Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

George — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:53:59 GMT

I have an Apple TV. I like it... for music and for podcasts. I've always found the music library portion of the MCE interface to be a bit cluttered and laggy for my tastes (perhaps because I have a pretty substantial music library, perhaps .01% of which came from the iTunes store). The Apple TV's presentation is visually pleasant and I confess to enjoying the album art screensaver more than I should. That said, I use XP and Vista MCE PCs for absolutely everything else, and I didn't pay anything for my Apple TV. If more people actually had a clue what MCE and the extenders could do, nobody would be talking about Apple TV.

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

Aaron — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:49:16 GMT

What shocked me about the Apple TV is how boring it is. I mean, it lacks any kind of innovation and it's quite inferior to MCE extenders IMO. And apparently the market is proving that, as by many accounts it really only selling to Apple enthusiasts. The retail demand has been modest.

Very un-Apple sounding.

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

Ben Drawbaugh — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:38:21 GMT

The bandwidth is the same either way, but if you own it you only have to download it once. I didn't mean to put words in your mouth, just wanted to point out that Apple was doing something differently, of course the real question is, "do people actually want to buy downloadable content Vs. renting it".

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

chrisl — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:25:05 GMT

Not sure, but I didn't say that anyone else sells 720p downloads.

I said that that other services have been providing downloads. Bandwidth is bandwidth, doesn't matter if you "own" or "rent" the content in terms of the bandwidth needed to get it to you.

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

Ben Drawbaugh — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:15:29 GMT

Who sells 720p movies for download?

I thought Xbox and the like only did rentals?

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

chrisl — Thu, 31 May 2007 17:02:36 GMT

Mark: Very true. Of course I've been talking about this for a long time and it is the biggest problem with Microsoft's platform.

oatmeal: I don't think Apple will have a problem finding the bandwidth to do this on their end, and I highly doubt they have any sort of cap on what they can offer.

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

oatmeal — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:59:49 GMT

besides current end user internet connections, you have to factor the load on Apple's servers. If all content was upgraded to HD tomorrow then Apple will have to deal with more simultaneous connections and higher bandwidth costs and requirements. They probably have their download capped (not unlimited for those on super high bandwidth modems) and going to HD might require upping this cap from a customer experience standpoint. I have a 7mbit connection, but there is no way I can download that fast... from nearly anywhere.

re: Apple TV Gets Upgrades; Still Not For Me

Mark Sowul — Thu, 31 May 2007 16:49:41 GMT

All the above may be true but now answer me this: how many people know about the AppleTV and its capabilities, vs. Media Center/Extenders and its capabilities?

MS has done a piss-poor job at marketing these things. Nearly everyone I know is impressed with Media Center and such, but few knew of it.

Also, why is XBox STILL the only V2 extender? It's too loud and expensive for me to want to use as an extender (and only an extender).

Also a shame that portable media centers have been killed. Zune is a step down in many ways, and what a waste to reinvent everything (DRM, media center, stores) for it and it alone.