HD For Indies

Well, finally! Today Apple revealed some more details about what was once called iTV and is now simply called Apple TV.

If you don't know about it, you can read my geek summary here, or Apple's page on it is here.

Or watch the Steve Jobs Macworld 2007 Keynote.

I started hypothesizing about this kind of a device back in August of 2005, about a year and a half ago.

While I got the functionality mostly right, I got the form factor wrong - I figured it would be a big wall wart, they have it as a small set top box (with a hard drive included as well)

Some thoughts:

Is it worth it?

In its current incarnation as offered, frankly I think not (although I'm buying one...and I don't have a suitable TV - what does that say about me?)

For many folks, this is really a movie box - you pay $300 for the box, you have to have a computer, a broadband internet connection, and then...it doesn't look as good as a DVD.

...and there are no extras, and you can't take it to your friend's house and play it there, and it only works on widescreen TVs, and it costs 6 times more than a basic DVD player, and the movie selection is tiny, and....why is this a good idea again?

There's a good story I heard from a venture capital guy once - aspirin vs vitamins. When you travel, the little bitty store in the hotel has aspirin for nine bucks for 4 pills. You grumble, but you pay for it - because you NEED it (OK, you just really WANT it, but you get my point). You'll notice they don't sell vitamins in those hotel mini-stores. Why? Because people buy what they NEED. Vitamins are good for you, a good idea, etc., but there is no core NEED. The VC's point was that you want to offer people aspirin, not vitamins.

All the other extra features, like streaming audio with a nice interface, looking at your pictures on the HDTV, being able to watch your purchased TV shows that you couldn't get anywhere else....those are all arguably just vitamins or things you get get some other way.

But on second thought...I do think there will be a subset of the population, me included, that would be happy with the iTV STRICTLY as a premium iTunes interface for their audio collection, with photo display as a bonus. TV/movie viewing is just gravy on top of that. And for right now, I think that is the ONLY way to see this as a possible success. Prepare to see this marketed as "iTunes on your TV, including movies" not "Hey watch downloaded movies on your TV!" With the really nice UI and great integration for audio content access, suddenly the perceived value goes up.

NOW...if they offer 720p downloadable HD movies, that changes the formula ENTIRELY.

Based on this article dealing with viewing distance, screen size and resolution, and knowing that most HDTV panels are actually under 1400x800 pixels at best (many are only 1024xsomething), 720p makes a whole lot of sense. Plus, 720p is a much more manageable download than 1080p.

SO...if Apple were to offer 720p resolution downloadable movies on a $300 device that also had some other fringe benefits (like viewing all your pictures easily, and a good interface to play back all your music) that would suddenly be a MUCH more compelling option than spending $500-$1500 for an HD playback device (Blu-ray or HD-DVD) that you didn't know if it was going to "win" the format war in a few years. Of course, Apple would also need to get additional studios beyond just Paramount (whom I hear is only offering older movies at this point in time, probably to test how well the encryption can or can't be circumvented)

HD movies would probably take up about 2-3 times as much space as the current standard def movies, that are taking up about a gig and a half for full length features (1.4 to 1.75 GB for the 3 I have at present on this box).

They could at least be potentially competitive with HD movies. And I'll betcha lunch that HD movies come out in the first half of this year, or surely this calendar year.

And I think their intent is clearly to head in that direction - as with everything iTunes, Apple eases their way into it - you'll notice they first did itunes based music videos (in low res), then TV shows, then movies, then jumped to SD resolutions. At the same time, Apple started phasing in high def movie trailers - wisely practicing to see how well the infrastructure, from servers to bandwidth, could handle it.


So, on to other features...

-EDTV or HDTV only - this will be a crunch point that a lot of people won't get - it wasn't until I heard EDTV that I got suspicious and decided to check it out - a regular 4:3 TV will not, Not, NOT work with Apple TV as far as I can tell. So that'll filter a bunch of folks out who just wanted to watch movies in SD on their existing sets, and also have a good interface for iTunes and Photos. Poop on us, apparently. From a technical standpoint, I can see why they wanted to only support progressive devices (or progressive signals at least with hardware adding 3:2 pulldown to take the 24p to 60p or 60i)

-it has a USB port for....what? Direct connect? More HD space? I could certainly see running out of room for the stuff I'd want stashed on it. While your boot drive on your primary linked computer is the real depository for all your content - but it'd be nice to be able to plug in a USB drive with ALLLLL of your stuff - and for power users, I see them exceeding 40 GB FAST - I have 20 GB of pictures on my laptop already, however many older ones, 50 GB of MP3/AAC files, 10 GB of purchased movies and TV shows....that's 80 GB already, twice the capacity of this device, and I haven't seriously started buying or converting video content yet

Speaking of video content, what formats does it support? Obviously encrypted H.264, as well as unencrypted H.264, and that's all they are listing for now. So playing your DVDs from your computer to stream the data to the Apple TV is NOT an option...because Apple wants you buying THEIR versions of the movies!

-Somebody once asked me if I thought Apple would add DVR capabilities - not on their life - Apple wants to sell you shows for $2-4 a pop, not let you record them for free...

-and I wonder if they will ever offer a way to download directly to the Apple TV, without a Mac or PC involved? Will they ever offer an IPTV or other streaming solution, or is it forever just a media extender? It is sort of inbetween since it has that 40GB drive as a cache.

-speaking of which, whatcha wanna bet that you can't copy files off of the Apple TV, even if you shagged your drive with all your source material on it?

-uses Apple Remote, same as for laptops and iPods...and for this usage, it strikes me as kinda lame/thin on buttons and features - hey, will there be an iPhone app to use the iPhone as a remote for the apple tv? THAT would be cool!

-and speaking of iPhone, can you stream content from iPhone to the Apple TV directly with no other devices included? Maybe just a WiFi router? Or dock it and direct connect it over USB?

-no A/V cables provided - get your own (kinda lame)

-I mis-stated content capacity earlier based on live commentary from the keynote - it'll hold up to 50 hours of STANDARD DEF content

-and when they DO get high def content, how long to download? Because clearly, you have to wait until it is all the way there before you can start to watch it. In theory, Apple could get clever with some progressive download stuff to let you start watching before it is all downloaded, streaming the already downloaded portion while writing the incoming stuff to disk.

So what does this mean for indies?

Not much for quite some time. Due to the limited audience this will have, straight up DVDs are going to be your best distribution option for quite some time. Get'em on Amazon and Netflix and that's about the broadest first step you can do on your own without a "real" distributor. But that's another rant.

: )

So again, back to the "Is it worth it?" question, after a few hours reflection - it all depends on what you see as the primary value of the device:

If you see it as strictly a movie player, then DVDs are a MUCH better option.

If you are fully into watching TV shows you missed, and don't have a DVR or didn't record them, then it has some value, but $300 is a stretch.

If you see it as a premium iTunes interface to get your audio into the living room and let you use a big screen as the interface and let you use a remote, suddenly it gains a LOT of value,especially compared to the other options on the market (as they don't play back purchased iTunes content usually). And on top of that, you can see your pictures, podcasts, and download movies? That's how this device will have to be marketed to be successful, or perceived as valid/viable.

-Mike

UPDATE - yet more further thoughts - but after thinking about it a bit more, this product is really just a media extender - it just lets you do your iTunes thang at a distance, with a widescreen TV interface. An interesting experiment I need to try - if I set up one of my old G4s as a media server, and use my Macbook (without having to store ALL of my media on it) as the interface to the TV, can I not get all the functionality of Apple TV? And get that today? I have an s-video adaptor for my Macbook already, and it has Front Row, the basis upon which the Apple TV UI is built...wanna bet the Front Row experience in Leopard is going to pretty much match what we get here? Come to think of it, that dual 2.0 GHz G5 doesn't do much these days...I could just use that, with the Front Row patch, and I have a 17 button IR remote I could configure...

AppleInsider | Macworld: High-quality photos of Apple TV and software interface

-Paramount added about 100 movies, but not their latest