New Apple TV: Of Course I’m Getting One
Apple just announced a long-overdue refresh to Apple TV, and I’m definitely sold. Several of my wishful blog posts over the past years were granted, and the “WTH” price met exactly.
After months of wrangling a Mac Mini attached to the television to my will, I largely agree with El Jobso’s description of not wanting a computer hooked up the television. In so many words, it comes down to usability. As soon as you have to whip out a keyboard or remember where something is coming from, it’s too much hassle. We just want to watch TV shows, and not have to remember where they’re coming from, what button to press, what format they’re in, and what devices to point at the screen to make it happen.
Anyhow, here’s what I like about the new Apple TV:
- No local storage. Won’t miss this feature at all; at some point I gave up syncing with the present Apple TV — don’t even know what’s on there anymore.
- Media bridge: Thankfully, the ability to stream from a networked Mac is retained — have a substantial library of movies already, and their playback is the primary use of the current Apple TV.
- 99 cent television show rentals: awesome. Oddly enough most of the shows currently being watched are on ABC or FOX, will have to do a spot-check on individual shows.
- Streaming content from an iPhone or iPad: won’t know exactly what this means in practice, but with videos at least, effectively turns either into a touch screen remote. That will be fun.
- $99 price. Perfectly priced within the WTH amount.
The new Apple TV in function and design seems similar to the streaming Netflix / Roku Box, but with the addition of media bridge and playing nice with iTunes content. So the new Apple TV will most likely replace our Roku Box and there’s a possibility it will replace the television Mac Mini as well, whose primary use is running the Hulu app. Will have to do some math to figure out if repeated 99 cent show rentals beats out Hulu, but better quality and no ads might be worth the extra money. And removing one or two devices from the entertainment system will make things a lot easier overall.
With one announcement, I believe the Apple TV will move from a semi-regularly used device back to regular use, mostly because of Netflix and the cheap TV show rentals.
Netflix is the key part of this new device. Without that, it’s a cheaper but less powerful device than the current Apple TV.
With Netflix added, Apple TV just basically murdered the Roku box. There’s really no need to buy one of those at this point. I’m glad I waited on that.
Finally, I have a reason to reactivate my Netflix account.
I’d still like to see a lot more content available on iTunes. ABC and FOX are far from all the TV shows out there. And the movie selection on iTunes is still far from good, unless you only watch recent first-run Hollywood films.
Plus, there are many shows I’d still prefer to buy rather than own. But I can still do that on my Mac and stream it over, as far as I can tell.
Still, if some of the other networks and movie studios come on board soon with the rentals, I think the new Apple TV will be much more of a hit than the previous version, if for no other reason than the WTH price of $99. Apple is bound to sell five times the number of Apple TVs at that price point, regardless of anything else. That won’t make Apple TV more than a hobby, but it will keep Apple in the game for a while longer.
I did notice Netflix lowered the prices of all their Roku boxes, obviously trying to look like a better deal than the Apple TV. Personally, that’s the same game the lower-priced Kindle is trapped in, relative to the iPad. I mean, why not spend a little more for a device that does a lot more? And 99 bucks for the Apple TV is a really good deal.
The combination of Netflix, which generally has older movies and TV shows plus the recent shows and movies available for rent on iTunes will definitely be cool. I totally agree the selection of the TV shows in iTunes is pretty lacking. Of course, Mad Men isn’t rentable, and some shows (Fawlty Towers) are also on Netflix Watch Instantly, so what’s the point — I’ll have to go show-by-show to see what I’ll really commit to. Glad to see Master Chef available to rent, a show I really have no interest in owning. So the networks give up some ad revenue, but get money for a rental where the end user doesn’t even get ownership — seems like a really good deal for the networks; hope more get on board soon.
Still I would bet the iTunes TV show rentals gets a fair amount of use just because of the “impulse buy” factor — just browsing through the selection looking for something to watch, and 99 cents is hardly anything. Heck, a movie ticket is $10 bucks (for a movie you’ll watch once and not own) these days, that’s 10 show rentals.