I voiced my displeasure with me AppleTV experience on Twitter and to a few friends this weekend only to be told that it’s not the AppleTV’s fault, it’s the content I chose (Survivor) and not the fault of Apple. Of course one of those friends is an admitted Fanboy and the other is a big fan himself, but it makes me wonder. Having just finished three seasons of Heroes in HD quality on Netflix via Xbox 360 (HDMI) I was shocked to see that Survivor’s video quality was just about on par with YouTube. I wish I could say I am exaggerating or blowing it out of proportion, but I am being quite literal.
Quality sucks, who do I shoot?
So Matt thinks that “It only looks as good as what was delivered to Apple.” Which I get, but that makes me question Apple’s quality control and pricing. I paid $19.99 for this season of Survivors, that’s $1 more than the Seasons we purchased at Fry’s on DVD. So I am paying more money for less quality. Something doesn’t sound right.
So who is responsible? Should Apple provide content quality ratings of some sort? Should they discount substandard quality content? Should I get an asterisk of some point that says “This is <1500k bit rate content and it’s going to look terrible on a larger TV?” I feel like I did not get what I paid for.
One of the things I have noticed with Netflix is even Standard Definition content looks really good. I have watched 30 Rock, Heroes, Dexter, Harper’s Island, not to mention countless movies and documentaries and have yet to come across something that looks as bad as what I have seen so far with AppleTV, and I pay around what this season cost a month to watch whatever I want.
And while I am on my soapbox, a few other questions about your content delivery and media options:
- Why does everyone love Netflix Watch Now, but have a huge problem with paying a subscription for music ala ZunePass? What’s the difference?
- How much would you pay per month if everything was available, even new releases?
- Should the AppleTV be so automatically integrated with iTunes on the Mac? What if I don’t want the video on the AppleTV copied onto my Mac?
- How important is it to you to be able to get one copy of a content item and use it on any of your devices regardless of brand?
- If all TV shows were available on Netflix the day after (like Harper’s Island) would you cancel Cable?
These are just some of the questions I am wondering. With Comcast totally screwing over us Media Center users by dropping analog cable and making it all but impossible, without some questionable hackery, to get digital content, I am pretty close to dropping cable tv. If I can get fast, reliable internet from FIOS or Quest, and get the most important channels via Over The Air HD, supplant my watching options with AppleTV, Xbox 360 and Netflix, my need for cable is dropping rapidly.
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Stop complaining, atleast you CAN get content with AppleTV… Here all those promised features aren’t even available… And Apple makes no haste in providing us with anything remotely near to it other than to tell us “You can watch HD content, which isn’t available, on your AppleTV.”
On the other hand. From others i hear that Apple does deliver high quality content too, so perhaps you had bad luck with this one. In which case you’re right and lower quality should be marked and made a bit cheaper.
And to answer your question 3… They treat it like it’s an iPod, so AppleTV must be kept in sync with your Mac, which is ridiculous. Just give the AppleTV a 1TB disk and allow us to store things on there that are not in iTunes with one of those nice checkmark lists like the podcasts for your iPod/iPhone.
I agree mostly with your questions. They are valid. I hope i wasn’t the “fanboy”
although i wouldn’t blame you if you thought i was 
1. I don’t have a problem with ZunePass, i think Apple should have done that years ago. I don’t have a Zune nor really want a music subscription. If i was a younger lad, i might. Now i have 90% of the music i will ever listen to. I know that sounds crass but i’m not really interested in any new music. I have enough music to keep me satisfied for many years. I get the new Dream Theater and Dave Matthews Albums as they come out. Also i’m into christian contemporary rock so Casting Crowns and MercyMe get my bucks when a new disk comes out. I also buy my $.99 songs on iTunes as i hear them on the radio but i might not purchase the entire disk.
2. I would pay $30-50/mo for a “Premium” Netflix account that allowed sameday/nextday HD availability of all my primetime shows (ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX) and any DiscoveryHD stuff (Mythbusters, Man vs Wild and Deadliest Catch) would be nice as well. To me that would be a sound investment. The items would have to be available to my Instant Queue (i.e. i can watch them anytime i want and as much as i want). I would also switch back and forth to my AppleTV if Apple would do something like this as well.
3. i would assume they do so for several different reasons. First being backup. If your AppleTV’s harddrive were to go dead you would have an immediate and local backup of your purchases movies. Just like your iPod. If the iPod OR your computer were to go dead, you have a backup, since they now allow you to copy iPod content back onto the hdd of a computer (as long as it’s registered with the login/pass that purchased it, for older purchases). Second, i believe with some AppleTV Movies and TVs you can convert them (via iTunes) to play on your iPod/iPhone. If the movies weren’t part of your iTunes library it would make this (typical Apple ease of use) quite a pain in the rear for typical customers to do this (whatever the “typical” Apple customer really is, i’m not sure). Also if you purchase the smaller HDD on the AppleTV (40GB i believe) and you buy lots of movies, it allows for the AppleTV to provide additional storage space by offloading the movies to a computer in the house so it can continue to add movies/tv shows as you purchase.
4. On a scale of 1-10 about a 6 right now. My main concern is just getting content onto my TV. I will watch TV/Movies on my laptop, but i have a 42″ plasma TV and damnit i want to watch my content on it. Just trying to get stuff off the web onto my TV was a pain. Take for example Harper’s Island. We watched the first 5 episodes. Then my MOXI DVR from Charter died and it was 8 days before they could get me a replacement. I still had 3 episodes on the DVR that i hadn’t watched and missed the 4th one during the downed DVR. So now i’m 4 episodes behind and my wife want’s to watch it. Our options are watch it Online with my 15″ laptop while my TV sits there all dark. Buy the content on AppleTV (i assumed they have it, i didn’t even check), but that’s like 2.99 per episode in HD. I already paid for the show via my Cable Bill. But if i try to grab it off a torrent site and watch it on my TV (via converting it to mp4 and putting it on iTunes for my AppleTV), all of a sudden i’m a pirate and the scum of the earth. It’s the equivalent of buying a DVD and then having my DVD player destroy the disk. Well why should i have to buy another DVD. I’ve already got to buy a new DVD player. Shouldn’t i be allowed to get my disk content w/o buying another physical media, without being some kind of blood sucking leech on the Movie/Music industry? Once we got Netflix and i noticed Harper’s Island was available. We canceled the cable
5. I did cancel cable because of the plethora of content on my Netflix via my xbox 360. Just 2 days after having my 360 and Netflix accounts i canceled cable. My bill was about $200/mo and only $75 was internet. So i dropped a $125/mo load on Charter, reduced my internet to 10Mb from 20Mb (to help cut costs over the summer) and went exclusively to Netflix via Xbox.
1. I love the idea of subscription music services, though currently none of them quite fit my needs. ZunePass, specifically, seemingly has every other song I want excluded from the subscription plan and as “purchase only”.
This defeats the point for me.
It does not matter that it does not work with my PMP of choice as other services offer better selection for a far lower price, whilst still being incompatible with my mobile player
And yes, Apple are as much to blame for the compatibility issues as anyone.
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2. I’d also pay $35-50/month for a next-day, HD-quality, version of Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature. The higher figure being dependent on the ability to pre-download HD content in the same manner as a Tivo schedule, so picture quality was not compromised during periods of high server/network utilization.
They would also have to ditch the rotating availability scheme they have going now. Once you have it encoded and on the servers, it needs to stay there.
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3. The automatic copy from Apple TV to the Mac/iTunes is a sane default for most users, but should be user configurable nonetheless. The only reasonable alternative here is permitting re-downloading of content you have already purchased.
Microsoft and Sony have this model right with Xbox Live and PSN.
Those of us that know to back up our data and pay attention to terms of service can turn the option off easily enough. We’re smart enough to look for it, and intelligent enough not to bitch (much) when WE screw up and lose data we should have backed up. Most users would not even think about it until they lost several hundred dollars worth of purchases and found they could not download it again without paying twice.
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4. I think this is the holy grail, and I might even pay a little extra per-content item for it.
For music, of course, it is already the case (unless you are stupid). Every track I have bought in the last couple of years has been playable on my iPod, iPhone, PC, Mac, Xbox 360, PS3, PSP, Sonos, Linn DS and even my 1st generation Zune (until I bounced it off my deck). Music I really care about I purchase on CD and do a lossless EAC rip to FLAC on anyway.
Video is more of a problem. Things like DoubleTwist (www.doubletwist.com) make it easier for portable devices, but still there is no good, single, model for high-fidelity sources on PC-to-theatre sized displays.
Bizarrely the pirate community does not have these issues and get their content for free. I am just not willing to walk that path. If you will not SELL me what I want I am content to do without it.
As it is I do not buy video content for download as the quality it far too variable and it really does not transfer to other devices well. Every large screen TV in the house is connected to at least one of an Xbox 360, PS3, Tivo HD or a PC … if I cannot make one purchase in one format and play it on ALL of those units I pass … and either stick to streaming via Netflix or using their DVD service.
In increasingly rare cases I actually buy the DVD or Blu-Ray (for those few films that truly gain something there), but given the dearth of half-way decent movies released in the last 2 years even that has slowed to a trickle.
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5. Given a reasonable option for the local news channels I would ditch cable TV in a heartbeat NOW.
Sadly OTA HD is not it a workable solution for me. OTA HD requires a GOOD roof-top antenna install unless you are fairly close to the transmitters. It does not work at ALL where I am using an indoor antenna.
This is more the wife’s issue … I am happy with my collection of very-high-end portable radios/scanners for this task.