The Apple TV (2010) Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on October 4, 2010 12:07 AM ESTApple TV Movie Rental
The Apple TV isn’t just for streaming content you have stored in iTunes, you can also rent TV shows and movies directly on the device. The pricing structure is similar to other á la carte streaming services online:
| Apple TV Rental Pricing | |||||
| Content | Price | Days to Start | Time to Watch Once Started | ||
| TV Show | $0.99 | 30 | 48 hours | ||
| Movie | $3.99 - $4.99 | 30 | 24 hours | ||
To rent a new movie release it’s a one time fee of either $3.99 or $4.99. You have 30 days to start the movie and 24 hours to watch it once you’ve started. That’s expensive compared to Red Box or, well piracy, but the idea is that you get new releases and you get them legally.
There’s no ability to purchase movies on the Apple TV, you’ll need to do that on your Mac/PC and stream it over to the ATV. This box is rental-only.
The fee structure works but if you rent a lot you’ll quickly rack up more charges than you would with a service like Netflix or Blockbuster. The former is good for older titles, while the latter can get you the same things the iTunes store can - you just have to wait for a DVD to come in the mail. As far as an instant service goes, Apple is relatively competitive. The pricing and movie availability is comparable although I did notice that Iron Man 2 was available to rent via Amazon’s Video on Demand service, but not on the Apple TV. Other new releases like Get Him to the Greek were on all competing streaming platforms.
The image quality of the rentals is determined mostly by bitrate. Thankfully with H.264 you can get pretty decent quality out of low bitrate video. I rented Robin Hood in HD and based on the rate of streaming and the estimated time to completion I calculated the total file size for the 155 minute film at somewhere between 4 - 5GB. If we do the math that works out to be 3.5 - 4.4Mbps. That’s significantly higher than a standard definition rental through Amazon’s Video on Demand or even through iTunes (1.3Mbps and 1.5Mbps respectively). As a result, the Apple TV movie rentals actually look reasonably good. I picked out some macroblocking so it’s not going to be perfect. Note that Blu-ray discs can offer an order of magnitude higher bitrate so the Apple TV may be good, but it’s no Blu-ray replacement. Even most illegal content you can find online is encoded to higher specs.
Preparing to stream, the actual process took far less than 158 minutes
You can start watching your movie once the Apple TV has downloaded at least 5% of it based on my experience. That translates to around 256MB in the worst case scenario, not too bad assuming your internet and Apple’s servers are both behaving properly.
The Apple TV store is technically separate from anything you do on your Mac/PC. If you rent something in iTunes on your Mac/PC it doesn’t appear as rented on your Apple TV. There’s no concept of moving your movies to the Apple TV, despite the device having 8GB of storage. The NAND is strictly used as a cache for movies you rent on the Apple TV. Instead you have to stream any iTunes rented content over or rent again on the Apple TV.
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strikeback03 - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
By your numbers each user would save about a dollar a year. Meaning that unplugging this thing might not even make the top 100 ways to save energy.naho - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
Yes, it is certainly not worth having 5 million people connecting and disconnecting their A TVs every day. Calculate what that would cost with a decent price for peoples time!The point is that that if Apple had spent half a million dollars (or probably far less) extra to put some proper power management on the device, they would have saved hundreds of times more for their customers.
tipoo - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Half a million is probably even overstating it quite a deal, as they already have the iPad/iPhone/Touch versions of the chip power optimized. It would just be a matter of taking those power settings and re-optimizing them for a video device.trip1ex - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I see the ATV as more of a wireless iPOD av cable/dock with a 10 ft GUI and Netflix etc.That made it an easy buy for me especially next to Apple's own over-priced iPOd av cables and dock.
Netflix has search and you can see other movies actors/director are in by clicking the "more" icon under a movie listing unlike 360 (although 360 Netflix is getting search in the future.)
Wish you could organize the new ATV GUI ala other iOS products because renting tv shows and movies are the last reason I bought the new ATV. Yet those 2 options take up half of the screen real estate in the main menu. Wish I could take over that real estate with the functions I most use.
Remote sucks without volume. IT's sad that you need your big remote laying around in case of a volume emergency. And with the dynamic sound range in today's movies and with a family it's a must to frequently change the volume. Frustrating because the small basic remote makes your tv and even tivo remote seem rather large and clunky in comparison. (A power button and input button would be nice too, but I can at least deal with them given the low frequency need to use them.)
Another complaint is the older interface used for content located on your computer in iTunes.
It's basically Front Row. IT's alright.
But would love to have the icon/cover art grid interface used in the movie and tv rental menus and also used in the Netflix and even in Internet/Podcast menu.
I could see this coming down the road in an update. Hopefully that's the case.
But the best thing is the hobby device finally got an un-hobby like price. AT $99 I recommend any iPOd owner to get one. Doubley-so for any netflix-loving ipod owner. Even someone that just wanted to see photos on their tv should think about one. After all it turns your big screen flat panel into a digital picture frame for less than most digital picture frames.
hipnetic - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
I agree with most of your comments. I think most people are missing the fact that this is a great iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch accessory. If you don't already own one of those, then it's easy to find fault with the Apple TV, but if you do own one of those, the Apple TV is a great addition to the family. Once AirPlay hits and Apple starts advertising this on TV, every iOS device owner will want one of these (or one for every room in their house). Remember, they've sold over 120 million iOS devices, so even a fraction of that number will mean millions of Apple TV units sold.My one disagreement is that I actually prefer the older FrontRow UI, so I'm glad that my own content uses that mode. Less glad that I have to go through a couple of extra clicks to get to my own content. That said, I think it's a bit odd that they offer one (and only UI) for the content they're peddling, and a different one for your own content. I'd like to see them offer the flexibility (even if buried under Settings) to set the display mode to whichever you prefer. Me, I prefer to view all my movies in a list (or filtered by genre), rather than a tile view of coverart.
The big problem for me right now is that there is a bug of some sort that results in dropped frames or stutter every few seconds, which appears to be *more* frequent/noticeable when the movie has fully loaded to the buffer (which seems counterintuitive). Not many have noticed this yet, but as more users (who plan on streaming their own content) get their hands on one, I expect to see the problem more widely reported.
Ammohunt - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I ordered one of these the other day since the current full ATX HTPC i have is mainly used to stream itunes and netflix i couldn't warrant the $300 for a smaller form factor HTPC Setup at about $300(alot of the parts i already had) for the rare web surfing. My needs may change in the future for for $100 what do i have to lose?Mumrik - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I was very surprised to see that Anand didn't kick Apple's ass all over the place in the Final Words for selling a media box that can't show 1080P content. I guess I feel this is a far larger issue than Anand did in this review.B3an - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
Anand seems to be pretty bias with Apple's useless toys.Also the comments get deleted on here that dont put this review or Apple in a good light.
Dustin Sklavos - Tuesday, October 5, 2010 - link
Like yours, right?And which review were you reading? The one I'm looking at wasn't very happy with the Apple TV. I do agree that not showing 1080p is an issue, but on most televisions it really is going to be like splitting hairs. With HD video content and animation, the difference between 720p and 1080p is often a pretty mild one.
That said, even though 1080p playback would basically be a checkbox feature instead of a serious benefit, the lack of it (among other things) is enough to turn me off of the Apple TV, and even Anand said to wait for the newer Roku boxes and the Boxee Box.
Spazweasel - Monday, October 4, 2010 - link
I bought one of these beasties a few days ago, and I'm impressed.I primarily use it for NetFlix streaming. That alone makes it worthwhile for me. Compared to even the cheapest HTPC it's much cheaper, and from a power consumption point of view it's an even better deal (it uses only 10% of the power of even the most lightweight Atom-based HTPC). Picture quality is quite good, easily as good as or better than cable (cleanly-compressed 720p looks better than overcompressed 1080p any day), and the user interface is excellent.
Complaints about the Apple TV seem to be more about the content than the device itself. "I can't watch blahblah" has nothing to do with what you are trying to play it on; that's a matter for Apple's business development effort, not the engineers. Is your favorite TV show not available? Point the finger at the show's provider, not Apple. Plenty of content providers are making plenty of money through Apple, it's not like it's a losing proposition.
Could Apple TV replace a cable set-top box? Absolutely. Will it? Ask AT&T, Comcast, Warner Cable, etc. I'm sure Apple would be very happy to include that functionality. The reason it doesn't is strictly because cable providers like to rent cable decoder boxes for exorbitant rates (really, Comcast, ten dollars a box per month plus another 7 for "HD technology fee" for something that costs maybe 100 dollars to make?). Cable companies aren't charities, that's a big revenue stream, okay fine. But they don't get to point fingers at anyone but themselves about it.
As for being able to play torrents downloaded from pirate sites... yeah, go right ahead. I have no interest in that kind of behavior, and Apple has no interest in explicitly supporting pirated content either. If someone is dead set on viewing pirated movies, they should grab a copy of ffmpeg (for free... that's why they're a pirate, because they think they're entitled to free stuff that others have to pay for, right?). It does a bang-up job of converting formats and rescaling, including creating movie files which iTunes (also free) can play well, hence can be played through the Apple TV. Problem solved.
I like my Apple TV, for good, objective, nonfanboyish reasons. It works well, it's inexpensive to buy and feed, it's small and unobtrusive, it has a good user interface, and was up and running in under 5 minutes from the moment the box was opened. What's to not like?