What is wrong with 720p (24 fps)? That is ideal for the vast majority of consumer HDTVs out there.

You did a great job baiting users with a title about Apple TV, while the majority of the article is about a different subject. I know its not your faulr, no one has heard of Neokast but the media has been buzzing incessantly about the HD fruit company.

As someone with a plasma TV bought a couple of years ago - I agree with Glenn...720p is fine. It is still HD and I watch a channel with it available at anytime. 1080i is only just becoming a standard (I am in Australia) and the range of HD content is still very small.

The problem I see with the adoption of HD is that in countries other than North America and some European countries it just hasn't hit the streets yet. It isn't a revolution like DVD or VHS were...as the head of Sony in Australia said "the hardest part in selling HD is providing a compelling reason to upgrade"(not sure where that was from exactly).

FULL HDTV 1080p is moving at 1050 EUROs for 37" and 42" screens - When you have seen 1080p you will never turn back :-) - Remember those clunky VHS tapes? - Take a look at them now :-)- Its an eyeopener - 720p is DVD quality only.

The big letdown with the Apple TV is the lack of MPEG-2 support. It ONLY plays H.264 - while almost all broadcast content today is in MPEG-2. Content can be transcoded for sure, but this surely precludes Apple TV to be used in live TV (IPTV) applications as a normal set-top box. Why Apple wanted to limit their product like this? To force people to buy their content of course. But Apple´s content offering is too paltry, especially internationally so this may well backfire. Apple is not the only company in this space, Motorola, Amino etc. are doing a pretty good job too - with both MPEG-2 and H.264 support. The future of TV is NOT to have a bunch of single-purpose boxes.

This year probably will be the year of HD, because the rate of HDTV sales is entering a critical mass area. Last week I purchased a 42 inch HDTV with good a contrast ratio and built-in tuner for under $1,000 which was unheard a year ago. I won't buy a Blu-ray or HD DVD player, because they are expensive and not enough content exist. I'm not a hard-core gamer so I won't purchase a PS3 or xbox. I want a Wii and I will seriously consider purchasing an Apple TV.

isn't kind of silly predicting all this great stuff and still not buying any stocks or any part of the company? you call yourself smart? :P

Apple. Still not worth it. I'm on itunes right now and the selection is pretty limited. Also, the prices are way too high.

If I pay $10-$15 for a movie I want to play it anywhere in my house. If I go with iTunes I need to spend another $300 per tv in order to watch the movie instead of $30 for a cheap DVD player.

Also, where are the rentals? I'm not going to buy a movie until I watch it.

720p looks great on my 67" 1080p DLP, granted 1080p is mind-blowing (when it can be obtained).

I have to agree with Jon though, locking it into H.264 is going to keep me from buying. All of my vacation videos are on DVDs, and I ripped them to Divx a while back.

There are media boxes that support every possable format, and are cheaper than the Apple TV.

First off the poll is probably the worst written poll I have seen in a long time. You should be fired for being a biased journalist. A poll should not have two options ... A. Yes IF it is the cheapest and B. NO I HATE... what the hell.

Also your article is misleading. You really need to have an editor review your work.

The AppleTV is a trojan horse. Remember back when Bob was floating theories about the dimensions of the MacMini (2 x 6.5 x 6.5 in) and the AppleTV (1.1 x 7.7 x 7.7 in) and whether the two were stackable? The AppleTV is actually a repackaged MacMini designed to be the internet appliance in your living room. It's got an Intel processor, an ethernet port, a WiFi card, a hard drive, USB port and video out ports, and it reportedly runs a modified version of OS X. All it lacks is an optical drive (which could even be added through USB). Therefore, there is no reason why this device needs a Mac or a PC at all. A future software update to the AppleTV will make it capable of buying movies and music directly. Later updates will gradually expand on this functionality until eventually you have a fully functional internet appliance hooked up to your TV. All for $299 Remember that this device was originally going to be called iTV? Maybe Steve felt he was tipping his hand?

Bob: "But of course nobody ever listens to me."

And yet, somehow, the world continues to spin on its axis, businesses continue to make money, grass still grows...

Wotta bunch of sour comments. I happen to think Cringely writes as clearly as anyone I've seen about some pretty complex business and technical matters. Not buying stock in a company is traditional journalism at its best - keeps the writer from being (or appearing) biased. Journalists work closely enough to the sources of insider information that their refusal to buy stocks in companies they write about costs them some big potential money sometimes. Lay off one of the best tech/business reporters around.

That said, I won't buy Apple's TV for the same reason as Jon Bohmer - it's a thinly disguised lock-in. Jobs says he doesn't like DRM for music but has no choice due to the RIAA. So if that's true, why is Apple locking its TV customers to H.264? It's too limiting.

Neokast just tees up the business question of 'walled garden' content providers, cell carriers and cable carriers, versus common carriers exploiting net neutrality, independent ISPs. The walled garden folks have only won when that was the business model from the beginning, i.e. cable. When it was bits first, there is always a crack in the wall. For example, every cell carrier tries to offer services but every business customer just wants bits. The wall had to have a pretty big door to accommodate that demand. Neokast enables the ISP to expand the old fashioned way and not embrace the dubious business of 'hit and miss' content creation.

Apple TV is interesting as it is the first device (yes, device) that understands that media convergence is about converging data and not computing at the appropriate device, in this case the HD-TV. Buying the Apple TV for just music and photos is sufficient for most family needs. Adding HD-video is just a plus. The folks who decry the lack of configurability are not the target market. In fact, they are the anti-market. Most folks just want the baby photos on the screen when GrandMa comes over. Apple's iTunes/iPhoto caching on the Apple TV does just that.

The problem with Bob is that he makes sense.

Most decisions are made with the influence of ego, emotion and greed. If these boys are as young as he portrays, that will be the largest influence on the outcome.

Please stop using "squirt" in the context of networking. It's not that it validates Ballmer's usage, it's just nasty. The world will thank you.

What percentage of the target market *right now* for the AppleTV have TVs that do 1080, anyway? Surely in the single digits, and probably less than 5%. (Note that the target market for the AppleTV is *not* the high-end audio/videophile geeks who are the early adopters and have bought the majority of those very expensive 1080 sets sold so far.)



It's like how people are complaining that the iPhone won't initially support HSDPA, when maybe only 5% of the U.S. has HSDPA coverage anyway.



People already complain at the $300 price of AppleTV. Would they complain less if it supported 1080 but cost $400, instead?



When 1080 has wider adoption and the tech is cheaper you can be sure that there'll be an AppleTV that supports it.



Similarly, by the time the iPhone is ready for Europe it'll support HSDPA, since the adoption rate of that technology is high enough there to make it worthwhile. Why else for the delay in release of the iPhone in Europe, other than manufacturing ramp up? (Vendor contracts are surely being worked out right now, and would certainly be able to be finished by the iPhone's June launch in the U.S. if they really wanted.)

Apple TV is a nice appliance for a the right market niche, however, as others have pointed out here and elsewhere, it is a walled garden, with limited uses outside of Apple-provided content. For anybody who is beyond basic plug and play, the Mini provides a lot more functionality outside of the Apple Garden.

DWitt_SF writes, "For anybody who is beyond basic plug and play, the Mini provides a lot more functionality outside of the Apple Garden."

But the reality of the marketplace is that the overwhelming majority of consumers IS the 'plug an play crowd. And as usual Apple 'gets' this fact and is poised to take advantage.

And BTW Bob, you can stop saying you don't own the stock - there IS none. If there was I'd be snapping it up.

From what I have read, Neokast sounds like Bitorrent for live video. The clients that are viewing the Neokast video are responsible for transmitting the same video to other clients. Sure sounds like the Bitorrent seeders and leachers to me.

Just because there isn't any *publicly-traded* stock doesn't mean that there isn't any *privately-held* stock.

I'm not all that familiar with the details, but I suspect that even Subchapter S incorporation at the minimum implies and probably requires that stock share ownership be specified. I suspect that even an incorporated entity owned by a single person still has to define that all the stock (an arbitray number of shares, eh?) in the company is owned by that one person.

FWIW, AppleTV outputs 480i (NTSC), 576i(PAL), and 1080i (ATSC) - it's just undocumented.

For the ultra brave:
Also it's already been hacked to play back DiVX. Well "hacked" is an overstatement. It's running OS X, so someone installed Perian and it works. If you are comfortable changing a hard drive in a PC, you can "Hack" your AppleTV. (You can even add a bigger hard drive!)

I think Apple either has something in the wings for solving this bandwidth issue, or they will buy a company, Neokast or something like that. Steve Jobs of course has bigger plans, being both on the media producing side (w/ Disney) and now being on the distribution side w/ Apple. I think HD-DVD and Blue Ray's days are numbered, Apple will eclipse them soon...

My full comments can be viewed here to save a ton of space: itfinanceguy.com/?p=11

There's how Neokast should absolutely prove themselves. Let them handle the next Victoria's Secret webcast. Pulling that one event off could do more for them positively than anything else I can think of.

And then get NetFlix and their Watch Now service running it.

I don't get all the "walled garden" comments about AppleTV. H.264 is an open industry standard isn't it? Ok, I'll answer my own question. From Wikipedia:

"H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC (for Advanced Video Coding), is a digital video codec standard that is noted for achieving very high data compression. It was written by the ITU-T Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) together with the ISO/IEC Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) as the product of a collective partnership effort known as the Joint Video Team (JVT). The ITU-T H.264 standard and the ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Part 10 standard (formally, ISO/IEC 14496-10) are jointly maintained so that they have identical technical content." So what's more open, .WMF?

Apple would surely like you to buy all your content from the iTunes music store but they obvously won't compel you to do it. Look at the music side of iTunes. The vast majority of music on iPods and in iTunes libraries is not from the iTMS. Itunes is very simple and straighforward to import music from CD's and it will even automatically import cover art for your CD's. Doesn't sound like a walled garden to me.

There is a substantial market out there that does own a library of favorite movie DVDs, plus DV home movie files. Here's predicting an iDVD to iTunes hook to easily put that all on your AppleTV. And although Apple hasn't put direct DVD ripping into iTunes, (they're afraid of the wrath of the studios), its only time until a slick utility comes from a third party to do that.

The only lock-in or walled garden in this is the the AppleTV and the iPod, and iTunes software (free software that supports multiple platforms).

One other thing. Slashdot has already reported that AppleTV has been hacked to support DIVX.

Bob,

I have been a fan of yours for some time, but obviously you did not make it to the show in San Jose and got your reports from the Neocast guys themselves. Everyone that visited their booth seemed to say the same thing as I, “it’s just an idea, and they have no product, not even a beta rolled out”.

And at their booth when pressed for details there was also a lot of “trust us it will work” type things said. Now I do not know about you, but I think you know how easy it is to put on a demo at a show (very). Mind you I am not saying they are hype artist (I stopped trusting hype artist back before the 1st crash (lucky me)) just a group of very nice excited guys who have not worked it all out yet (not at all).

And for you to say they were the “hit of the show”, well can we please hold up on giving them the “Nobel Peace Prize” until they have at least put a beta version on the street. If this is as I suspect it is, Neocast is going to fall way short of the promises they are making and way short of our expectations (thanks to mainly you), it could damage the whole market segment that you and I both love. And while doing so really hurt a lot of great companies with working product.

And as far as a father and son team “flying in” and giving them $1million Dollars after seeing the demo I saw on the floor, …well all I can say is …was there a separate “secret” demo they did not show people that just walked up to their booth….well you know what they say about a fool and his money….

Please Bob, stop drinking that Kool-Aid long enough to try to remember that little, much hyped, company called BlueFalcon (NOTE: if you do not please see the CNET article from December 5, 2001, 2:30 PM PST (http://news.com.com/Radio+service+preaches+peer-to-peer/2100-1023_3-276659.html )). And yes that was 2001; I think they raised around 24 Million dollars all in (maybe a little more). Weren’t they going to do the same thing?

And I am not saying that Live Streaming p2p or Distributed broadcasting is not the future, clearly it is, but when there is a company with no product, no beta, no specifics, and no answers, well, Bob …. that must be some damn good Kool-Aid your drinking.

Apparently Neokast geniuses reverse-engineered one of these...

PPLive
PPStream
TVAnts
Sopcast
PPMate
TVU
VGO
Afreeca
PCast
TVKoo
......
That how China has been watching western world TV for free.. heh

All the appleTVs are connected to the internet, all of them have itunes running....i think it would just take a patch download to convert all itunes programs into torrent clients or P2P clients or even neokast clients :). i wonder if gradually ITunes is actually going to be more like a new OS.

let the installed base grow first :)

I have to agree with you about multicast. It has been there in TCP/IP for decades. The problem seems to be that carriers couldn't figure out how to charge for it. Hopefully TV over IP will push carriers into a flat rate pricing scheme and make the internet a better place in the process.

Chairman Jobs: Let a hundred million Apple TVs blossom.

Three things AppleTV is missing to becoming the market dominating default way of enjoying movies:

1. HD Content:
It is coming, but how?... 20 Gigs for a 1080i, 7 Gigs for a 720p presentation?... Count on a hybrid peer-2-peer/direct from Apple (AKA Akami) solution, along with h.264 getting some special Apple wrapper (think zip on steroids) that can uncompress on-the-fly. iTunes 8.0 people.

2. Rentals:
The majority of DVD renvue comes from sales, but the majority of DVD activity comes in the way of rentals on nearly a 4-1 ratio. A rental solution is a must for Apple, as it adds another 3 households to justify Apple TV and puts the rental businesses - thus new HD DVD box sales - both in a no-way-out situation...

3. Direct purchase and rentals from the living-room via Apple TV (directly talking to iTunes movie area). Removing a barrier from Computer to living-room is a huge deal. Studio's will not go for having a rental sit in a house on a hard-drive for five-days, but Apple will get its way in the end.

Add these three components in, and it's a winner

> It is coming, but how?... 20 Gigs for a 1080i, 7 Gigs for a 720p presentation?

The size thing may be easily overcome by the fact that Apple is looking to have the AppleTV communicate with your PC. Therefore, it doesn't need loads of storage space, just a wire/less connection fast enough to spool it from the server at a usable speed. The 20Gb on aTV is only needed to cache and run the OS.

I think most of this hype around the AppleTV is way too lofty. The AppleTV has some major limitations. Unlike the iPod before, the AppleTV doesn't play *my media* (divx, mpeg, etc) instead requiring me to convert my files to iTunes-compatible formats. This is what Sony tries to do with Atrac and MS with MWA; we all know how well they've done. Also, outside the U.S.A. there is no video or movie content available on iTunes so what formats it can play via rental is a non-starter. Add to that the lack of true 5.1 surround and HD ability and it's a deal killer. Steaming photos to your TV? Can you say family slideshow? Frightening. No-one will use this. Put photos on a website like everyone else does. As for Music - an Airport Express does that great.

Re: Brian

The original poster was actually commenting on getting the content from Apple to the player, I don't know how it is in the US, but here in the UK most peoples monthly allowance from their DSL provider would be wiped out by 1 1080i movie or 2 @ 720p.

It's ok to offer these services but the users need to be able to get them, how long would a 20gig film take to download anyway?

What about the Microsoft box of X? Doesn't that handle all of iTVs functionality with more in the pipe? I mean, it's only up to what Microsoft decides to release in regard to firmware.



Imagine...full DVR functionality, games, LIVE, streaming media all using Neocast type tech...though by the sounds of it, the 'evil' companies trying to worm their grubby little hands into the Neocast pie may have something to say about it.


Why can't it just 'work' or be 'easy' for a change! Why do companies always try to screw it for the consumers and other visionaries...*sigh*



Calling Neocast! Listen to this blog and don't screw yourselves (and 'us') just to sign away your IP with a share buyout!



Oh...and Apple...keep pushing M$Soft (those ads are really winding Bill up - though where is Tigger...or Tabby...or some other small pussy cat of an OS name??) as I really want my 360 to flambé iTV...hmm a flaming iTV...now that sounds 'interesting'...hehehehe (cue maniacal laughter)...

I went to the Apple store and played with the Apple TV. The Photo slideshows on the Apple TV look really amazing, no question, but clearly there is problem with low quality content from the iTunes Music Store. I hope they get some decent quality movie content or else they're basically defrauding all these people with HD TVs. Someone mentioned a 20gig HD movie. Not likely: the iTMS movies must be less than 1GB downloads. I was blown away by how utterly terrible the 640x480 Incredibles clip looked. Compared to the DVD on a laptop (Incredibles is 7.75GB), the iTunes Music Store downloadable-for-$10 version was frighteningly embarrassing: washed out color, choppy squared-off mpeg artifcats, black shadows covering half the screen. Majorly disappointing.

If you read this and you have the chance to watch some of these movies (the $9.99 DRM ones on the iTunes store) on a computer please tell me their TV was calibrated wrong (compare it to the same scene of the DVD). These movies might look OK on a 3" iPod but I was surprised that Steve Jobs didn't personally fire the people who decided that the video quality was even remotely bareable. (The Quicktime trailers were the same low-res, low-quality video too, even though I have personally watched some nice HD trailers on my laptop on an HD-TV (Ratatouille)). They could at least demo some nice content....

Lack of MPEG-2 compatibility (the main format of my video library of EyeTV recordings and DVD rips) and shortage of H.264 content are two reasons I won't buy Apple TV. I also get the feeling Apple is trying to coerce people into making iTunes Store purchases of inferior content that at best should be rented. Never felt that way about the iPod since it's relatively easy to have alternative sources of content (audio anyway).

I'll keep using Elgato's EyeHome for now, even with its crappy UI, which has no trouble streaming MPEG-2 (and a few other formats) over my 802.11g WLAN. If Apple TV had at least a superset of EyeHome functionality it would be a more tempting product.

Apple TV is ready and here but HD-DVD/Blu-ray players and titles are just becoming available. While Apple TV does support 720P HD, it does not appear to support the 1080p HDTV resolution that all those new HD players and high-end HDTVs now support.

It seems possible (perhaps even likely) that the studios do not want to give Apple a leg up on HD downloads that might compromise HD-DVD/Blu-ray content sales. So, they may not allow Apple to sell downloadable HD titles until AFTER HD-DVD/Blu-ray is well-established.

...or perhaps Apple is just waiting to announce HD downloads so that it can work the kinks out of the download process or delaying so that it will coincide with newer hardware sales. Can you say "large screen, iMac HDTV?"

STEAVE JOBES IS IN LEGUE WITH TEH FUCHING FERRETS AND IS GOING TO USE THE I PODE AND I TONES TO CONTROLL THE POPULATION AND MAKE THEM SLAVES TO THE WILL OF TEH FUCHING FERRET. HE BELEAVES HE IS IN CHARGE OF THE RELATIONSHIP BUT TEH FUCHING FERRETS HAVE BEATEN MANY PEOPLE BEFORE. JOBES WILL END UP DEAD ON THE FLOOR OF A BATHROOM OF A CHEEP MOTEL WHEN THE FUCHING FERRET STEALES HIS MONY AND CAR KEYS AND RIPS OFF HIS PRIVETS LEAVING HIM TO BLEED TO DEATH SCREAMING.

I am hoping that streaming rentals (rather than the poison-pilled download "rentals") would be the way to go with iTunes and appleTV. But since that is a different business model for Apple, it seems less than likely.

As for lack of capability in the appleTV, it is just an iPod for the living room with streaming capabilities. It isn't a DVR killer or a Netflix killer ... yet. It is an elegant, somewhat useful device for the 5% of the consumers with HDTV's (at least in my circle of underemployed folks) that Apple can use to tweak UI's and demonstrate content partnerships right next to your TiVo and stack of Blockbuster DVD's. THEN in 2 years, when everyone needs to upgrade their TV's and HDTV's quadruple in market size, the appleTV will move to version 3.0 and slowly knock the Tivo off the shelf.

The question then is "what about rentals?" Netflix still? On Demand from your cable company? iTunes Rental store? Netkasting direct from studios?

I think Apple has these two years to make iTunes OnDemand (buy Netkast) so elegant and content rich that even if the studios ever get their acts together, the appleTV market will have reached a critical mass 'a la iPod.

My questions for Mr. Cringley are:
1. Will Netkast be the right technology in 2 years when it will really matter?
2. Will Apple/Google contain enough indie and p2p content to move the balance far enough from the studios to still be successful irregardless of the what the studios do.
3. When is your next PBS miniseries air?

Man...got to love the drug induced Ferret post...go Ferrets!

Meanwhile, people are finding the Apple contraption surprisingly easy to hack (Username and Password: frontrow; seems like an invitation!) and are busy hacking the hell out of it, making good progress on making the XBox mediacenter hack (XBMC) obsolete by making this the mediacenter modder's dream machine.
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=2391956
http://wiki.awkwardtv.org/
http://www.appletvhacks.net/

Just as how homebrew clubs grew around the Altair 8080, this stuff excites a lot of geek hackers who aren't necessarily Mac fans or ever had plans of getting one, and anecdotal evidence from various fora is that this alone is selling quite a few Apple TVs.
Makes you wonder how deliberate this is, or at least now it has come about, will Apple let it continue. Jobs most of all should appreciate this, considering his Homebrew background.

I wonder how long before a fusion Mini/AppleTV will be sold as its bigger brother? A modified Mini with WiFi, decoder chip, and HDTV plugs as people originally envisioned for it. And this baby will do FULL 1080p HD rez.