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Apple Sold 1.4M Apple TVs in Most Recent Quarter vs. 2.8M Sold in All of Fiscal 2011
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Good news!! Bring on Apple TV 3 with full 1080p output!!!
Kill this product more like, it's half-baked at best. 720p? What a joke. It's never sold particularly well, and if Apple do end up making a TV they'd do best to start with a clean slate.
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Fixed that.
so true HobeSoundDarryl.
720pers -
please also make sure you get slower RAM, a 900mhz cordless phone, kodak disc film, 802.11b network, instand coffee. etc, etc, etc... You'll also notice little difference between those options and faster/newer choices.
720pers - if the ATV3 does come out in 1080p (to support among other things - the fingernail sized camera on the current iphone) may just have to prepare yourselves to be abused by that extra resolution! Save yourselves by perhaps smearing some Vaseline on your TV screen.
720pers -
please also make sure you get slower RAM, a 900mhz cordless phone, kodak disc film, 802.11b network, instand coffee. etc, etc, etc... You'll also notice little difference between those options and faster/newer choices.
720pers - if the ATV3 does come out in 1080p (to support among other things - the fingernail sized camera on the current iphone) may just have to prepare yourselves to be abused by that extra resolution! Save yourselves by perhaps smearing some Vaseline on your TV screen.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
It is available. For years now. Go try to buy a HD camcorder capped at 720p. Apple gave us iMovie HD in- what 2005-2006? It can import 1080 HD home movies and render them as 1080HD video files. These go right into iTunes just fine. They just can't push through
TV to our 1080p HDTV at 1080HD resolution. Elgato provides HD DVR hardware that can record HD video at greater than 720p, process it into a form that will go right into iTunes and play just fine there. It too can't get pushed from iTunes to an HDTV at 1080HD resolutions.
There are a number of rental sources other than iTunes that have been streaming 1080HD rentals for years now. For example, look at Vudu. Apparently, they've (long) found a way to resolve "constrained bandwidth" and similar arguments, found a way to get the studios to let them offer 1080HD movie streams (for years now), etc. My 2+ year old Samsung HDTV has a Vudu app. While the app itself is relatively poor vs some kind of hypothetical Apple incarnation of the same, the 1080HD video playback works just fine.
As I've posted before, the hardware must lead. Until there are 1080p
TVs going into homes, nobody can make any money on 1080p movies for TV being added to the iTunes store. If today every single video in the iTunes store suddenly included a 1080p version for a 1080p TV, there would be NO REVENUES because no one has an TV that could play that video. The hardware must lead... just like it does with Macs & iDevices.I think there is no question about love of these devices. Many of us "1080p or bust" people probably have one. I certainly do and I love mine too. I just would like it to fully blend in with everything else I have. I've had better-than-720p HDTVs since about 2001 or so. I've shot all our precious home movies at better-than-720p since 2004 or 2005. I've got hundreds of them (edited & rendered via iMovie 2006 and newer) and it's so sad that, to view them at the fullest, I've still got to hook the camcorder or some form of storage directly to the HDTV rather than just push them there via this little box. Etc.
I'd much rather keep it all within the Apple ecosystem and with Apple ultra-user-friendly interfaces. But the train has long left that (720p) station at my house. If I can rent a movie on either iTunes (at 720p) or Vudu or others (at >720p) for about the same cost, I'd rather spend the same to watch the sharper picture. My HDTV is 1080p not 720p. I'd like to feed it images aiming to max it out rather than upconvert from something less.
I love my AppleTV too though. But I'll give Apple a lot more money for new AppleTVs as soon as they step up to 2009-10 standards. Those happy with 720p though will lose NOTHING with such a move, as better hardware will easily max out lesser software... just like better Macs run less-demanding software to its fullest too.
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That argument is ridiculousness
Did Apple decided to not release thunderbolt until there was a full line of supporting products? Of course not - someone's got the LEAD.
And if you have an iphone 4s, and any modern digital camera / camcorder - YOU are creating 1080p content now.
I'm the owner of twoStill, a third one may come in handy in our basement area someday.
Most of our movies are encoded for the iPod touch with only 480 pixel width, with the rare exception of visually grand movies like Avatar, Star Trek: First Contact and WALL-E which I've done at higher resolution. Even so, my family doesn't seem to mind too much, and we can squeeze lots of movies onto my daughter's older iPod touch for road trips without re-encoding.
The only time we use a DVD player now is when one of us is too impatient to wait for the movie to appear on Netflix and makes a Redbox run. My daughter watches movies several times-- her Cars 2 playcount is already in double digits, for example-- and as all of us with kids know, kids tend to be rather rough with physical discs. HandBrake +
As I've been an iTunes fan since the intro of iTunes for Windows, all my media is iTunes compatible, so I've never felt the need for jailbreak or XBMC. My Airport Extreme works like a charm at nudging my iMac awake long enough to serve up a file and putting it back to sleep when it's done.
Our family's
where do you keep the movies? the whole idea of buying hard drives or having to turn on the MBP just to watch a movie on TV is what's keeping me still buying blu ray/dvd's. and the fact i can easily take the disks and watch on any player unlike these super high tech digital files that are locked to my itunes account and special devices
Maybe it would be, if that argument was actual being made...I think the more tired argument, which is actually being made, is that anything less than 1080p is complete crap...1080p is better, but 720p is still pretty dang good...and under most normal viewing situations, the difference isn't even that noticeable, if at all...
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Since you replied to my post, please show me where I posted anything like "anything less than 1080p is complete crap". You'll find nothing.
While these are "eye of the beholder", subjective statements: 720p is generally better than SD (DVD) and 1080p is generally better than 720p. For now- and maybe for the next decade or so- 1080p is likely to be the MAX standard for the masses. Those of us wanting this little box to fully cover that standard are simply wanting the last link in our chain to step up with that capability.
720p or less is fine for anyone happy with it. However, just because YOU may be happy with it doesn't mean that I should be happy with it too. Or more simply, arguments that seem to justify forcing the limitation of 720p upon me means I can't get what I want. Arguments that seem to justify forcing the max (mass) standard upon you means you can still get every bit of quality of 720p files that you like now. See the difference?
And, if there really are many like me, Apple rolling out a 1080p
TV means that Apple can make a lot more money when all of us "1080p or bust" people buy it. Selling lots of new households a 1080p-capable TV (instead of a Roku or BD player) adds that much more enticement to content owners to sell/rent their stuff through TV. That means both the 720pers and the 1080pers could find even more stuff they want to watch through Apple's solution instead of resorting to non-Apple solutions.Again, those happy with 720p lose NOTHING if Apple rolls out better hardware... their 720p files will play EXACTLY THE SAME on 1080p-capable hardware. It just doesn't work the other way.
Today's hard drives can easily house hundreds of movies (I use the ATV2 720p preset in Handbrake, which results in file sizes from 2 to 5GB). I see your point about having to turn on the computer. It's a non-issue for me because I have a mac mini server running 24/7 anyway, but I realize that I represent a minority. However, this setup is infinitely more convenient than having to deal with physical media. I wouldn't even know where to store them. On a shelf in the living room? Maybe when you're 18! If I want to see a movie outside the home I use Air Video on the iPad, and on the (very rare) occasion I need to see it on a different player, I burn it to DVD.
please, the interface on these BD Netflix players sucks -- on my Samsung i cant even browse or add to the queue. and i sure cant beam video content or mirror the display via AirPlay.
as for quality -- while nothing compares to physical BDs, the diff between streaming 720 and 1080 is largely insignificant, due to compression and distance to screen.
Samsung must have a bad Netflix player on it. I have never had any issue with my LG and it allows me to browse and add as well.
i don't have a server
i don't want one sucking up electricity 24x7
i don't have time to rent dvd's from netflix and rip them
i have no interest in digital hoarding terabytes of data
i like BD quality better than rips
i have kids and sometimes take DVD's to daycare for them to watch or to my inlaws
i don't buy that many blu rays but between netflix, itunes, amazon and other services you can stream/rent the once in a year ones and buy the ones people watch over and over
i actually have less disks now than before. i maxed out at 250 11 years ago. no reason to have thousands of movies on hand since most will only be watched once in a few years
Since you replied to my post, please show me where I posted anything like "anything less than 1080p is complete crap". You'll find nothing.
While these are "eye of the beholder", subjective statements: 720p is generally better than SD (DVD) and 1080p is generally better than 720p. For now- and maybe for the next decade or so- 1080p is likely to be the MAX standard for the masses. Those of us wanting this little box to fully cover that standard are simply wanting the last link in our chain to step up with that capability.
720p or less is fine for anyone happy with it. However, just because YOU may be happy with it doesn't mean that I should be happy with it too. Or more simply, arguments that seem to justify forcing the limitation of 720p upon me means I can't get what I want. Arguments that seem to justify forcing the max (mass) standard upon you means you can still get every bit of quality of 720p files that you like now. See the difference?
And, if there really are many like me, Apple rolling out a 1080p
Again, those happy with 720p lose NOTHING if Apple rolls out better hardware... their 720p files will play EXACTLY THE SAME on 1080p-capable hardware. It just doesn't work the other way.
Sure, as soon as you show me where anyone has argued that "720p is better than 1080p"...
Maybe I am missing something, but I find this whole battle between "720pers vs 1080pers" a bit over the top and silly...
Ok, so you want ATV to run at 1080p....you know what, so do I...as I am sure all of do as well...you act like those who are satisfied/content/happy with 720p never want to ATV to go 1080p...almost as if we enjoy your perceived suffering at not having an Apple product that runs your 1080p content...trust me, that's not that case...
I would love nothing more than for ATV to run 1080p...however, until that happens, I am not going to piss and moan about it, because yes, 720p is still pretty dang good in my eyes...if that makes me some kind of unwashed, Apple apologist, "720per" in your eyes, so be it...
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
You do realize that you're suggesting a picture made from less than 1 million pixels is insignificantly different from one made from more than 2 million pixels?
Do you feel the same about- say- "retina displays"? For example, is Apple wrong for jacking up the resolution on the iPhone's very tiny display due to similar insignificance?
Do you feel the same about- say- Apple displays/iMac displays? Is Apple wrong for delivering them at higher than 1080p because maybe a 1024x768 or similar would be insignificantly different?
Digital cameras? HD Camcorders?
Or does this argument stance only apply to THIS one thing?
And if Apple does roll out a 1080p
TV, you both won't be interested and will rail against Apple for that (apparent) overkill?The reality is simple: in our household we shoot a lot of 1080p video as home movies (family, kids, kids playing sports, vacations, etc). Downconverting the 1080p video to 720p so that it can play on the
TV is noticeably different (not insignificant) by EVERYONE in our household almost regardless of how near or far we are from the TV. The choice is the convenient version (via TV) or the best version (via hooking the camcorder of the very same video directly the TV or bringing over the iMovie-rendered 1080p version on a USB stick or hard drive to attach directly the TV).If you find it insignificant to your own eyes and setup, that's just fine. But your eyes and setup is not everyone's eyes & setup. Some of us would love to fill this last gap in the 1080 source (which now includes Apple's own iPhone 4s), iMovie 1080 edit & render, iTunes 1080p storage & playback,
TV, 1080HDTV. It all "just works" and is basically endorsed by Apple throughout the chain except for the ONE part where it must be down-converted.
Time to enable Apps and add them to the App stor
With 4 million aTV2s now in the hands of consumers hasn't Apple reached a point where enabling apps is economically compelling? Firecore's aTV (black) is a nice extension, but not nearly as nice as it would be if Apple unshackled the iOS 5 variant in aTV2.
With 4 million aTV2s now in the hands of consumers hasn't Apple reached a point where enabling apps is economically compelling? Firecore's aTV (black) is a nice extension, but not nearly as nice as it would be if Apple unshackled the iOS 5 variant in aTV2.
You do realize that you're suggesting a picture made from less than 1 million pixels is insignificantly different from one made from more than 2 million pixels?
Do you feel the same about- say- "retina displays"? For example, is Apple wrong for jacking up the resolution on the iPhone's very tiny display due to similar insignificance?
Do you feel the same about- say- Apple displays/iMac displays? Is Apple wrong for delivering them at higher than 1080p because maybe a 1024x768 or similar would be insignificantly different?
Digital cameras? HD Camcorders?
Or does this argument stance only apply to THIS one thing?
And if Apple does roll out a 1080p
The reality is simple: in our household we shoot a lot of 1080p video as home movies (family, kids, kids playing sports, vacations, etc). Downconverting the 1080p video to 720p so that it can play on the
If you find it insignificant to your own eyes and setup, that's just fine. But your eyes and setup is not everyone's eyes & setup. Some of us would love to fill this last gap in the 1080 source (which now includes Apple's own iPhone 4s), iMovie 1080 edit & render, iTunes 1080p storage & playback,
Once again, you twist opinions of 720p being good enough into anything more is "wrong" or something to "railed against"...please take the chip off your 1080p or bust shoulder...
Misinformed
Seriously? The announcement was that it sold better in the last quarter than it did in the previous two quarters combined. In fact it sold more last quarter than all of the Google TV set top boxes sold to date. There were more aTV2s sold last quarter than all DVD players sold in their first year (350,000) which until the iPad was introduced was the benchmark for fast adoptions.
TiVo would kill for these adoption rates and it has been around for a decade. In reality there are nearly more aTV2 in use than than active TiVo subscribers. You may not like aTV, but clearly a significant number do as it is selling at a rate that for any company other than Apple would not be a "hobby" device, but a stand alone business unit.
Seriously? The announcement was that it sold better in the last quarter than it did in the previous two quarters combined. In fact it sold more last quarter than all of the Google TV set top boxes sold to date. There were more aTV2s sold last quarter than all DVD players sold in their first year (350,000) which until the iPad was introduced was the benchmark for fast adoptions.
TiVo would kill for these adoption rates and it has been around for a decade. In reality there are nearly more aTV2 in use than than active TiVo subscribers. You may not like aTV, but clearly a significant number do as it is selling at a rate that for any company other than Apple would not be a "hobby" device, but a stand alone business unit.
maybe not you MWULF - but there do seem to be an awful lot of people who present an argument that I interpret as they don't want Apple to upgrade past 720p for future ATV development.
They say - I can't see a difference.
The say - there's no content.
My argument - shared by maybe yourself too - is that producing a device in 2012 that supports 1080p is more than reasonable for Apple to do.
I can absolutely see a difference.
I have suitable content for a 1080P ATV.
We all know that Apple staff are pouring over our discussions here on MacRumors, so I'm just serving my own interests to make sure an extra 30 cents in invested in each unit to meeting the 1080P threshold.
Very nice. I love my Apple TV, so I bought a second one for my house and I bought one for my father for xmas.
I still have my fingers crossed for an App store on the device though.
I still have my fingers crossed for an App store on the device though.
I love mine. I haven't bought any dvd's since, which saves up a lot of room in the house.
It's best selling point to me however is the airplay mirroring feature.
For just 99 USD this thing is pretty powerful.
Think of the possibilities with future releases. iPad/iPhone/iPod touch could possibly become controllers to games played on your tv through apple tv.
It's best selling point to me however is the airplay mirroring feature.
For just 99 USD this thing is pretty powerful.
Think of the possibilities with future releases. iPad/iPhone/iPod touch could possibly become controllers to games played on your tv through apple tv.
maybe not you MWULF - but there do seem to be an awful lot of people who present an argument that I interpret as they don't want Apple to upgrade past 720p for future ATV development.
They say - I can't see a difference.
The say - there's no content.
My argument - shared by maybe yourself too - is that producing a device in 2012 that supports 1080p is more than reasonable for Apple to do.
I can absolutely see a difference.
I have suitable content for a 1080P ATV.
We all know that Apple staff are pouring over our discussions here on MacRumors, so I'm just serving my own interests to make sure an extra 30 cents in invested in each unit to meeting the 1080P threshold.
I think your interpretation is wrong and that you and others are chasing windmills...
I agree that supporting 1080p is reasonable thing for Apple to do...by the same token, the fact they haven't yet IMHO isn't quite the crime against nature that some seem to want to make it out to be...however, don't interpret my lack of outrage to mean I don't want Apple to upgrade past 720p...
I agree with the general statement that for most people, under most viewing situations, the difference between streamed 720p content and 1080p content is marginal at best...you may not be most people...however, that doesn't make you right and me wrong....
This argument reminds me of the whole lossy vs. lossless debate regarding music...yes, there are a few who can tell the difference; no, they are not most people...and the few don't make the many wrong...
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
mwulfz67, in the prior post you asked for examples and they are abundant in this very thread. See the post to which I made that reply or maybe post 31 (key paragraph copied in below) where the reference to "crap" you cited is actually used against the idea of 1080p, not, that "720p is crap".
My replies are to those who are arguing that 720p is good enough or that no one can see 1080p and similar. You seem to be defending such arguments by implying I have some chip on my shoulder. I'm NOT putting down 720p. It is better than SD or lower quality.
But I'm also not taking such comments as fact such as: "1080P and 720P cannot be discerned by the human eye 51" and under... it's a fact... look it up.". In fact, we have an HDTV under 51" in our own home and it is easy for EVERYONE here to see the difference between the 1080p video played from the HD camcorder and the exact same video rendered at 720p for
TV. That's not putting down 720p. That's simply not putting up with suggestions, insinuations, etc that no one should want 1080p because some say they can't see the difference, they don't want it, etc. Frankly, I'm happy for them but that doesn't change what I would like for me.
Relative to past volumes, Apple sold a lot of
TVs this quarter. They'd sell a lot more by giving other pockets of buyers what they want (too). Personally, I'd buy 2-3 of them to replace my existing TVs the day they roll out one with 1080p playback... even if that was the ONLY change. Whether I can see it or not, sit close or far from my TV, have fast or slow internet, review "the chart" or not, and- especially in my own case- whether there is any 1080p content added to iTunes or not, Apple can have my money that first day. Until then though, it waits and some of it flows to alternatives that have already long been there. I'd rather give the money to Apple and wish they wanted it bad enough to give a customer what he wants sooner than later.mwulfz67, in the prior post you asked for examples and they are abundant in this very thread. See the post to which I made that reply or maybe post 31 (key paragraph copied in below) where the reference to "crap" you cited is actually used against the idea of 1080p, not, that "720p is crap".
My replies are to those who are arguing that 720p is good enough or that no one can see 1080p and similar. You seem to be defending such arguments by implying I have some chip on my shoulder. I'm NOT putting down 720p. It is better than SD or lower quality.
But I'm also not taking such comments as fact such as: "1080P and 720P cannot be discerned by the human eye 51" and under... it's a fact... look it up.". In fact, we have an HDTV under 51" in our own home and it is easy for EVERYONE here to see the difference between the 1080p video played from the HD camcorder and the exact same video rendered at 720p for
That's not putting down 720p. That's simply not putting up with suggestions, insinuations, etc that no one should want 1080p because some say they can't see the difference, they don't want it, etc. Frankly, I'm happy for them but that doesn't change what I would like for me.
Relative to past volumes, Apple sold a lot of
I asked for example where people have stated that 720p is better than 1080p....not for an opinion that the human eye can't tell the difference between the two...I agree there is indeed a difference, and with the right equipment and a close enough viewing distance that difference is apparent...however, that doesn't mean that under many other situations, the difference is marginal if detectable at all...for most people...
I want and agree that its reasonable for Apple to make an ATV capable of running 1080p...I also think is not unreasonable for a company to design something with most people in mind...
The movies are stored on an external drive attached to my iMac, which does double duty as my main workstation and as an iTunes server. I keep my iMac on pretty much 24/7, and allow it to sleep after a period of time. The Airport Extreme Base Station that serves as my main router has a built-in Bonjour proxy that wakes the iMac when an
tv requests a file, has the iMac send the file to the tv's memory buffer, then allows the iMac to sleep again when the transfer is done.I have a MBP as well; it has most of what my daughter would want to watch. When I want to have my iMac run Windows via Boot Camp (specifically for music production in Cakewalk SONAR) and thus won't be running iTunes, I direct her to use the MBP or my wife's iMac as a temporary iTunes server.
As far as portability is concerned, the only times we took DVDs out anywhere was for long road trips on a portable DVD player. My daughter only had a limited selection of DVDs to take (we weren't about to bring our whole collection), and the player was bulky as all get out. Her iPod touch holds about as many movies as we normally took or even more, and there is no danger of losing a DVD or dropping it out of the car and getting it all scratched or chipped on pavement. I have an Apple composite video adapter that can quite easily send the video from an iPod touch, an iPad or even one of my nanos to a TV for playback in, say, a hotel room.
Have I bought into the whole iTunes ecosystem? Yeah, I'd say I have.