New Apple TV small and cheap
It’s hard to deny that Apple been raking in the money with success after success of their products. With pretty much everything put out with an Apple logo on it seems to sends people into some sort of frenzy, flooding into the stores to buy whatever Apple are selling. The exeption has been up until now, the Apple TV, that little black box that connects to TV sets and lets users buy content online, and play media from the built in hard drive and network devices.
When first launched in 2006, the analysts had high expectations for the Apple TV, spouting off statements you often hears during Apple product launches like “It’s going to change the world!”, “It’s Magical!” and “I so want one! What does it do, again?” That said, it never lived up to any of its hype.
In reality, Apple TV has been more of a success people give it credit for. Any product that sells over six million units and generates decent profits can’t be considered a failure, although it isn’t nearly the runaway success of other Apple products like the iPhone or iPad. Most importantly, it’s proven to Apple that people will pay to rent and stream video content. Where people pay to consume media, Apple will be there to rake in the profits.
Apple’s TV finally comes out with a new box. Like almost all the new Apple products, it’s smaller and sleeker than the original, sports an industrial design, and has too few connectivity options. However, it vastly differs from the original Apple TV. For example, there is no hard drive.
It receives streams from the Internet or network only, and don’t think about plugging in a USB drive to play media locally that won’t work either. It will still play audio, video, and photos just fine from over a network, but only supports up to 720p, thats a bit behind the times for media playback devices these days.
The new design is about a quarter the size of the original Apple TV, and its connectivity has been stripped to just five ports: HDMI, optical digital audio output, USB, Ethernet, and power. There’s also built-in Wi-Fi, so you won’t need to drag an Ethernet cord into the living room. Unlike the old model, the new Apple TV doesn’t have onboard storage, instead it streams all content either directing from the Internet or other devices on your home network.
It’s online offerings are what has really changed though. For starters, it hooks into the web to play content from Netflix, YouTube, Flickr and MobileMe. Which is unusual for Apple to directly support services that compete with its own itunes. But for many, this is what must be done to compete in the online tv market. Of course, Apple content will still be unique to the Apple TV and put it above other media-boxes. For now anyway.
Plus Apple have moved to a rent only model now, no options to buy. Movies are $3 to $4, HDTV show rentals are 0.99 cents. The only downside being that currently their TV content is only from ABC and FOX. If you have loads of other Apple gear, there are some cool integration options coming that will let you play something directly to the Apple TV. They call it “AirPlay.” It’s basically Windows 7′s Play To feature.
The thing is though, most viewers and consumers in general are confused or even unaware about how to use an Internet-connected TV. There is no one big company pushing the brand, but a growing number of competitors. Apple realise this will be a very lucrative market when someone gets it right.
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