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Apple, where are the rentals?
Well, by now is seems pretty obvious that Apple isn't releasing anything huge before Christmas. From what we've heard, just about everything in the Macintosh lineup is scheduled to get a hit at Macworld (more on this to come soon). iPods are staying put for awhile and the iPhone won't see revision 2 until around May - in time to ship in Asia. That leaves the AppleTV line - Apple's "hobby". What could have been a huge product this Christmas is turning into a dud. Why? The technology is there. We've all seen the hidden tidbits inside iTunes that allude to movie rentals. It is ready to roll. The infrastructure is also in place. People downloading Purple Violets (>1GB) reported it came in at under 15 minutes - much faster than the average trip to Blockbuster and with no winter clothing to put on or car fuel to burn. The roadblock is that the studios aren't budging. Perhaps wary of what is happening in the Music Industry or perhaps burdened with the writer's strike, they haven't made the deals to get on iTunes like Apple had hoped. Additionally, the entertainment industry is this time hoping to roll their own movie rental services - or at least have a few more players out there so as not to give Apple as much power as it has in the Music business. TV shows from NBC also aren't running on iTunes anymore. Will other networks follow? Not likely but they could. Should all of this be cause for concern? Perhaps. Over the past few weeks, the studio bosses have been reversing course and praising apple again. Warner Chief, Edgar Bronfman recently got caught praising Apple's iPhone and iPod lines. Jon Gruber at Daring Fireball reports on Doug Morris' admission that the Entertainment industry had/has no idea what they are doing technology-wise. In fact they were so stupid that they couldn't even know who was smart enough to hire to figure it out. That is Calculus Integral stupid - and it seems about right. Quote:
The movie industry might be a bit smarter (no one can be this dumb can they? - I mean they could have enrolled in some classes at NYU?) and has had some more time to watch things unfold. Rather than give up such an important part of the value chain right away, they are willing to hold out longer. But is this actually smarter? People aren't really into waiting for technology when better means exist - even if its legality is, shall we say, questionable. While the movie studios wait on Internet movie rentals, more and more people are becoming familiar with the BitTorrent clients - some are even going mainstream like Vuze. They are buying multi-terabyte mediacenter hard drives that can hold thousands of regular definition moves and hundreds of high definition movies. People are getting higher speed fiber to the home and 100mb cable is being rolled out in limited areas. Movies are getting to the Bittorrent sites faster. Most movies hit Bittorrent before they hit the rental shelves. sometimes they are even out before they are in theaters. While a lot of times these are poor quality camcorder or Oscar voter-type copies, if you wait long enough, most movies come out in DVD quality. Some you may even see in HD. Of course people have alternatives. They can go to Blockbuster or send away to Netflix and get their movies slower, more costly way. But given the opportunity to do it better, more and more people are turning into pirates. Just like the music industry did when Napster went mainstream. So maybe the movie studios ARE dumber than the record labels? At least the record labels didn't have a precedent to follow. Apple, of course isn't hedging its bets on AppleTV. It is, after all, just a hobby. But how long will Apple leave this device out there dangling when it could be making mega huge hard drive media centers that can store thousands of movies? Maybe we'll find out at Macworld. The window of opportunity is closing on AppleTV - but more importantly, it is closing on the movie studios who obviously don't get technology or its implications on their business.
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AppleTV's are being cleared
AppleTV's are being cleared out, to make way for AppleTV Part II:
- An integrated standard DVD player. This allows everyone to view their legacy DVD titles via the AppleTV - just like a DVD player (because it is a DVD player). More importantly it positions consumers to understand AppleTV is a crossover, next generation DVD player. "Ah, so I can get this instead of a BlueRay or HD-DVD player, and it'll play my legacy stuff too - BlueRay can't do that."
- The rest is all software, and the following is comming:
-Movie Rentals
- Direct Purchase/Rental access via AppleTV
- HD (720p, but it's a start)
- Connect ability to standard TV's.
The combination is huge, and will put AppleTV right in front of Sony and Toshiba, and Apple TV will start to win, and win big.
Since you seem to know so
Since you seem to know so much, do you see the rental service as a subscription or as pay per rental? And will they be servicing new content, the latest tv episodes can be rented?
Just about everything in the
Just about everything in the Mac lineup is scheduled to get a hit at Macworld?
I just ordered a new aluminum iMac... but that's okay. I suspect the changes to the iMacs will be the along the lines of the Peryn chipset and a replacement for the ATI card. Other than that? I'm not sure. Hopefully no iPhone-like price drops...
This Apple TV post's timing is interesting, goes perfectly with what rapper Jermaine Dupri wrote in the Huffington Post. Interesting.
Don't be surprised if Apple
Don't be surprised if Apple begins selling the AppleTV in a "good","better","best" configuration. The price of a blu-ray drive is dropping significantly ($200-$300). Put a 500GB HD, and sell if for $399 (competing with PS3 no doubt), the "Better" option could come with a 250GB hard drive ($299) and the good a 150GB (or whatever the current configuration has) and sell for $199. Put a 2.0 of the software which supports rentals and VOD and you have the beginnings of a huge success.
I do not believe the delay is the movie studios. The rental model will have them drooling (lots of iPods to get that recurring revenue from). The hold up was the legal battle with Burst. They could not budge with AppleTV until their law suit was settled. Apple has settled, and the details lend themselves to some potential excitement. Apple settled for 10M, a settlement that at one point this year had a billion dollar price tag. Apple has licensed Burst's entire portfolio, minus 4 DVR patents (that are still in the approval process). But,! Burst has said they will not file suit against Apple for any DVR infringement, which makes me believe Burst is set up to earn a ton more on DVR kickbacks when Apple puts DVR into the AppleTV. Why put DVR into the AppleTV when they sell TV shows you might ask? Because Apple is going to start embedding advertisement into their iTunes TV shows. They have invested in a Bay Area company, that allows content providers to inject ads into a video via an API. Studios like NBC will come running back, because now they are making ad revenue on their shows. So, free shows for downloading, or go the "old timer way" and "AppleTV" (instead of TiVo) your shows. The wifi store will be accessible directly from your TV set, and the computer connection is strictly for syncing rentals, recordings, and purchases to your computer for putting on a touch, nano, or iPhone.
I believe many parts of this are due at MW, and I would not be surprised to see Apple give that stock price another jump with a major game changer!
Very specific guesses The
Very specific guesses
The past 2 weeks i thought this all through, and i try to make some good guesses Here:
Strike 1:
Apple will anounce 3 different "AppleTV2 clients", with an DVD, an Blueray and without opt.Drive. But maybe everyone of them will sport an 7.1 Soundcard based on creative X-Fi with the possibility to directly plugin an suround-speaker-set without an AV-Reciever. (Remember Apple hired someone in early 07 for work with X-Fi)
Strike 2:
Apple will kill the mini and will anouncing an similar looking "AppleTV Server" (Thats easy: take a Mini, replace the HDD + Optical Drive with 2 hot-swap drives, ad AirPort Extreme Base Station, ad an reduced MacOSX Server with server-apps of iTunes and maybe iPhoto, iMovie, iCal, mail)
Strike 3 (evt. later in 08):
Apple will anounce something i would call AppleHDTV. An LCD HDTV with AppleTV inside in 3 sizes that looks like an huge iMac Aluminium 37", 47" or 57". It´s likely for me that when Apple release this, it will definitly have an 7.1-x-Fi-Soundcard with maybe an Apple Suround-Speaker-Set.
The user perspective:
Ok, in future we need an easy to use resolution to buy, share, back-up a lot of storage and to distribute it to our macs, tvs, ipods, macbooks, iphone and whatever. It´ time for Apple to give it to us.
The Server will act as your distribution and backup system of your complete devices, u can start watching a movie or tvshow on the big screen in the livingroom, pause it, go to your office and start your AppleTV client and watch it there to the end, while your wife start to watch her favorite show in the livingroom. Ur macs can tm-backup on the Server. (Maybe thats why u cant do it automatically with Apple Extreme Base Station because Apple want to sell network storage for themselve?)
Don´t let us forget, Apple loves to have everything in one device (ok, only the funktionallity we need in Steves eyes). That makes it likely Apple is working on HDTVs with integrated AppleTV AND suround-reciever-funktionallity, so that we only need an AppleHDTV and a suround-speaker-set in our livingroom, no more dozens of devices and Boxes around the TV like heavy AV-Reciever, DVR, Center-Speaker (it´s in the HDTV too), aso. iPhone+iPodtouch could also be used as an remote control...
But let´s get back to Movie-distribution...
Finally my Bells began to ring, as i read an very interesting detailed article about the settled law suit with Burst, like described obove. I am convinced, that Apple will infringement the Burst-DVR-patents with the Apple-TV2 and will buy licenses AFTER AppleTV2´s release! The really interesting thing are the kinds of DVR patents, that Burst owns. The patents are about "Push VOD". With Push-VOD, Apple can as an example deliver movies or TV-Shows to your AppleTV Server in advance. Think of hitting the street with your buddys at night, and u deside to go over to your house to watch a movie; you actually dont own it. No Problem, you pull out your iPhone, rent it at the iTunes Store, and Apple deliver it instandly to your AppleTV Server. So Apple will rent movies, no question.
Whats with TV-Shows? Mhh...
1.) Apple could offer it as they did it, (maybe as a option)
2.) Apple could offer a free subscribion with ads (not Apples style)
2.) They sell a 10bucks-subscribtion with ads and no DVR
+ a 20bucks-subscribion without ads an with DVR. (sounds more Applelike)
I cant guess this one, because here in Europe Apple dont offer this actually.
one plugin I'd like to see
one plugin I'd like to see for the Apple tv is the ability to work with the streams coming from ABC, NBC, and Fox websites. Why can't I watch Lost streaming though their player on my Apple TV?
Well, apple certainly aren't
Well, apple certainly aren't going to let you watch lost for free considering they sell it in itunes, what company sells something and gives it away for free?
Apple TV is most likely to see an update at Macworld expo. Expect 320gb configurations, with rentals being announced to be released end of 2008. Add a blu-ray drive (no hd-dvd as apple supports disney, who in-turn support blu-ray) and possibly a web browser.
Another addition would be the welcomed use of a tv tuner to make it a PVR putting it into competition with TiVo. - Oh and your recordings will sync back with itunes, and yes, to watch on iPod and iPhone!!! - This will happen.
Until apple start taking the potential of the TV seriously i wont buy one, hopefully a good announcement at macworld will change that, maybe next year will be the hype fest for apple tv similarly to the iphone this year....maybe not.
Oh and no iPhone 2 until 2009, apple will use 2008 to market their 3rd party apps strategy, lets face it, we have 2 year contracts in US, 18 month in Europe, how pissed would everybody be if there was another phone before their contract was up!
@ Steve H. You are
@ Steve H.
You are completely wrong on almost all of your points. First there is a big difference between streaming an AD supported (limited time) video feed and buying a season or a few episodes of a TV show. I wouldn't expect Apple to develop plugins for the networks websites but it would be interesting to see what some 3rd party developers could do. ABC can stream 720p to my browser at home… why not on my Apple TV?
Although I do think we'll see update at Macworld with the Apple TV I don't think we'll see a browser (Web TV anyone?). The browser just isn't made for TV. It is hard to read news and really only helps you do what was mentioned earlier about streaming video from network sites or other sites. A browser is a bad idea for a TV without a mouse or some other type of input to manipulated the screen. The Apple remote just won't cut it.
The DVR functionality of Apple TV is non-existent. It won't happen. It definitely isn't in Apple's interest to allow you to record TV. To quote you, "Well, apple certainly aren't going to let you watch lost for free considering they sell it in itunes, what company sells something and gives it away for free?" This goes back to the first argument. I'd expect some third party plugins to work with Hulu's API or something but Apple will only allow purchased downloads or Ad supported downloads. You will NEVER see a DVR from Apple. Just drop the idea.
iPhone 2 in 2009? Hahaha! iPhone doesn't have a chance in Asia with only 2.5G. I'm expecting on upgrading my 4GB iPhone (got the cheaper one because I planned on getting a new one 9 months later) to v.2 in the Spring of 2008. Did you really expect Apple to sit on their arses and use all of 2008 to market 3rd party apps? Seriously? I expect a new version of the iPhone at least once a year for the next couple more years. I also expect a cheaper iPhone Nano or something next year. In a couple years It will settle down to be something like just .5G revisions with spec upgrades and software updates for everyone.
>> A browser is a bad idea
>> A browser is a bad idea for a TV without a mouse or some other type of input to manipulated the screen.
The Wii-mote isn't too bad for that, which I know already works with Minis with a little software magic (3rd party app). It's not bad, though the targetting isn't quite as preceise as with a mouse. It's hard to push a button and not jitter a little bit.
>> To quote you, "Well, apple certainly aren't going to let you watch lost for free considering they sell it in itunes, what company sells something and gives it away for free?"
Ummm, well networks do. It used to be their bread and butter to give it away and the basic stuff is still tossed out there for free on the airwaves. In fact the same can be said of Hulu, because Fox/NBC also sell those shows for free and still sell the DVDs. You might be right about the DVR but not for that reason. I suspect that Apple would be more than willing to gut some of there iTunes sales (and remember it's only some of them) if they thought they could make more money selling hardware. Afterall they knew very well that the vast majority of the music on iPods is NOT coming from iTunes and they have done nothing to discourage that, in truth iTunes Plus runs entirely counter to any effort to force people to come to iTunes instead of the iPod.
Apple knows what bring the bacon home and what is just an enabler for that.
Rentals are coming in the
Rentals are coming in the first quarter of 08, not the end and you're smoking crack if you think that iPhone2 is coming in 09. That's a May release for sure. The service provider contracts in each country are structured so you can upgrade your phone.
I doubt there'll ever be a PVR function, or blu ray, kinda seems like an FM radio on an iPod and we've seen how that played out. Happy to be wrong on this though, but this is Apple's INTERNET tv jukebox.
M.
Personally, I dont download
Personally, I dont download a damn thing with my Apple TV. I simply ripped all of my DVDs to my iTunes (via an external hard drive) and now use my Apple TV as my DVD player - with over 600 movies available whenever I want. No more thumbing through case after case, looking for the right disc, no more devoting three or four shelves to all of my movies. Now they all take up a teeny amount of room on a hard drive.
Would I buy an Apple TV with a Blu Ray drive in it? Yeah, I probably would. Then I would sell my PS3. Hey, that would probably pay for most of the Apple TV with Blu Ray!
Whoever said that Apple
Whoever said that Apple would add a dvd drive is completely wrong, who doesn't have a dvd player? and as for bluray - the whole point of the Apple TV is that you don't need one.
The delay of course is due to the film studios, they're scared of Apple controlling movies like they currently control music, I think movie rentals on iTunes are inevitable.
My question is, will they support multi channel sound? HD is a no brainer, but we haven't seen any evidence if 5.1 audio from Apple yet. . .
Isn't Microsoft already
Isn't Microsoft already renting movies through the XBOX 360? They have them in HD too. Why would I spend $300 on an Apple TV when I could spend it on an Xbox. Games, Movies, Media Center, I don't see the down side here?
"I don't see the down side
"I don't see the down side here? "
It's Microsoft, dummy.
I don't have any problem
I don't have any problem with Apple TV doing what I need. I bought my Apple TV so that I could share home movies of the kids and photo slideshows with the grandparents on the big screen HDTV. It works wonderfully for that. All my iPhoto and iTunes content are automatically at hand and ready.
I even just imported our 16 year old wedding video VHS tape to my mac and put it in iTunes for the kids to watch. We all got a great kick out of it and the quality was much better than I thought for VHS upconverted twice to 720p.
I already have a TiVo HD and an upconverting DVD player. I don't need Apple TV to be those devices.
Plus the last two times we wanted to go to the movies we were able to check out the trailer for the movie we were considering in HD on the Apple TV on the big widescreen in less than one minute.
The studios and record
The studios and record companies had better get over themselves, quickly. They are being left behind and are too stupid to see it. APPLE is firmly entrenched as THE one-stop shopping area for entertainment media-all the fragmented services as a last gasp by all the movie/music companies will fall by the wayside one by one.
Same goes with MS and their "Zoon"
>> Rather than give up such
>> Rather than give up such an important part of the value chain right away, they are willing to hold out longer.
Isn't that EXACTLY what the record companies did???
>> just about everything in the Macintosh lineup is scheduled to get a hit at Macworld
Except for the Mini, right? At least not a good 'hit'.
i love the mini, it's a
i love the mini, it's a wonder of design and a basic solution for switchers and people who like Mac for its iTunes/iPhoto/iDVD/iMovie features. i wish they kept it in their product line. well, that and an upgrade for the video chipset and the hard drive :)
maybe they could only sell one model for like 700 bucks max with a 250GB drive and the same macbook video chipset? that would be cool cool cool, i'd buy one yersterday.
Considering that a 2.5"
Considering that a 2.5" 250GB HDD is still $150, cha I'd buy it yesterday. ;) I'd even buy a 160GB one with the new laptop chipset for $700.
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