Top Ten Reasons You Don’t Need Apple TV
iLounge has a balanced and well-written piece on the newly released Apple TV called Top Ten Reasons You Don’t Need Apple TV (Yet).
In brief, those reasons are:
- You have a fifth-generation iPod with video
- You don’t have a HDTV, or don’t use one as your primary set
- Your movie collection isn’t in one of its two supported formats
- iTunes doesn’t sell movies or TV shows in your country
- You want to protest Apple’s pricing and bundling policies
- Apple TV doesn’t have a DVR - or you already have one
- It doesn’t have a DVD or other hi-def disc player
- You’re budgeting for another Apple purchase, like a Mac mini
- You want to hold out for a version with higher resolution or more capacity
- You want to wait until the reality distortion field dies down
Since I’d raise my hand to reasons 1, 2, 4, 6 and 10 I think I’ll pass for now. I’d also add a couple more of my own:
- Having to turn your telly on to control your music seems a little, well, odd…
- I can’t honestly imagine using it to browse my photo collection
- It’s yet another box to fit among the cable box, broadband router, amp and videogame console
I have an iPod dock connected to my amp. That will do nicely.
[EDIT] In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think the potential of it is immense, but untapped in this first generation. Here are some features that I would like to see it gain in future:
- At £199 and with a good selection of AV-out options, it is dying for a software update that enables it to play PowerPoint, Keynote and Flash files. Hooked up to a projector, it would make a killer no-fuss presentation machine
- With a HDTV and a broadband connection, it would only take an optional camera (like an iSight or a Sony EyeToy) to make video chat a mass market proposition
- A selection of cheap downloadable games that people who don’t have a dedicated console might play
A battle between Apple, Microsoft and Sony to make a meaningful and effective whole of your devices is definitely on and heating up. It will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next few years.
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March 22nd, 2007 at 6:29 pm
i agree with you. Over at Highbrid Nation we have been talking the Apple TV and how unimpressed we are with it. I just don’t believe that most people will be able to get much out of it. Too many issues to deal with. I’ll likely be a while before I make such an investment.
March 23rd, 2007 at 1:39 am
All nice ideas, but once again Apple are tying to their own format that is virtually unused.
I know you’ll argue otherwise, but when was the last time anyone ripped to Quicktime?
What that top 10 misses is that if you have a HDTV, chances are you’ll have Digital Cable. If you have digital cable, you’ll most likely have a DVR.
There’s also the fact that a number of the TV stations here offer some of their leading shows online for free (Heroes, Desperate Housewives). On the back of today’s NBC announcement of a youtube-like site where they’ll be offering more of their content for free online in partnership with other media companies, iTunes for TV looks really shaky.
I’m sure it’ll look great in media and PR studios though.
March 23rd, 2007 at 8:56 am
I know you’ll argue otherwise…
A little presumptuous… I don’t rip films at all, so I’ve not looked into what formats people use. Given that you need to pay $29.99 for QuickTime Pro to export video to other formats, QT is probably the last thing I’d expect.
People will rip to whatever format suits the kit they have, so I don’t think that’s much of an issue. The typical user will just want transparency. A big “Send to my telly” button is what they will want, not an “Export to DivX / H.264 / WMV etc” menu.
The fact that it takes friggin’ ages to encode and transfer is what might put people off. I don’t watch the same film so often that I’d bother to capture it. I’d either just stick the DVD in my player or buy it digitally. As things are, buying downloaded films seems like a low-quality, no-extras, DRM-restricted rip off.
What that top 10 misses is that if you have a HDTV … you’ll most likely have a DVR
See point six, where it cites having a DVR as a possible reason why you might not want an Apple TV.
I didn’t fancy an iPod until the third generation, nor do I see anything compelling in Apple TV as it stands. I guess time will tell.