Apple TV: brilliant, but not for everyone - yet

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Thursday, 22 March 2007 20:26

Opinion and Analysis

So, Apple’s ‘Apple TV’ is finally shipping in the US, where Apple is selling it in its intended form: as a digital media center that comes with its own fully featured store – while overseas we have to bring our own video content.

In the US, the iTunes store sells you just about anything you want, and if Apple haven’t got a company on board, chances are they’re working on them to get their catalogue of movies, TV shows and music on board as quickly as they can.

While Apple has been very successful at this in the USA, the rest of the world doesn’t have it so lucky: not only do we have to wait a few days extra for the Apple TV to turn up in stores (which is not the issue of this article and is understandable), the real issue is that currently, iTunes in countries other than the US mostly only offer songs, audio podcasts, video podcasts, movie trailers and audiobooks. Besides the video podcasts and the Apple TV's ability to display your photo collection on screen, do you really need to use your TV's speakers to listen to the rest of the audio content, or could you just sync it to your iPod and plug that into a speaker dock or your hi-fi instead?

Audio content and short video content is perfect for a 5th generation iPod, but for the rest of the world, mostly audio only content is not enough compelling content to want to go out and buy an Apple TV immediately – especially considering that most of the movies and TV shows that people are downloading illegally will not natively play on the Apple TV, but will require a slightly cumbersome extra step of transcoding to make them compatible for Apple TV viewing.

Obviously, Apple doesn’t want to make it easy for digital media pirates, nor does it want people to stop buying content from iTunes, the store that has changed Apple’s fortunes along with all the iPods, the Intel-based Macs and of course the long rumored iPhone which is now an iFact, even if you still can’t buy one in stores just iYet.

None of this is a problem in the US, where there’s a wide range of TV shows and movies in the iTunes store that truly completes the Apple TV picture, giving you a store that’s easy as to use as iTunes for buying music – because it is iTunes – to buy the TV shows and movies that make up the majority of shows that people still watch on televisions these days.

Of course, video podcasts are very cool, and like YouTube have become their own legitimate ‘channel’ or source of video content, but few are up to prime-time TV and Hollywood movie standards yet, despite a few gems including Chad Vader on YouTube (do a search, you’ll love it if you’re a Star Wars fan).

Of course, the Elgato people, have a digital TV unit for iMacs that records TV shows which can be transferred to the Apple TV, but it’s an extra step that has left some asking why such functionality wasn’t simply built-into the Apple TV in the first place.

The answer, once again, is that Apple wants you to buy content – not get it for free. And the best place to buy all of that content is iTunes – at least, if you live in the US, or can somehow otherwise access US iTunes store content. So, if Apple ever does plan to add this functionality into a future Apple TV, it was never meant to be incorporated into the original version, if it ever will be at all. A real PVR would sport at least 200Gb through to 500Gb or larger anyway.

So… is the Apple TV really worth it? Please read onto the conclusion on page 2 to find out!