now for $299 (only the 160GB version is available; this is about a 10% discount).

Just picked one up

 

[jettredmont]

Wow in America we have to pay a monthly fee for digital TV, plus an added fee for the DTR. It must be great living in europe where they give you that for free

I live in America and I'd get my digital TV for free if I wanted. You just buy a cheap set-top box and position your antenna. Of course, I don't, because satellite gives me many more channels and significantly less antenna-fuss.

DVR's stand-alone aren't "free", but digital TV is definitely available without subscription (and will be the only over-the-air broadcast this time next year!)

 

[jettredmont]

Apple will have a hard time with this venture. They got LUCKY on the IPOD as they were the first out the door and grabbed alot of the market.

Yeah, except that the competition had been around for 2-3 years and was well established in their market.

Secondly Unlike the IPOD where you can buy it once for 300.00 you now can add FREE content podcasts, your music etc to the IPOD. The Eye TV will make you pay for the system and than cost you every time you use it.

Presumably you are talking about the TV, not the "Eye TV", which is a completely different product.

The TV will download free content from video podcasts and YouTube, and if you have the wherewithall to operate Handbrake (pop in a disk, hit the button) it will play any DVD you rip as well. The problem Apple faces here is that DVD ripping is seen as likely to be technically illegal (violates DMCA) and so Apple can't provide an end-to-end ripping solution as they had for CDs (ripping CD was not and is not seen as illegal by most people not acting as paid witnesses for the RIAA).

Personally, I just bought an TV, and really don't expect to be renting many movies on it. I'll give it a shot, and might turn to it in a "must watch that movie NOW" pinch, but I am far more than happy with my movies being delivered to my door via the mail.

 

[bommai]

Wow in America we have to pay a monthly fee for digital TV, plus an added fee for the DTR. It must be great living in europe where they give you that for free

The best kind of TV is free. Digital OTA has less compression than satellite and cable. I have both cable and OTA and can prove that digital compresses the signal more (file sizes are a little smaller with eyeTV).

I love OTA-HD.

 

[jettredmont]

And how many different TVs would they have to make. Rear-projection, tube, Plasma, and LCD sets. Then there is HDTVs of varying quality, EDTVs and SDTV that have Component. There are too many possibilities for Apple to be able to cater to a majority with just a couple sets.

Now, if Apple could get with Sony or LG or HP or whomever to create a special holder in the back of most sets for the AppleTV and a passthrough—with the USB cable—to control the IR sensor with one remote.

I second the motion!

Funny, I was dreaming of such a move pre-MacWorld ... seems like a "docking station" for the TV (or its successor) akin to the now-ubiquitous iPod docking stations on every conceivable audio output device would really make for a killer setup.

Of course, the first design consideration which comes to mind in heat output: I hear the TV gets rather hot, so putting it in a confined space behind the LCD wouldn't be something which could just be done as a second thought. They'd actually have to spend some time and money designing the enclosure to ensure proper ventilation in all living room conditions.

 

[matticus008]

I totally agree with you. The PS3 is a beauty. You cannot compare 50Mbps A/V bandwidth support with 1080p AVC High Profile support (PS3) to just 5Mbps 720p AVC Standard profile support (AppleTV) I have the AppleTV also and it has its advantages too.

Indeed there is. There is also a large difference between $229 and $499 and between subsidizing your own components for Blu-ray adoption and not.

The PS3 is a great hardware platform, and probably a fair model as an extremely low-margin hardware product intended to recover costs through content.

That's my point. If I can get a one-off 60GB 2.5" drive at $45 in the retail channel (which means the retailer is also taking a cut), I just don't see Apple paying $37.50 for bulk pricing for a 40GB 2.5" drive.

Newegg and OEM are both factors going against "retail" channel assessments. They are a wholesaler, with no retail presence (and therefore very low costs), and excellent supply chain management. They undercut retail prices, which are already low-margin on most computer hardware, and make it up through volume and cost-cutting.

Undercutting Newegg in a commercial transaction isn't going to be to the tune of 20%. Newegg, too, is a bulk buyer that negotiates aggressive discounts. Undercutting retail prices by 20% might be possible--but that involves a retail packaged drive and a retail establishment (of the traditional type, and not the Amazon-style model). That doesn't apply in your scenario.

 

[jragosta]

What annoys me mostly is Apple's focus on the US market and not at all in Europe. Apple is just as popular in Europe as they are in the US, they simply just lack the lower pricing, same products. The new cheap AppleTV is nothing without rentals and we don't have that yet! (more a problem with EU but...) Only three countries have the iPhone and most people I know are actually planning to buy one when it comes out, and if it doesn't in the near future they will buy it and unlock it themselves.

My point is that Apple has so many cool features going but as a Danish customer I still haven't seen half of what Apple is capable of unfortunately...

I can't wait to a couple of years when these quirks have been ironed out.

I don't know for sure, but I suspect that much of the difficulty in Europe is the complex laws - different in every country, and many of them antithetical to copyright owners.

Just as with iTunes music store (where Apple got burned, anyway), Apple is going to have to move slowly.

 

[RRutter]

These 10-30% margins are significantly lower margins than Apple typically enjoys on their hardware products, suggesting that they are indeed aggressively pricing the units to drive more sales. The Apple TV was originally launched at Macworld 2007 but was reportedly met with modest sales. Apple revamped the Apple TV at this year's Macworld with the inclusion of direct-to-tv movie rentals. This revamped software will be available as a free software update to all Apple TV owners.

The TV's costs to manufacture are lower than the actual cost to buy them, are because: look at the above quote. That's amazing you can rent movies with that mini controller the Mac comes with.

No one should whine or complain about costs being different and higher than the manufacturing costs - the Apple TV has revolutionized the regular TV, just like Apple has done with MANY other products, and you can even rent stunning HD quality movies.

 

[AidenShaw]

...the Apple TV has revolutionized the regular TV, just like Apple has done with MANY other products

The only truly notable thing about the Apple TV is that it reminds us again that there are some turkeys that not even the Lord God Jobs' RDF can keep alive.

...and you can even rent stunning HD quality movies.

So I assume that you weren't at MacWorld to see the fuzzy, artifact-laden over-compressed 720p downloads that they were showing? Except that at MacWorld they weren't actually showing any downloads - even at MacWorld the bandwidth wasn't high enough to support video on demand. All of the demos were showing pre-cached movies.

Perhaps you should check out Here’s what fake HD video looks like to get an idea of what happens when you try to pump 4 times the pixels of DVD at one half the bandwidth.

Here's a hint

... Although this is actually pumping 4 times the pixels at the same bandwidth, not at half the bandwidth like Apple's TV.

There's a good reason that Apple didn't announce anything about Blu-ray at MacWorld. If they had, everyone would have realized how craptacular the "HD" downloads from Itunes actually are.

 

[archer75]

If it only just supported more video formats...

I'd like vc-1, .mkv/x264, .ts, .avi, .xvid, .dvix

It would then be a device I could use. As it stands now it's useless to me.

 

[jettredmont]

Perhaps you should check out Here’s what fake HD video looks like to get an idea of what happens when you try to pump 4 times the pixels of DVD at one half the bandwidth.

Here's a hint

... Although this is actually pumping 4 times the pixels at the same bandwidth, not at half the bandwidth like Apple's TV.

H.264 does wonders here. Comparing my own videos (ie, encoding home videos), I often find that I can have 5x (or better) smaller H.264 video than MPEG-2 video for the same quality. There is simply much less of a tendency to macro-block at lower bit rates with H.264. Ou in your above link says that H.264 is (obviously) not being brought into play here, and will change the comparison, although as a historically mindless pundit he hand-waves that away. I am sorry, but I believe my own eyes over Ou's hand-waving!

That being said, I wouldn't assume that the videos being downloaded here are "DVD-quality" pixel-for-pixel. It's just not going to look like the VHS-quality crap Ou captured from DirecTV's much-maligned HD-lite channels. They will definitely pale in comparison to Bluray or HD disks; in that case you are seeing the exact same codec (H.264), identical encoders, with much more bit-bandwidth to play with; they will get better quality from it.

 

[AidenShaw]

H.264 does wonders here. Comparing my own videos (ie, encoding home videos), I often find that I can have 5x (or better) smaller H.264 video than MPEG-2 video for the same quality.

Two to one is more commonly quoted as the H.264 advantage, few people claim five to one.

Note that I did say "fuzzy", not "macro-blocked".

H.264 does help, but it's not a magic bullet that makes low-bandwidth feeds really high quality.

They will definitely pale in comparison to Bluray or HD disks; in that case you are seeing the exact same codec (H.264), identical encoders, with much more bit-bandwidth to play with; they will get better quality from it.

Blu-ray (HD-DVD is dead, put it to rest¹) is also pumping more pixels, usually at a lower frame rate.

The difference in quality between True HD and Apple HD is pretty substantial.


¹ http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35749/118/

Chicago (IL) – Recent HD player sales data provided by market research firm NPD point to bad month for the HD DVD camp: Blu-ray extended its market share to 93%...

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35808/118/

Chicago (IL) – Gartner analyst Hiroyuki Shimizu believes that the recent price cuts of the HD DVD camp are a desperate move to compete against Blu-ray and will end up to be “useless resistance”. By the end of 2008, Shimizu wrote in a research note today, Blu-ray will have won the format war.

 

[uscmatt]

I think I'm gonna be picking one up soon.

 

[EricBrian]

I think I would buy the new ATV if it were not more than $99.

No ability to attach my external hards drive holding TONS of TV shows and songs purchased from iTMS is one reason why I won't buy it.

The movie rental is far too expensive. Any movie rental should not be more than 99 cents and show be viewable over a period of at least 7 days. I pay about 99 cents per movie that I currently rent from Netflix... not counting the online viewing of movies.

Even if I were ok with the 24 hour viewing mandate, I could go with a Red Box movie rental for $1/day.

So, ATV still NOT an option for me.

 

[bommai]

I think I would buy the new ATV if it were not more than $99.

No ability to attach my external hards drive holding TONS of TV shows and songs purchased from iTMS is one reason why I won't buy it.

The movie rental is far too expensive. Any movie rental should not be more than 99 cents and show be viewable over a period of at least 7 days. I pay about 99 cents per movie that I currently rent from Netflix... not counting the online viewing of movies.

Even if I were ok with the 24 hour viewing mandate, I could go with a Red Box movie rental for $1/day.

So, ATV still NOT an option for me.

You do know that ATV seamlessly streams content stored elsewhere (on another pc or mac) right. So, you can have all your purchased content stored elsewhere and not at your AppleTV. To me this is an advantage.

 

[EricBrian]

You do know that ATV seamlessly streams content stored elsewhere (on another pc or mac) right. So, you can have all your purchased content stored elsewhere and not at your AppleTV. To me this is an advantage.

Yep, but there is not always another machine around.

 

[7on]

Yep, but there is not always another machine around.

I'm hoping take 2 solves that... Hopefully

 

[rstansby]

I live in America and I'd get my digital TV for free if I wanted. You just buy a cheap set-top box and position your antenna. Of course, I don't, because satellite gives me many more channels and significantly less antenna-fuss.

DVR's stand-alone aren't "free", but digital TV is definitely available without subscription (and will be the only over-the-air broadcast this time next year!)

I was responding to a post that said people in europe get something like AppleTV for free and I was only trying to point out that you only get those boxes (and DVR) by paying for a subscription to so some service. Which is not free.