The Contradictions of Apple TV
Apple TV is a curious device. Stuck between the digital media and high definition content. In many ways this is a battle of gigabytes. Sony’s Blue Ray’s hold 50 gigabytes of data, ensuring an extremely high definition user experience. Apple’s movies come in at a much smaller size than Blue Ray ensuring the ability for them to be downloaded in a reasonable time, and stored without breaking the bank.
Music from Apple has a similar compromise. We buy music from the Apple music store that is of lower quality than a CD and we do it by the millions. We except this compromise because the disadvantages seem minimal, particuarly when we listen to the music on our iPod earbuds.
But will we except this compromise in our home theatres? Walk into a local Best Buy or Circuit City and you will be baragged by all kinds of numbers. And all these numbers lead to one conclusion, the higher the definition the better.
There is another aspect to this equation too. And that is that the more you pay the higher the quality, and, conversly, the less you pay the less the quality. It is a model that TV viewers have become very accoustmed too. When the DVD first came out players and the disks were more expensive than VHS. But us consumers were fine with that because you got a higher quality image, menus, and more content.
So, what do you get with the Apple TV? Currently you get movies that cost $14.95 and have nowhere near the quality of DVDs let alone Blue Ray. They do not have the menuing features of DVD, and perhaps most startling of all, they movies play in stereo. Now pretty much every Tom, Dick, and Harry have surround sound systems and flat screens. Movies downloaded from the iTunes music store are quite simply an inferior experience.
Yes we can rip our DVDs (note, you first have to buy the DVD, then take the time to do this, plus have pretty ample storage space plus circuvent the law) but the fact is the experience will not be as good as a DVD.
The quality gap gets much worse when you compare what is going on with Bluetooth and HD-DVD. These technologies work best on 1080p devices, something the Apple TV can’t even come close to rendering.
The ultimate question is whether we will trade the convieniance of having our movies as digital files, able to stream throughout our households, with this quality. My personal answer is a strong no. I think the Apple TV is a few years too late. With the growth on-demand viewing with almost all cable and other providers the age of being able to select any move or tv show ever made is becoming very close. It simply is a matter of time. And unlike music consumers have a strong preference and precedent for renting, not owning content. Netflix will no doubt come out with a killer service (they recently demoed an amazing movie viewing interface, that works on PCs and Macs at MIX07). And when they do the Apple TV will just gather dust.
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Yes, the Apple TV is a strange beast. And with Steve saying they’re just toying with it, it does make you wonder.
Hopefully what he really means is the Apple TV has no future but they’re just getting some MediaMac experience and feedback before they hit us with the real deal.
Yeah, I think Apple is a little slow on the uptake (or maybe roll out) with AppleTV, but they just need to tweak a few things and the thing could catch fire. I just can’t believe Apple isn’t aware of the device’s shortcomings and aren’t currently working on fixing things.
I think movie rentals is the big thing for AppleTV.
Netflix cannot have a killer service until they find a user-friendly way for customers to move the download rentals from the computer to the TV. If they rely on 3rd party video streamers, they’ll never get any traction because the complexity of those things will drive away customers.
And even if they solve that, think of the tens (hundreds?) of millions of people who are already using iTunes regularly to manage their iPods or AppleTV and soon, their iPhones. Compare that installed base to Netflix’s daunting task of a.) convincing people to install their (Netflix’s) rental client software and b.) persuading them that it’s a good idea to manage their movie rentals separately from the rest of their media.
The moment Apple announces movie rentals on iTunes, Netflix, and all the other download rental aspirants are dead. And they no this. And unfortunately for them, they really don’t have anything of value that Apple would want to pay for.
Oh, and I forgot another critical factor for AppleTV: Bandwidth. DSL and cable broadband was needed for the internet to be where it is now. We would not have the current richness of online offerings if we’re still on dial-up. Movie downloads will never be mainstream until bandwidths undergo another wave of expansion. Which I hear is coming soon.
I see some confusion of the device with the service here. As you state, we could rip (and keep) our (legally owned) DVDs and play them from the ATV. Just as we do with music. In terms of storage, the price for HDD-space is low enough for not having to compromise when it comes to tunes (->lossless), and it is getting there for DVD-sized content too. AFAIK there are DVD-rippers that allow for you to massively downscale the content to your needs in terms of sound & language options, chapters - and even visual quality if you dare. So once you know that you want only English in Dolby Digital and no subtitles, all that is left as an inconvenience is the lack of chapter-selection. Which should be circumventable. If you decide you want to see the French dub with Polish subtitles, you can still whip out the DVD for the rare occasion. So the convenience in access to DVD-quality video is going to be the same as we currently experience with CD-quality music, and the ATV can deliver it at full quality. If you want the best available, 1080p video or SACD (or DVD-Audio if anyone ever bought one), you will need the specialized player, for reasons of a) DRM and b) sanity. Using 5GB for one hour of music, or up to 50GB for a movie is not feasible at current HDD prices. The ATV can deliver up to 720p, which is totally sufficient for anything you want to actually download and possibly keep stored. It is also very sufficient for regular sized displays, plus pretty sufficient for bigger screens if you keep in mind how happy you were about DVD-quality on your high dollar front-projection system.
Now the CONTENT you can buy from iTunes is clearly sub par compared what the HARDWARE of the ATV can do, and it is also priced beyond belief. At some point that will change, and you will be able to buy 720p movies with Dolby Digital or DTS sound. But those will still be about 6-10GB depending on length. Too much to store on a HDD, too much to burn to DVD for backup, and much too much to carry on a portable device. At this point.
From this perspective, the ATV in terms of hardware delivers perfectly for what makes sense - today.
What we need to see is
a) higher quality downloads (DVD quality at least)
b) a renting service with limited playback times
c) the option to handle *any* digitized movie like a DVD in terms of content access (chapters, etc.) within iTunes, which should not pose a problem. Just import a MOV with chapters (from Rocketboom or whatnot). They work fine, but cannot be manipulated.
d) have DVD rippers create files accordingly (please enlighten me if that is already a given and I just have no clue).
As an Apple TV owner, I am compelled to comment. You make it out like the only aspect of Apple TV is movies. That’s far shortsighted. It also allows you to put your photos, podcasts, and music collection on your big screen TV. No other devices out there that I’m aware of do that or promise all of that in one device. It has its place. It isn’t for everyone. It works for me.
tv plays audio using Pro Logic MPEG4 surround sound.
Beaver is right. The problem is the quality of iTS downloads. This is a really tough compromise between quality of download and file size. Your opening criticism though, that tv is tuck between the digital media and high definition content, seems precisely wrong. tv is a future-proof HD device served with lowish-quality media that will improve linearly with the distribution and storage technology.
It is accept, not except. And it is circumvent, not circuvent.
Xapplimatic you echo my sentiment. EVERY Apple TV commentary seems to invariably pick on what is perceived as a weakness in video playback and totally ignores the ability to view or playback photos, Podcasts, Audiobooks and music from our CD collections that took hours to rip. I agree ..it isn’t for everyone. Apple can’t support DVD rips without angering the studios they hope will eventually provide their movies on iTunes. Right now though just about anything on iTunes will play plus your own creations that have been encoded to the right resolution/bitrate. I believe the Apple TV has had a good start.
Contrary to some popular opinion I believe the Apple TV is far more important to Apple’s future than many give credit for. Let’s highlight some important issues.
1. Apple announced the Apple TV months before it shipped which goes against policy. While Steve calls it a hobby let us not forget that he dismissed flash based MP3 players right up until the nano/shuffle were announced.
2. If Apple wanted basic they would have used a System on Chip =(SoC)design and probably ran some sort of firmware based hardware. The Apple TV runs OS X and thus has access to many of the frameworks. Thus enabling web support is easy or adding Spotlight search facilities.
3. The Apple TV is well appointed. Nothing compares in its catagory. 11n wireless, HDD storage, Component and HDMI, extensible OS.
Here is my guess for the future. 720p movies will come. The OS X core will eventually sync with a Leopard based core. Future features will allow for DVD support, audio/video zoning with multiple ATV and web support
The iPhone will offer control features.
http://www.powerpage.org/2007/04/apple_files_remote_control_patent_iphone_may_serve_new_function.html
Forget Microsoft’s Media Centre strategy. Apple’s strategy will be multiple “peer to peer” ATV easily found via Bonjour. Media can reside anywhere and Spotlight will find and share all the data so there no need for a centralized media server. Front Row will add mesh network features and Leopard iSync will keep things in order and Time Machine will keep things backed up.
With faster processing chips future ATV will support 1080p video
http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=1010620
There is far more potential in the Apple TV than most have recognized.
Actually, as an owner of an AppleTV, I have to say that 720p material looks great! I did rip a few DVDs, and they look OK, but HD native material looks great. iTunes has a few 720p video podcasts and they look stunning on my 50” LCD rear projection TV.
I don’t think that you see 1080p material anytime soon. 1080p sets are just starting to come down in price and the bandwidth required for video of that quality will be sometime in coming. As well, while storage might be cheap at present, it isn’t that cheap for what would be required for 1080p.
Once Apple has the content issues solved, I think that this thing will take off, like the iPod. Remember, the iPod took a while to get going, with it only really taking off once the second generation players appeared…
Steve Jobs said that the real limitation to HD online movies was filesize and I think you’re going to find that the next 5 years contains some nice advances here.
Wavelet compression has the ability to further shrink files down yet keeping the same quality. The Red Camera (red.com) uses a wavelet based codec for their Red Code codec. Apple’s Pixlet is a wavelet based codec.
Next up will be the successor to h.264...appropriately named h.265. Check out this blurb.
http://www.ibc.org/cgi-bin/ibc_dailynews_cms.cgi?db_id=23665&issue=5
“The ink is seemingly hardly dry on the H.264/AVC MPEG-4 standard yet the engineers are looking down the road at H.265, and a “further 50% saving in bandwidth” said Ralf Schaefer, from Germany’s prestigious R&D;company Fraunhofer.
He told delegates at the ‘HDTV-Technology Challenges’ panel that while the labs were looking hard at assorted promising developments including Wavelet technologies, it was likely that H.265 would emerge in five or six years, “
That’s a nice savings. Imagine 720p content at 4GB and 1080p content at 8GB. In 5 years the bandwidth of many homes will make streaming this efficient enough.
The Apple TV is not the problem here. It’s the weird disconnect between the requirement that you own an HD TV to use the device as intended (yes, it supports SD widescreen TVs, but c’mon) and the dearth of HD content on iTunes.
While one could speciously argue that it’s really intended for those wishing to stay roughly five years ahead of the curve (talk about early adopters) when bandwidth catches up with HD content, it seems to me the easiest and simplest solution is to add composite outputs and remove the widescreen requirement.
With that done, it would STILL be “future proof” and yet also useful to the vast majority of people who still own non-widescreen SD TVs.
Not only that, hmurchisoncomment9, I firmly believe tv currently runs a version of OS X that includes some Leopard frameworks, that Front Row 2.0 will be exactly the same as ‘Back Row’ (tv’s interface), and that the reason Intel macs haven’t yet been upgraded is because it’s been built on Core Animation technology.
I agree with Beeblebrox. Except to point out that tv already has composite outputs. However I see why Apple would want to put out such a device now, to have the “complete horizontal and vertical solution” in place, even if the time isn’t quite here yet for HD content.
I consider it another “no floppy on the iMac” issue.
Granted, there are some nice 4:3 TV out there the puck is clearly headed in the widescreen/HDTV area of the rink. Am I bummed that that I can’t “easily” add the ATV to my Panasonic SD TV? Nope..it’s time to step up to a DLP or LCD this year. The Xmas pricing should be great.
Correction noted, Ben, although there still is the required widescreen TV, which is actually quite uncommon on SD TVs.
I consider it another “no floppy on the iMac” issue.
The difference is that there was a LOT of CD-ROM content available at the time. Requiring an HDTV but providing no HD content isn’t future-proofing. It’s just stupid.