Sun, 27 May 2007

Is the AppleTV the Beginning of the End of Broadcast Television?

I bought an Apple TV this weekend, to which my friends immediately asked why I bought such a poorly reviewed product. Yes, this first revision has some faults. However, for a first generation product, it brings a very interesting paradigm shift to the way someone views television.

Some of its faults really show almost immedately. Is it a $299 TV video adapter, or a self-contained set top box? Its flip-floppy dependence on iTunes extremely complicates that determination. Content is either streamed from the computer or stored locally on the box, depending on if iTunes bothered to synchronize the content yet. I can see how this can be useful (most people have most of their content initally on a PC or Mac of some sort), but I really wish once I tell it the podcasts I want to subscribe to, it would check and download it directly on the box itself.

Besides, if you really wanted to change the way this worked, there is great news. The AppleTV is extremely hackable -- and in an native, friendly way. There is no need for crappy GUIs made by engineers. You can easily intergrate your additions to AppleTV using the FrontRow API. (FrontRow is the pretty, shiny, black interface). There are plugins available for YouTube, RSS feeds, weather, sports, and just about anyhing you can think of. If you are not a savy C developer life myself, you can even execute PERL scripts using a PERL script plug-in. Also, when Apple gets off their butt and starts adding really neat features to this product, like...how about being able to actually BUY crap ON AppleTV? While im sitting on my couch? I found myself much more willing to purchase content while sitting in front of the television than digging up the laptop, and buying it through iTunes, and remembering the fact that I am actually telling it to bill my credit card. It would be like pay-per-view.

Also, Apple didn't include any DVIX/etc codecs (gee...i wonder why? Could it be that 99% of folks would use this to play their pirated content off bittorrent?), but you can put these on yourself.

But this is all software and design concept. The hardware is there, and it works, so lets just forget about the iTunes dependency for the moment.

After a several hour synchornization (I only have about 1.5GB of MP3s, and 5GB of images), my AppleTV had all content stored locally. You can start viewing all of your content off the bat, but it required streaming it from the laptop. Not bad...unless...since this is a laptop..it goes into hibernation, runs out of batteries, or follows me to the office, etc. I subscribed to a couple video podcasts for things that interested me, including several 720p podcasts of interest, and various professional news outlets.

So far, I am quite impressed. I am able to watch all sorts off offline content (podcasts) to my hearts content. Every hour, the newsbrief videos and audio update. When I idle, a bunch of my digital pictures fly around the screen. I can watch iPhoto slideshows based on roll with effects and the ken burns effect, listen to pre-created iTunes playlists, view movies -- both premium content purchased and views of my own, movie previews, etc.

Can it replace my satellite service? Potentially. Most of the media we view at home is on-demand content via internet. I have looked down on Podcasts in the past, but with the introduction of AppleTV , several new content startups have started producing high quality shows -- some of which are in 720p (HDTV) resolution. The HD podcasts are at least 150-250MB a shot, but since synchornization is done in the background, I really don't notice much. While iTunes features a lot of good video podcast content for adults (Including a bunch of free Family Guy episodes directly from Fox), there is very limited content for children. The only thing interesting I have found so far is the "Vintage Tooncast", featuring cartoons with expired copyrights. These are the $1.99 DVDs your mom buys on sale at the grocery store. They are okay, but for my three year old, she likes the recent gimmicks such as that stupid yellow thing named Bob, etc. I might have to convert some of her DVDs over so she can watch them on the AppleTV.

The video display, although very basic, is quite a performer. 720p HD is as smooth as you would expect. I have the display mode in 1920x1080i, so it has to work extra hard upscaling everything. The ken burns effect combined with transition effects works at full frame rate in 1080i mode. I just love photo slideshows on my HDTV....and since the resolution is high, you can actually see intricate details of the imagery (1920x1080 is double what my little MacBook will do too).

I think with a few hacks (or plug-ins), this AppleTV might be a contender to my Satellite TV service....which we haven't watched all weekend so far. This unit is part of a two-pronged approch to get rid of our Dish Network service and eliminate the need for any subscription (Dish/DirecTV/Comcast/etc). And for a steep cost of $60-$80 for satellite television, I could still purchase my wife's favorite show (Deperate Housewives) at a fraction of the cost....even with Apple's expensive prices at the iTunes store. $1.99 a show is $7.95-$9.95 a month. Or for free with an ATSC Over The Air tuner.

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