The Apple TV (2010) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 4, 2010 12:07 AM ESTThe Apple TV as a Cable TV Replacement
This is where the Apple TV is more of a hobby and less of an Apple product. Apple doesn’t like letting its flagship products out of Cupertino incomplete, it reflects poorly on the company. I believe by referring to the Apple TV as a hobby, Apple somehow attempts to exempt it from this policy.
If Apple were to build a box capable of replacing your cable TV subscription, it would have to at least deliver the functionality you’d get from said subscription. The Apple TV however, does not.
The UI is inherited from the rest of the Apple TV interface. It’s clean and to the point.
The rental process is simple. You can find shows by network, genre, popularity or your own favorites. You can also manually search for TV shows. TV shows are available for rental 24 hours after they air. To rent a TV show in 720p it’s $0.99. You have 30 days to begin watching and 48 hours to watch the show (unlimited times) once you press play.
The pricing isn’t even the problem. At $0.99 a show you’d have to watch over 60 shows a month just to equal how much it costs to have Digital Cable through Time Warner in Raleigh, NC. The issue is selection.
Apple only carries shows from Fox, ABC and BBC America. Most of which you can get through a basic cable package for around $15 per month, or over the air for free. Adding insult to injury is the fact that most of these shows are also available for streaming a day after they air on the Network’s websites and Hulu.
Then there’s also the fact that you can’t channel surf on the Apple TV. You have to find a show, manually preview it and then move on to the next one if you’re bored and looking for something to do. It’s just not something you can do without a live TV stream.
Apple’s pricing model would work very well if you could watch anything you wanted on the Apple TV. You effectively get DVR on every show and at $0.99 per show you can watch a ton before even breaking even with what a decent digital cable package would cost. Not to mention there aren’t any strange taxes or fees lopped on at the end of the month.
That would be in an ideal, non-hobby world of course. The Apple TV today just doesn’t deliver that. You get an incomplete cable TV experience at best, at worst you end up paying for things that you can get for free.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
Thanks for the correction, fixed :)cjs150 - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
And it will look like the Apple TV.What a simple concept, small box, very limited backplate. Lets think about it how about a box that had the following connectors
1. Ethernet connection (but a bit faster)
2. HDMI connection
3. Audio out (personally would not bother and take through HDMI)
4. USB
5. Wifi (optional for me because house if wired)
Add in 2 Gb of memory a small SSD for OS + limited applications
Plays movies, TV, music. Can surf web and basically that is it.
Would need some sort of wireless connection to allow remote control and to attach a keyboard (if only to type web addresses).
Apple have got the size of the box about right. Even a mini-itx board has too many features that would not be needed for the ideal straming box.
Apple has given me a glimpse of the future - it looks like Apple TV but it will be something else
tipoo - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
Is that a typo, or can it really go that high? Apple's official specs list MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 Mbps and Motion JPEG (M-JPEG) up to 35 Mbps.Docchris - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
he was specifically testing non-apple videos to ty and break it, so what apples specs state doesn't really matter.i was just curious where he got a video form which exceeds the blu-ray specification
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
http://www.networkedmediatank.com/showthread.php?t...I remuxed the files as .mov without re-encoding and sent them over to the Apple TV. Even if I re-encoded down to 10Mbps there was still some slight stuttering so there's something unusually stressful about these samples. At 70Mbps or above the Apple TV would start behaving very strange, the video player app would either crash or the unit would reboot before finishing playback.
Take care,
Anand
tech6 - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
While the cable and content oligopoly are terrified of IP based home entertainment, no legitimate solution will truly replace cable. Cable is simply too good of a revenue stream not to protect by these companies. Once they have "cabel-ized" the Internet through the defeat of net neutrality and can restrict and monitor users Internet activities then I'm sure we will see a lot more IP TV but at the expense of any freedom or anonymity that we may have ever had on the Internet.mfenn - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
Perfect response! XDvol7ron - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
"You can argue that it’s for firmware updates but there’s also WiFi/Ethernet for that."Isn't WiFi firmware update for anything considered bad practice? Or have people turned the other cheek on this?
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
Technically as long as the firmware package can download over WiFi and execute once completely downloaded it should be ok. I agree USB seems like the safer bet though, particularly if there's a firmware update that fixes a network issue.Take care,
Anand
naho - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
"Unlike a smartphone it eats a good amount of power at idle - a whole 1.8W. I don’t think Apple even bothered to enable serious power management on the A4 in the Apple TV, it’s just not necessary."What would power management reducing idle power to 0.8 W have saved customers?
Eg. if 5 million units are sold of this model x 22 hours idle per day x average product lifetime 4 years x 365 days/year x 0.12$/kWh (maybe less in US, more Europe) = 160.6 GWh x 0.12$/kWh = 19.27 million dollars in additional electricity bills.