Doug Petrosky's Profile

No! it is nothing like a Car!!! It is like a cable box! Are you allowed to hack your cable box to try to get other channels (talk to the direcTV mod group about that). This is a consumer electronics device that has been subsidized by 1 or more companies. Part of purchasing this device is giving into it's restrictions. Just as you accept that Sony is trying to keep you from ripping a Blu-ray DVD. You didn't buy this product outright. You bought it with a contract and you have limited rights to that device as long as you are under contract. You will further have limited rights after the 2 year agreement if you want to continue to get updates. What is so hard to understand?

I can't think of a product that can't be improved on, and it is even less likely that a product would exist that would be exactly what everyone wants. That hardly makes a product stupid! I have no idea the cost associated with allowing AppleTV to receive digital only over the air signals, but I can tell you in the states it would probably do little for sales. It would undoubtedly add cost and maybe size, heat, noise....etc. I don't know when Apple wrote the ad you mention but it is exactly what I hope to do with my AppleTV eventually. Really, all I'm waiting for is Apple to get NBC to buckle under and distribute video via iTunes, and I will live the marketing! I may hold onto lifeline cable for sports, but I will convert to watching only shows I can purchase. I've done the math before but here is a condensed version. I pay about $80/month for TV. This includes a HD DVR and a boat load of TV shows but no premium channels (HBO, Showtime, etc). That is $960/year. Between my wife and I we watch about 24 new season shows every year at about 25 episodes each. So at max cost we are talking about $1200 in purchased TV. Fortunately most season shows are discounted by 10-20% if purchased as a season pass and here we can buy iTunes credits at a 5-10% discount (costco gift cards). So lets say 20% discount on average........$960/year. So I break even and don't have access to all the other shows I some times watch (but probably shouldn't). But wait. I OWN these shows so year after year I have that much more content for my own re-runs. Better than skipping commercials, I don't even have them and trust me there is a difference!!! And I have access to everything on every computer in the house as well as every iPod, iPhone, and AppleTV. There is one other benefit. My father now has an AppleTV and my brother will have one shortly. I have 3 systems in my home so I have two more licenses for this content. This is owned content that I can legally distribute to 5 systems and the iPods and AppleTV's attached to them. Things that make you go hmmmmmm. someone would not have an Idea for that for them they think it would make it better. Ok, up till now I have simply been arguing that the AppleTV is not a stupid product and defending it's use as a media hub for your TV. I absolutely believe in this product for this purpose. But let me take on the marketing message.

Wow Chris I disagree with virtually everything you said, where do I start. First "how often do you have the time to do any of them? How often do you stream photos to your TV? " Daily! When someone is not actively watching TV this is what I put it on. So if I'm picking up around the house, playing with the kids, eating lunch whatever. I'm also seeing photos ether top rated photos or photos of the last 3-6 months. It is awesome! Second: "YouTube or vodcasts" There are a number of video podcasts I subscribe to on AppleTV so I'd say an average of 20 minutes a day. Some of the stuff from NASA, National Geographic, as well as some great independent stuff. (audio I mostly do in the car with my iphone). Third: "Why" Because it is a better viewing experience, even YouTube (which varies greatly in quality). As for flickr/.mac I have friends and family who I can keep up with what they are doing via their recent photos just by switching to their feed over the net. Fourth: "Browsing content" There are no pages on AppleTV. When you go to a genre you see all the covers of all the movies. It is a very nice experience. And I can search as well as look at related items. In all likely hood, I could be half way through a movie by the time you could get the kids together, go to the store and get back home. Fifth: "At the end of the day, it’s obvious Apple TV owners have specific needs that most of the population don’t seem to have (otherwise these things would be flying off the shelves)." Ok, I'm guessing you wrote that when you were tired or something. PVR's have been around for almost a decade, and I've had one for about 7 years. I spent the last 6 trying to convince my father how much better watching TV with a PVR was and he said the same sort of thing you are. "I don't see a need" "I don't watch that much TV". But a month after finally getting one he would never watch TV without it. AppleTV has been around for about 18Months and it is hard to explain to people how nice it is. Isn't it more reasonable to assume that you don't get how nice it is than that every owner of the product is some freak niche user? Internet delivered TV is happening. Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Amazon and now it sounds like Dell and Netflix are all pushing hard to be the one to own a part of it. So I'm guessing that this is an emerging market, not a niche. IMHO.

Let me try to stay objective. You are an idiot!......oops that just slipped out. Ok, PVR/DVR's not delivered by your TV provider are stupid and over priced and only an idiot would purchase one. I say this after being a DirectTivo Subscriber for 6 years (recently converted to DirectTV HD DVR). There is one simple reason: The provider can capture the feed digitally, pre-compressed with no quality loss. Regardless of how good your hardware is, re-compressing heavily compressed data comes at a substantial loss or the need for much larger files to try to hide it. It is for this reason that even though TiVo has the best DVR interface on earth they are going to fail. So why would Apple try to enter a market where the dominate player is loosing money and going to fail. Especially when that player is doing everything right! So now that I've made it clear that I think stand alone DVR's are stupid, lets get into your specifics and my usage. 1."It's asking me to buying an expensive piece of hardware to then pay for TV shows I currently get for free." Ok, FREE? Really! Even if you are one of the small number of people who get their TV over the Air and thus (for free). You still pay for those shows by watching Ad's. And to the best of my knowledge most of the DVR's come with a monthly service cost of about $13/month (stand alone) or $5/month from your provider. And this allows you to legally time shift video (not own it). In contrast, shows purchased on AppleTV are owned by you, commercial free. Better yet, they are able to be distributed to up to 5 different computers (even in other households) and an unlimited number of iPods, iPhones, and AppleTV's. 2. Well… it’s either over-priced or under-featured, so that seems a stupid thing for Apple to do. This is actually sort of two points. Over Priced? Well, it has been about 6-8 month since the last rev so you might be correct that it is time for another price cut or storage/feature upgrade, but I'll give it another couple months. Regardless of that, for $200 you get an HD video player, with 802.11n and 10/100 networking and a 40GB hard drive....Who is selling an equivalent product for less? Under-featured, I already told you that the PVR feature you mentioned is stupid unless it comes from your TV provider and outside of that you have access to anything that you can put in iTunes (Music, Podcasts, TV, movies (rent, own, HD and SD). Streaming photos (both network and internet) As well as YouTube video support all without hacking the unit. All of this with no commercials and NO MONTHLY FEE! You go on to say that the AppleTV doesn't not have 2% of what's on the TV. And that may be true but TV doesn't have 2% of what's on AppleTV. You totally discount the hundreds of hours of content that is being created each day with video and audio podcasts and ignore that thousands of hours of content being put onto YouTube. Sure, it is not what's on the TV normally but it is what could be on the TV if you had and AppleTV. Now I will give you a concession. Because Apple is still playing hardball with NBC there are large gaps in Apple's "prime time" lineup. And until they fix that, it will not be a total replacement for my DirectTV subscription. Also, sports will likely never be great on AppleTV (till we get streaming podcasts of them) although they are one of the worst things to time shift as well. So here is a solution for your needs! 1) Drop to lifeline cable or continue to get offair. This will give you all the prime time shows, sports and news. Purchase an EyeTV for your mac to time shift those programs if you want to and use AppleTV to deliver them to your TV. Now, with the monthly savings, purchase some of your programing via AppleTV to get the best of both worlds. Over time you will build up a library of re-runs (98% of what's on TV) Personally, regularly seeing all of my photos on my 55" TV is justification for the cost of the unit. Purchasing Movies that I would have purchased on DVD is much more enjoyable and I get much more use of them. Owning the TV Series I really like is also something I have done in the past, the difference now is that I watch them new 1 day later, without commercials and have them forever. I enjoy a number of HD video podcasts (free) as well as the occasional YouTube. So, break down your setup and tell me why mine wouldn't be better for you.....

1080p does not have to happen via AppleTV any time soon and it is doubtful that anyone will really care. If quality is king BluRay wins for the next 5-10 years. The reason is simple, bandwidth or the lack there of. On a good cable connection you can watch an Apple 720p HD movie almost immediately. I don't have statistics on this but I would guess that we are talking about less than 25% of the current US broadband homes have this throughput. If you up this to 1080p you more than triple bandwidth. So now I have to wait 3 hours to start a 1.5 hour movie and the homes that could start watching it in real time drop to probably 5% or less. So, someone can fix my numbers above if they have more information but I'm guessing I'm close. So the second question is what does it buy you. And the rule of thumb that many people in the industry go with is that at a viewing distance of 10+ feet you need a 50+ inch TV to see the difference between 1080p and 720p. So yes, 1080p is better but most viewers will not notice it. AppleTV as it relates to HD Video rentals is currently at the sweet spot. It sells on instant gratification, not on max quality. All that has to happen to make it better is more selection.

Sorry but I disagree. Many applications are drag and drop install and remove. Those that use installers, include uninstaller, just re-run the installer. But the bigger issue here is, if you just remove the application, does it hurt the system to leave the rest? Pref files are not a major problem. Some of the Application Support folders are a bit larger than I would leave lying around but the naming convention makes removing them easy if I didn't use the uninstaller. This is just a non issue.

People siding with Gabe should stop reading and start downloading. The iTMS offers a number of free downloads where you can see first hand how good the quality is and let me tell you that "Near DVD" quality is not a stretch and depending on the DVD and the DVD player you might be surprised how good these movies are. As for the small screen argument. This may be an issue for some people but many of you probably already have what you need to get your downloads and big screen too. If you have a 5th gen iPod with video, you can get a cable to connect your iPod to your big screen and see how nice it really can be. If you have a laptop you get a cable to plug it into most screens (and the new laptops with front row support are really cool). For the rest of you, maybe iTV will be the silver bullet that will get you to see how much nicer it is to have your movie library available at the touch of a button instead of having to hunt through endless DVD cases. Not only should Walmart be worried, DirectTV, Dish and the cable companies should be worried too.