A Man and his Penguin

You’ve got to wonder.

First off, you have to have a TV with component or HDMI input. There are some CRT TVs which have these, but they aren’t really common. There are standard def plasmas which have them, but I figure that anyone with enough cash to spare for an Apple TV isn’t getting around with a cheapo SD plasma. So, basically, you’d have a high definition TV.

The Apple TV doesn’t have any sort of tuner in it. It’s not a PVR. It just allows you to watch iTunes purchases, and more recently Youtube videos, on your HD TV. Wirelessly (well, wires going to the TV).

iTunes purchases are 640 x 480 (not even full standard definition) and Youtube videos are 320 x 240 (VCD definition). On a TV capable of displaying 1,266 x 768 or 1,920 x 1,080. That’s going to look like shit.

And if the rumours are true, you’ll be able to hire "DVDs" through iTunes, which expire after 3 days or 3 watchings or something. Whoop-de-doo. Okay, so there’s possibly going to be a bump up of resolution to 768 x 576 if we’re talking about "DVD quality", but you’ll still have to download a couple of gigabytes worth of movie and you can only see it a limited number of times.

Why does Apple bother pumping cash into the Apple TV? The thing can’t have sold very well. It’s not one of Apple’s major products, and many IT commentators have described it as a white elephant. I don’t see the point of the product, and I suspect that most people with HDTVs don’t really cherish the thought of buying a device that will only output SD or sub-SD video. Instead, they are probably more likely to buy a Blu-ray player, especially if they are in America and starved for high definition content to match their TVs.

Apple should dump the Apple TV like they did the Newton, eMate, and Pippin; and reallocate the staff toward writing an operating system that is actually secure enough to be deployed on desktop and embedded devices. The Newton and eMate were ahead of their time, where the technology and marketing weren’t ready yet. The Pippin and the Apple TV are just examples of dumb ideas done dumbly.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 3:08 am and is filed under Other computers/OS'es. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.