This event is getting absolutely roasted by the Verge liveblog:
> NILAY PATEL 11:01:09 AM PDT
> It will play day or night shots depending on time of day. Sure.
> CASEY NEWTON 11:01:08 AM PDT
> "People are clapping for screensavers." -Walt Mossberg
And a TV remote without a power button?! That's bold.
> Netflix works in Apple's Universal Search but not Google's.
This seems counterintuitive to me -- you'd think Apple has an incentive to push people toward iTunes instead of Netflix, but I can't figure out why Google would want to obscure that content.
Interesting! Integrating with global search would essentially turn them into a media server. Never thought of it that way. Would that be... bad?
Their app doesn't have ads, thank god, so I'm trying to figure out what the motivation would be. Is it just trying to get people to watch Netflix content they wouldn't have otherwise seen?
Yeah - every time you load up Netflix you're presented with a front page of their choosing, outlining content they would like you watch (/think you should watch). Although there aren't ads, they still want you to get the most from your subscription, so that you don't cancel it.
If they just become a cog in a larger search wheel then you'll just go directly to the one show you want to watch.
* Universal Search - which they're doing with everything else - the user is trying to find a very specific content.
* Recommended Shows - the user is looking for things to Watch
Netflix could easily plug into both of these to capture the user - but they plug into neither and instead opt to create a suboptimal flow for the user.
What they're doing here is that, when on Android I search for a Show I never see a "Watch on Netflix" button.
And there's never interesting movies to watch on Netflix highlighted on my homescreen.
They're not doing themselves any favors by NOT having this functionality.
They're not doing themselves any favors by NOT having this functionality.
I suspect they are - their catalogue is strong enough (and paid for) that people will seek out the app when they realise it is not included in the recommended watching list.
Man you and I have a very different Netflix experience. I generally bounce off Netflix when I realize they don't have what I want to watch. I also very rarely browse it for content to watch as that takes _forever_.
Their strength these days is not their catalog size, which is constantly shrinking, but their original programming.
Which is exactly the type of stuff they should be surfacing in the OS itself - as it's what makes people stay with Netflix.
Google has no clue how to maintain anything approaching a traditional customer relationship. They sort of got lucky with ads and everything else is a side show in terms of revenue so there's no incentive to develop products or businesses further.
> Google has no clue how to maintain anything approaching a traditional customer relationship
Yeah, that's a good way to say it. It just seems as they don't even believe in their products themselves, whom they're for and how/if they'll maintain it. They're great at making "tech demos" (for IO specifically), but products? Nope, sorry.
It's not about belief really, it's about necessity. At google it basically rains ad money 24/7, that plus backbone internet traffic is where the vast majority of their money comes from, and it's a ton of money. For everything else it doesn't matter if it's successful as a business or not. In fact, the best case scenario is mediocrity and barely breaking even in terms of costs. Because that means there are no consequences, no bigger implications, no expectations for improvement, etc. Google is sitting on several enormous multi-billion dollar businesses (youtube and office tools, for example) but they don't care to actually develop them into such. Right now they can afford to not care, and all of the internal incentives are aligned to promote not caring.
I agree with you. The only downside of this attitude might be the customer trust on the long run and with their future products. Basically, how long can they afford to be mediocre in those areas and will they eventually run out of people who weren't burnt for their money?
Also upcoming public awareness about ads/tracking and how to block them might bring significant changes in their revenue success.
Ads in general are in a long, slow slide into oblivion, so google will likely eventually have to change, but when the crunch comes will they be able to?
I want them to succeed so bad. I try to support them.
But you're 100% right. The user experience for glass and google fi have both been pretty horrible. They don't even have a mechanism to receive feedback, yet they are purporting that I am "beta testing" for them.
I have a feeling when they want to know whats good or bad at about a product, they look 95% at a database.
They are a frustrating company to care about. They have so much that's so important that they're working on, but they're like some half-interested genius teenager with a short attention span. They just don't have a significant commitment to anything other than making money through ad revenue, and that's practically heart-breaking.
So cheap that I almost bought one on impulse, until I realized that I have no idea what I'd do with it. I'm sure a lot of people don't make it to that second step until after they click the "buy" button.
I have an Apple TV and an Xbone. Between the two I stream everything I care to stream, as well as anything on the local NAS. I'm not saying the Chromecast isn't useful, it's just not useful to me considering what I've already purchased. IOW, in my case Google was late to the game.
They aren't really actively marketing it, and Android TV is a fundamentally different product. A Chromecast is a dumb wireless adapter for your TV with a minimal interface largely controlled by a phone, while an Android TV (and Fire TV, Apple TV, etc.) is a small computer designed around a 10-foot interface.
The Roku is in a unique spot: it's got a channel store, so it can be expanded easily, and it can be operated with only a TV (no phone or tablet required), but isn't to the point where it can run full apps. It'll be interesting to see what happens, given the Fire TV (excluding the stick, which is closer to a Roku) and current iterations of the Android TV have been sales disappointments.
I think its getting obvious that they are having problems with their OEM relationships. OEMs want their own Smart TV platforms for their own ends. TV OEMs are also seeing the low margins on Android phones and want nothing of that.
I think Google was forced to give up on AndroidTV and just expects people to buy the Nexus Player for $69. Considering how much better the Nexus experience is on phones compared to the skinned Android versions, in the end, I think this is probably the better move. Especially when I can just unplug it and move it to a different TV. I don't want my TV buying choices to be limited to whatever model supports Android TV.
Not to mention, the low end is probably dominated by the Chromecast. I have two, they're great. I don't need yet another box or remote in my life. I just want TV's with Chromecast (or a cross platform equivalent built-in). I don't need more smart devices. In fact, I need less. The internet of things is greatly over-rated.
This device looks slick but I'm very disappointed that it doesn't really bring anything new to the table. It might be best of breed in terms of polish and features compared to Android TV, Fire TV, etc - but functionally, it's identical. What happened to Apple revolutionizing the way people pay for/consume content?
Yeah, they do. The problem is that very few people actually want to load their TV up with apps - they just want Netflix.
"Apps...on your TV!" has been a promise on multiple platforms for a few years now and it seems like nobody really cares past the first couple of weeks they have the device.
The people who want interactivity with their TV have game consoles. Even on those wildly successful, high-use consoles, the "apps" (as opposed to "games", the first-class use case for the device) typically do rather poorly.
Not-console-manufacturers have been trying to break into this market for ages by making a TV viewing device that also happens to be a casual gaming console (/app platform), but it seems that people who want gaming on their TVs buy gaming consoles, while people who want TV on their TV buy things that let them watch TV, and there isn't enough overlap between the two for One Grand Unified Device to capture the market. Microsoft really went hard-in on the married TV and gaming concept with the XBox One, and it's been a massive flop compared to the PS4 (with the PS4 outselling it 2:1).
I don't think it's an issue of "nobody's done it right yet" - I think it's actually two separate markets and attempts to marry them just can't force those two markets to both want the same thing.
Every "Smart TV" has garbage software features. Some become completely unusable during the hour it takes them to download and install weekly updates.
Apple creates new markets by switching the equation from 90% hardware/10% software focus to 70% software/30% hardware focus.
As for the xbone, that's more of a marketing/positioning argument. Just because a game console can be a home media center doesn't mean people will buy it for one. xbones are for teenagers who want to be racist over their headset connections online.
There's a very good argument to be made that the reason nobody wants "apps" on their TV is because the experience can be charitably described as utter shit.
Smart TV's are known for awful UI's with awful lag, high end consoles such as the Xbox One stutter and hitch on their simplistic home screens, experiments such as Google TV have failed for the same reason, set-top boxes from outfits like DirecTV have the same problem, lag, lag, and more freaking lag.
If anyone can put a decent user experience on this whole idea, it's Apple. After this, expect the rest of the market to shape up quickly.
As much of a Google fanboy as I am, I must admit that Apple is a market leader when it comes to UX.
I do hope Google was taking some notes during this keynote. Siri's interaction in Apple TV is far superior than Android TV's Google Now integration. Hopefully that changes with the work in contextual awareness they've been doing and Now on Tap in Android 6.
Shitty programming. The hardware in these devices should have no trouble dealing with a simple UI with a few movie thumbnails and a virtual keyboard. Yet my "smart TV" runs slower than any dinky 90s windows box I can remember.
In terms of hardware, it isn't the winner for this sort of product. According to reports from a few days ago, the new Apple TV lacks 4K support. The Nvidia Shield runs Android TV, supports 4K (well), and has a pretty reasonable GPU in it. It costs $50 more.
The Shield is an amazingly good device but it will never sell at anything near the rate of Apple TV. It's targeted toward gamers and enthusiasts, many of whom already have a console already.
I generally agree with you, but Apple's brand image is "luxury"; it does seem odd that what is ostensibly a premium brand would not be targeting premium features.
To put it another way, people who have 4k TVs today - the luxury market - may be put off of the new Apple TV because of its lack of support for their higher-end devices. I'm not sure that's a desirable effect.
That's their image, but supporting 4k would probably add a few bucks to the cost of the Apple TV, which would be unacceptable to Tim Cook. 4k will be included when it's achieved decent market penetration.
They've done this before; the ATV1 didn't support 1080p, at a time when 1080p TVs were starting to exist in the semi-mainstream (though the vast majority of the market was 720p or 1080i still), but there was little content for them.
Ultimately, it'd presumably add cost for a feature useful to few people. Connectivity for 4k also remains a mess; there's HDMI 1.4 (24hz at 4k, so not good enough; the interface presumably runs at 60fps like all other Apple interfaces), and HDMI 2.0, which does support 60hz at 4k, but which is somewhat rare, and has its own problems: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/168-hdmi-q-one-connector-world...
I expect in a couple of years when 4k TVs are more common, content exists for them in significant amounts, and the connector standard (possibly HDMI 2.0a?) is sorted out, they'll support it.
I get where you're going, but I would argue that Apple's brand image isn't luxury at all. Apple sits squarely in the mid-to-high end bracket — anyone who's essentially "middle class" can afford Apple products, and their pricing indicates this. Examples of luxury brands that few people can afford: Hermes bags, Lambourghini cars, Cartier watches.
That puts 4K squarely in the "middle class" market, if you ask me, and if Apple TV doesn't support it, that means they aren't even targeting middle class. They are basically targeting poor people with an expensive luxury item that can run apps (half of which, like Netflix and Hulu, already run on most users' smart TVs). Their marketing strategy is borderline nonsensical.
I think it fits squarely into the 'affordable luxury' armed; it's kind of the equivalent of, say, Bosch or Neff for kitchen appliances. A little bit more expensive than the entry level brands, and not really that different, but it looks good, and the oven door feels a bit more solid. Apple's certainly not in the true luxury segment, except arguably with the gold watch.
There's a difference between "luxury" and (the visual equivalent of) "audiophile." People with money to waste buy Beats headphones, not Sennheisers. Thus why Apple acquired the former instead of the latter. Targeting the high-market buyer doesn't usually imply making your product capable of doing all the latest and greatest bleeding-edge things and beating the competition in a highest-numbers contest, any more than BMW sells its products as race-cars.
Of course, some rich people are racing-car enthusiasts, or audiophiles, or whatever else—and it seems to be more common in the high-end, simply because more of the rich can afford to actually get these things when they want them. But that doesn't mean that the desire is a rich-people thing, or that making something super-duper-high-numbered will make it sell more to the rich.
(Of course, if you give the thing a super-duper-high-numbered price tag, you might inspire some rich people to get it as a Veblen good, which can often look like a desire for the bleeding-edge. You'll frequently find things purchased in this way being underutilized—4K "Veblen TVs" purchased in order to watch 480p Seinfeld re-runs and so on.)
Especially since it's not that expensive a feature anymore. There's actually a $15 Pi-like ARM board called the Orange Pi PC that does 4k, because apparently ARM media SoCs with 4k support are that cheap that you can put one in a bargain-basement board that's not even aimed at media applications. Admittedly it's restricted to 30 FPS at 4k, but still, I'm sure Apple could do better if they wanted to.
I can't argue with that, but the Apple TV will hit obsolescence much quicker, particularly as 4K becomes more prevalent. I just find it odd that Apple totally excludes the higher end of the market...Android TV has a range of options at least.
It's completely unacceptable for the new Apple TV not to support 4K, when both Netflix and Amazon are releasing 4K content now. On top of that, the new iPhones can record in 4K, and the new iPad can edit 4K videos.
You can buy a 50 inch 4K TV nowadays for under $1,000. 4K is going to explode in the next year or two, and if the new Apple TV doesn't support it, I won't be buying it. Period.
I agree. I paid $600 for my 52 inch 4K... and it's not a cheap Chinese one, it's a samsung smart tv with native streaming, voice command, and multi-axis remote..
They are going to miss the boat if 4k explodes this black friday.
At which time they will no doubt support it. Right now it'd be an extra expense of use to very few users, and they'd have to deal with the connectivity problem.
At what viewing distance, though? I have a 65 inch 1080p set that I sit 12 feet from. Without my glasses, I can't tell the difference between 1080p and 480p at that distance.
The whole reason the 4K bandwagon exist is to push people to replace their whole media hardware stack again. They tried with 3D, but that flopped, so apparently more pixels are needed, so you can see the media with more clarity from the sofa (where there's basically no difference because of the distance).
Similar as pushing 2k/4k screens to mobile phones - marketing and sales.
I have 20/30 vision (slightly blurry), and I can ABSOLUTELY tell the difference between normal HD and Ultra HD, from 10 feet away. Anyone who can't is either partially blind, or is lying.
I assume you're using a very big TV. I'm currently looking at a ~38" TV from about 10 feet away, and can't see the pixels on the 720p content from my 2010 AppleTV.
>60" TVs are a thing, but they're a serious niche, especially outside the U.S., where homes tend to be smaller. Apple would simply be adding cost to work for the tiny amount of the market who both want a really huge TV, and happen to have gotten a 4k one, and they'd probably have to release a hardware revision or so anyway in a year or so she the connectivity issues around 4k resolve themselves.
Sure, which would mean that users would have to spend ANOTHER $200 for the version of the Apple TV that supported 4k.
I mean, aren't they are supposed to be releasing cutting edge technology here? Why are they releasing a set top Apple TV that can't even display the content that the new iPhone and iPad can CREATE and edit?
I want to be able to record 4K videos on my iPhone, then turn around and play them on my 4K TV, without having to leave the Apple ecosystem.
It is a huge, glaring flaw in their ecosystem if I can't do that.
Well, no one can make you buy an Apple TV that doesn't have the features you want, so I feel like maybe you look at the world a little differently than it actually works. Given that, there's not much more I have to contribute.
I guess A8 chip can not handle 4k streaming or to the good user experience level Apple like. Apple TV uses older chip. It appears A9 in iPhone 6S can handle 4K thus you will see 4K support in next model. Anyway 4K content is not mainstream yet.
This is a genuine question. How many households do you suppose have an Internet connection that can support 4K? I don't know the answer for the USA, but I can see from a Ofcom report published at the start of the year, about 68% of households in the UK would not be able to stream 4K on Netflix due to insufficient broadband speed. Just 1/3 of households have connections with 30Mb/s or more (http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2015/broadband-speeds-novembe...).
I'm not saying this a valid excuse for omitting 4K support. However, for the most part I don't think the infrastructure is really there for the wider population. I live out in the sticks and barely get 3Mbps.
Perhaps we might see 4K come to the Apple TV next year either as a software upgrade on current hardware or with better GPU/CPU to support it.
Probably a chicken and egg problem, why upgrade to fibre many people will think when you have no need for it apart from slightly faster large file downloads
Thanks for the link! If 94% of the population can subscribe to BT's FTTC service and get at least 25Mbps then the state of broadband in the UK is much better than I had previously thought.
That said, 25Mb/s is at the lower end of the FTTC service. I can imagine a lot of households will max out at around 40Mbps due to distance from the cabinet and cross-talk on busy lines (though vectoring should help somewhat). I would like to see what G.FAST can deliver but unshielded copper phone lines can only take you so far.
Don't forget that ~50% can get up to 300mbit/sec (by the end of the year) with Virgin Media. And probably 2-3% more can get direct FTTP with Hyperoptic, BT or Sky/TalkTalk or other altnets.
Unless Amazon has substantially changed it's outlook on the Fire TV, Kodi is a disappointment. It's buried in a submenu and requires side-loading, and you have to mess with the device to get it to load as the homescreen or be surfaced on the main app launcher.
I'm getting a database error when I click that link, but if it's anything beyond "open store app, download app, go to home screen, run app", it's a third-class citizen (considering that Netflix et al are second-class citizens on the Fire TV).
The "easy and quick to set up" option is ten steps, and that's just to get the app on the home screen (rather than to replace the home screen). In what world is that not a third-class option?
I don't think of these things in terms 'classes'... the side loading + icon launching thing is a hack but easy to do and works great. Knowing Apple I doubt such a thing would be possible.
doesn't really bring anything new to the table. It
might be best of breed in terms of polish and features
I'd say their mission is more to be best of breed in polish, and generally just keep pace in features. Which I am actually pretty okay with - given the fact that 90% of the crap in our industry feels like it was cranked out by a sleep-deprived maniac deep into their third consecutive month of crunch time.
> It might be best of breed in terms of polish and features
It is. That's exactly how Apple revolutionizes anything - by making it fun, and natural, to use. Just like tablets, mp3 players, and smartphones existed before Apple got into them.
This is what they do, it's what they always do, and yet people are surprised by it every time.
Yup. When jobs announced the iPod at a special event most people said "big deal, it's an MP3 player".
What they didn't look at was how great the UI was, how well it integrated with their Mac (and eventually PC) and how much better the same features that already existed elsewhere were.
I believe the same rules apply here. And the app store will be the best in town. Again.
and with the iPad: "big deal, it's just a large iPhone".
The fact that most of HN seems to hate or deride these features (like the Live Photos thing) tells me that they'll likely be a huge success and all be using them in a year.
Which is odd because you would think a community like this the actors would be forward thinking and try and see what the possibilities are. The lack of creativity isn't unique to this place or generation - Slashdot had similar sentiments years ago when they still mattered.
Alas, community like this has very little empathy for non-tech, non-dev folks. I am amused how narrow worldview can be sometimes on HN. Every kid should learn to code, because nothing else is interesting on Earth, everyone is supposed to tinker with their devices, because what's else there to do, etc.
And when I state that "Inmates are running the asylum" is one of the book that changed my worldview it does not usually end well for me.
> most of HN seems to hate or deride these features (like the Live Photos thing) tells me that they'll likely be a huge success and all be using them in a year
If the fact that gifv videos are already everywhere (Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Vine-sorta-kinda) didn't tip you off. It seems like people are starting to think of short, usually-silent, looped videos as just what you take to preserve a moment, instead of a photo.
Do Android TV, Fire TV, etc., have a multi-axis, touch remote with Siri (or any spoken) interface built in, and also include an SDK for building apps (including full-blown games) that are universal between the TV and phone/tablet?
Fire TV has a bluetooth remote control with voice search, and an app store... and so does Google. Room for improvement but Apple's looks substantially similar to them both. Unless they've arranged a lot more gaming content than the android equivalents it's just going to be another netflix box + itunes, vs netflix + amazon prime, vs netflix + google play movies.
Both FireTV and Android TV have voice control via their remotes. Both have universal SDKs between TV, Tablet and Phone. Neither have touch enabled remotes or motion sensitive remotes, but both have traditional console game controller accessories and full blown (PS3 quality) gaming hardware. (http://shield.nvidia.com/games/android and http://www.amazon.com/b?node=7031433011) NVidia's Android TV will even play your PC games streaming off your gaming PC.
Bahahaha. That's funny. ESPN's entire business model is based on being just popular enough that any cable company not carrying it would go under so they can demand something on the order of $6.50 per subscriber when the majority of subscribers don't watch ESPN.
If they ever offered an individual subscriber deal they sure as hell wouldn't do it for $6.50 per sub per month.
> It might be best of breed in terms of polish and features compared to Android TV, Fire TV, etc - but functionally, it's identical.
That's always kind of been Apple's thing, though. The controller does look somewhat original.
> What happened to Apple revolutionizing the way people pay for/consume content?
I suspect that the content providers looked carefully at what happened to the music industry when they played ball with Apple (especially the unilateral killing of DRM on iTunes; the last holdouts were supposedly told to drop the DRM or be kicked off) and decide that they don't want any of that, thank you very much.
Apple almost never completely invents a new market out of the blue. What they typically do is take a relatively small existing market and make a hugely successful product in that market, expanding the market by orders of magnitude. The Nokia N95 was a touchscreen smartphone before the iPhone, but the day I first used the iPhone, my N95 felt twenty years old.
Is the Plex on Android on Nexus Player experience better than the Plex on Android on Amazon Fire TV experience? I'm very unhappy with my Amazon Fire TV (which only exists for Plex purposes).
Plex on AndroidTV is a different interface than the version that exists on FireTV. It's more polished than the FireTV version, but the recent additions to all the plex apps around recommendations really annoy me. I don't want Plex to try to be Netflix, I want it to show me unwatched videos in one section and all videos in another section, and that's basically it. Plex on iOS does the same thing, though, so my guess is that Plex on the apple TV won't be better.
Plex runs great on iOS devices, so this is probably a low-hanging fruit (to port).
I did try out the Plex app that runs on the Amazon Fire box (Android), but it was slow and didn't feel very nice. Not sure if that's because it's a different, less-optimized codebase, or the Fire is just underpowered.
Apple is in the business of selling legal content through iTunes, and to my knowledge there is no way of legally obtaining non-DRMed video files of movies or TV shows. Making piracy more convenient would be a surprising move.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was able to use the SDK to write a XBMC-like app.
VLC is available from the App Store now. And you can make your own movies or license them from creators in various ways other than the general releases. Also in many places other than the US it is legal to rip content that you bought legally.
You can indeed make your own movies, and a way to stream from Final Cut to your Apple TV is sorely lacking - AirPlay is too choppy. However, playing generic video files is just about the worst way to support this capability, because you can expect to wait 2-10 hours for your movie to render to a file, even on top-end hardware. The more "Apple" solution to this problem is streaming to an Apple TV app hooked into the Final Cut preview mechanism.
You can license movies from creators in ways other than the general release, and I have worked with content obtained this way in auditorium film screenings. You definitely wouldn't use an Apple TV for that, though, you use high-end rackmount DVD/Blu-Ray players, HDCP media servers, or specialized cue playback software so that the audience doesn't see you fumbling with controls - they're on a dedicated interface. Granted there are scenarios other than public exhibition, but if it's for consumption in your living room then it's pretty much by definition general release.
Apple is one of the first movers in killing physical media. At this point I don't think you can even buy a Mac with a built-in DVD drive; facilitating playback of ripped DVDs would be pretty low on the priority list.
Closest thing I can anticipate would be a way to play videos from your Photos library - intended for the ones you shot on your iPhone. It would probably be possible to import an unencumbered video file there, and stream it across your house with Home Sharing, which has been built into the iLife suite for a few years.
Apple does allow this, they just have to be in the correct format and loaded into iTunes on you computer. If your computers iTunes and the AppleTV are on the same network you can watch whatever video you have loaded. I do this all the time. It's probably not as easy as the Roku (I assume the Roku allows the playback of a larger variety of codecs) but for me it works perfect as I encode everything in h264 anyway to use for pitches, mood boards, etc as an editor working in advertising (where the majority of creative uses macs).
"no way of legally obtaining non-DRMed video files of movies or TV shows"
Uhm what? I know the studios are doing their best, but fortunetly non-DRMed video isn't illegal yet. Ripping your own dvd, recording from tv, public domain or cc licensed footage, buying from independent distributors or the authors themselves, video blogs, conference recordings and learning material etc.
I think the GP specifically meant "no way of legally purchasing some big-name-production-house-licensed title as a DRM-free digital-native asset", the way you currently can with e.g. iTunes' DRM-free AAC audio files.
Tell me with a straight face that Apple gives a shit about DVDs.
>recording from tv
Fumbling around with capture cards is roughly the opposite of the Apple TV's ethos.
>public domain or cc licensed footage, public domain or cc licensed footage, buying from independent distributors or the authors themselves, video blogs, buying learning material etc.
Vimeo is already a pretty polished UX for most of the independent film use cases. Offline is a concern on mobile devices but not really relevant to the Apple TV.
Also, let's be realistic here, people aren't watching public domain content on their couches day in and day out, they're watching big-name TV shows.
I think ripping your own DVD is still illegal in the US under DMCA and WIPO Copyright Treaty countries. DMCA says you can't remove copyright-enforcing measures on your owned media. It's crazy dumb.
Someone correct me if this is no longer true, or if I misunderstood it from the DeCSS days.
There's a Plex app for jailbroken Apple TVs already, and it's on the app store for iPhone and iPad so I imagine that it will be available for the new Apple TV on day one.
Why unlikely? It's presumably just iOS, and there are plenty of iOS apps already existing which can play arbitrary files (assuming they don't have AC3 audio; due to legal disputes most apps are unable to use this) over a network.
That event is only available via HLS, which never took off in the way that Apple perhaps hoped (it's only supported by Apple stuff, Chrome on Android but not desktop for some reason, Microsoft Edge, and a few random things like VLC). I'm sure they'll shift from it in time, but it's not without its advantages if you don't care about latency; it plays nice with dumb CDNs and caching proxy servers, making it perhaps the cheapest way to stream to a large audience.
With my XBMC I can download subtitles. Can I do that with AppleTV? I doubt it.
Apple TV has a difference audience, than XBMC and PLEX, which I doubt will manage to get. All in all it's not a very successful product so far, we'll see now.
In my experience, the Apple TV's native subtitle rendering (which seems to be identical to QuickTime Player's rendering) is atrocious. It doesn't understand styled subtitles (e.g. separate colors for separate speakers, or bold/italics/etc.), or Unicode characters in subtitles, or subtitle screen-placement directives, and it frequently manages to do stupid things like displaying comment lines left in the subtitle file as if they were part of the text.
Watching subtitled video is the main reason I have a Mac Mini plugged into my TV.
There are no Greek subs for most of iTunes content. If AppleTV was able to fetch subs from opensubtitles.org I'd had a subscription but it doesn't.
Plus the fact that some content is not readily available in my country, plus the fact that I must change format for huge load of media makes the entire thing a deal breaker.
I won't even start mentioning what XBMC can do that AppleTV can not because it's embarrassing.
I use Airplay to stream anything I can play on my Mac to my AppleTV. I suffered from a bit of lag and occasional syncing issues, so I switched to Beamer, and it's been absolutely rock solid: http://beamer-app.com/
This is already possible (if awkward) using iTunes Home Sharing and a dedicated media server. I wouldn't call it good, but it's good enough. It remains to be seen if it made the cut for the ATV4 (or whatever we're calling it). Though there's a still a legit use case for home movies and such, I'm not particularly optimistic. :(
I haven't bought an Apple TV thus far because I have lots of media that I'm pretty sure it won't play. But this new interface looks fantastic, particularly with the improvements to seeking (a hobbyhorse of mine - underpowered boxes plus crappy software makes it an often frustrating experience) and the addition of Siri. I don't think the remote looks that great for games, though.
AppleTV plus a Synology NAS is a pretty great combination. I have a Synology NAS, with an archive of movies stored on it. It also has a torrent client, which can pull down media directly. The Synology media service indexes the movies (finding cover art, genre, ratings), and makes them available for playing within the LAN. The best part is, the media service is AirPlay-compatible. Using Synology's (decent) iOS app, I can (1) Search for & initiate a download using the NAS on-device torrent service, (2) Stream that movie directly to an Apple TV - all controlled by the iOS device. Pretty slick. I might also note, because the NAS & AppleTV are connected to the router by ethernet - not wireless - there is no lag/buffering/etc.
Correct - though this is mostly due to there being little/poor hardware support for those formats.
Natively the Apple TV (currently, don't know the new model) supports H.264, MPEG4, and MJPEG - all of which are trivially supported by actual chipsets.
Matroska/Ogg/Avi aren't as well supported (or well used, tbh.. other than Avi which is a container anyhow)
Apps like vlc and mxplayer for iOS play Matroska, Ogg, and most of the codecs that lurk within avi files, and will presumably be ported to this new AppleTV pretty quickly.
It's a little roundabout, but I use AirVideo HD [1] with a separate iOS device to get around this. My media server recompresses content to MP4 in realtime, which then bounces to the AppleTV via AirPlay, which all works seamlessly for being so janky. Assuming Apple isn't too tight-fisted with TV app approval (which remains to be seen), I imagine the AirVideo folks will pull off a better version of the same thing using a native app.
Correct - seems to really only prefer mp4. About half of my library is not compatible. Fortunately a re-download isn't so bad, especially if it's an opportunity to get a higher resolution version (that's the optimist in me speaking). There are other VLC-like players available, but the drawback is the video must stream from your iOS device rather than the NAS.
I like the Apple TV. It solves the two frustrations I have with the Fire TV stick:
1. I can’t search across both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, instead I have to search both one after the other.
2. I like how you can ask Siri “what was that?” or “what did they say?”. I’ve been watching House of Cards and found myself asking that question quite a bit. On Fire TV, this involves rewinding, turning on subtitles, catching the missing text and at last turning subtitles back off again. Such a chore! I really like how Apple solved this problem. I have yet to see a similar feature in Fire TV.
FWIW Android TV does universal search very well, and has had it since launch. But I do think that this Siri integration is a notch above what anyone else has right now.
Number one is just a function of the FireTV exising to drive you to Amazon rentals. The Roku has had a comprehensive unified search interface for many years.
On my phone in the airport, so only skimmed article. Is Amazon an apple app? Not an Apple guy, but thought older apple tv didn't have Amazon.
Regardless, the new TV just bought has netflix etc. and controls stereo cia CEC. Stereo supports airplay, so I expect in future my bar to buying another box is very high. Asking Siri does sound convenient, but not sure worth it to have yet anoyher device to deal with. Wife is exceedingly happy to have one remote that "just works" compared to the mishmash of deviced I had prior to buying new stereo and "smart"
tv that support CEC.
The scoreboard is burnt-in by the sports channel carrying the game; to the best of my knowledge, there's no way to get the raw switched video feed before the graphics crew touches it.
They leave the scoreboard because it contains branding for the host team / stadium and frequently the local affiliate actually running the broadcast. NFL Gamepass, and both NHL and MLB live air the original broadcast feed.
Have you worked a lot with Bluetooth 4.0? Or previous Bluetooth versions? I've found BT 4.0 is tons better than say...Apple's old keyboard and mouse...which is a PITA.
Yeah, it's better, but 1/50 it doesn't work is super frustrating. Especially if there are multiple apple tvs in a house, I could see this being a problem where the remotes get confused.
At work we have a bunch of apple tvs hooked up to presentation tvs/projectors and we all just use the hdmi cable to the screen directly. I do not trust Apple to have their wireless issues sorted out this time.
Why even focus on the remote ? I understand its to make it accessible to people outside of the apple ecosystem, but it would have been nice to see better integration with an iphone app.
Yeah I might consider this if it turns out they have both, eventually. I get that you massively limit your market if you don't have a remote at all (like chromecast), but for me, it's so much more convenient to have everything on the phone.
They already have a Remote app http://www.apple.com/apps/remote/ that has all of the functionality of the last-gen Apple TV remote (plus things like a keyboard). I would be extremely surprised if this weren't updated.
They've had an Apple Remote app for quite some time. Works just like they showed in the demo with the added bonus that you can use the iPhone's keyboard for text input.
I'm a pretty heavy Apple TV user, and the reason I love using it is because of the beautiful, slim aluminium remote. Aside from when I lose it, which is always.
I'm not sure about others but I hate using my phone as a remote: grabbing it, unlocking it, launching the remote app. And then having to think about its battery level (especially if using AirPlay). It's nice when you're in a tight spot (have to enter a sensitive password in front of friends, need to AirPlay a quick video), but a phone is horrible as a general purpose remote.
This changes gaming. I need a bluetooth controller accessory and devs will really be able to go far with this.
edit: While everyone here seems to disagree, many indie devs have been waiting for this for a while. It will essentially be the biggest indie console market. Ouya was unproven hardware and lackluster adoption. Innovation wise, sure, there's nothing new here in hardware nor software. But in terms of form factor, dev kits, and market, this will be very different.
Not really. The Wii has had this stuff for a long time, and for a more direct comparison, so has the Roku 3. Neither has changed the world, and while Apple has a greater chance of doing so, success is far from assured.
The 'this' I think you're referring to is motion control. While the Wii certainly didn't change the world it was very revolutionary and drew its competitors to copy w/ the Kinect and PS Move. Something revolutionary in this day and age will definitely be some VR related breakthrough.
In any case, it wasn't what I was referring to. I'm referring to the idea of bringing the iOS marketplace to the big screen. It's the most adopted marketplace of both users and developers and while there isn't much to show for it now on the Apple TV I think time will bring many options of entertainment.
Does it really? I think the failure of greatly hyped consoles like the Ooya have demonstrated that there isn't actually much of a market for this. Hardcore gamers already have fully-powered systems. Casual gamers don't care about playing on their TV.
In my opinion Ouya was built for casual gamers but marketed towards hardcore gamers. Do you know any casual gamers that backed it? Even if you did, the execution of the hardware and production was poor. They had more than just market problems. So I really don't think Ouya is a good example of the idea that casual gamers don't care about playing on their TV.
Apple TV brings a different form factor to a marketplace that is already successful, just like the iPad did to the iPhone.
Ouya was barely marketed, and had little software ready to go (and required the use of its own obscure app store with weird restrictions on devs). There are a lot of console and console-esque games already on iOS devices, many already with controller support, which could be ported over more or less on day one.
It does not change gaming, it changes Candy Crush consumption.
All the fun things are on PC, not because of hardware, but because of openness of the ecosystem. You just cannot innovate in the self censorship environment of a walled garden.
I wasn't referring to specifically innovation. While games like Candy Crush are generally frowned upon by the non-casual gamers, iOS as a marketplace is rather well adopted by all sorts of developers from indie to AAA. Hell, even Nintendo has agreed to license their IP to the iOS market. To me, Apple TV is now a console and while it's not as open as the PC ecosystem, it is no doubt a place developers want to be.
Surely quite a lot of the fun things are on consoles? And the consoles are _far_ less accessible to devs, especially indie devs, than this will be (assuming it uses the normal app store model).
Just last night I walked into my living room where I have Chromecast's shitty screensaver "backdrop" running on my TV and there was an ad on the screen! I was seriously pissed off, I'm not going to have my TV be an ad billboard for Google, I'm done with them. I'll consider this Apple TV, though I think I'll end up with a Roku.
Really? I rather like their picture scroll. Sometimes when I have nothing to watch I'll just have that running in the background. What's pretty cool is that through the Chromecast app you can find more information about the picture. I've collected a lot of potential vacation destinations this way.
The iPhone and iPod touch are going to make really crappy game controllers. I would get the AppleCare+ if you have kids or are a bit of a klutz. I get the feeling a case with a Nintendo wrist strap might not be a bad idea.
All those features are just fine and dandy, but did they finally address the issue when streaming shows via hulu or netflix the audio and video eventually gets out of sync and you need to restart the Apple TV to fix it? If so, I'll order mine right now.
Cordcutter here -- AppleTV looks like a handy way to combine my Hulu, Netflix and Amazon Instant streams, but can anyone comment on whether it's worth the price if I'm not really plugged into the Apple media ecosystem? I quit the iTunes store after I discovered (too late, my fault) that all the audiobooks I'd bought from them could only be downloaded once, then were lost forever.
I've got a Chromecast and it works fine, for the streams it supports. But does AppleTV content justify the extra cost?
I've got the previous version of Apple TV and a Chromecast. Long story short, I use both devices exactly the same. The only differences really is how I communicate with each device - remote control for Apple TV vs phone/computer for Chromecast. The Apple TV does do streaming much smoother than casting from Chrome, and of course you can use any window, not just a website.
I think like most things though, it depends on the person. I'm a medical student, so it's not like I have free time to kill playing games on a new platform or discovering new shows.
I have and enjoy both the Roku 3 and the current (not the one announced today) AppleTV and aside from Apple stuff like Airplay video streaming and iTunes cloud integration, it doesn't really give you much over and above the Roku 3.
Of course, the apps and games on the new Apple TV change the game entirely... if any of that interests you.
Good to know, thanks. I've been looking at the Roku 2 for a looong while now. Not really interested in getting mobile games on my TV, might just go with that instead.
If the price difference doesn't deter you, you might be better off with a Roku 3 (or waiting for a Roku 4, if such a thing is in the pipeline). I have a 3 and sometimes the framerate drops a little bit, so I can't imagine what using a Roku 2 is like.
(The framerate drops occur when navigating the interface, not when viewing content.)
Definitely not worth it. The chromecast is pretty nice and netflix and hulu have casting ability (amazon instant video would require you to cast your entire screen which isn't the best).
The nexus player is on par with the apple tv/maybe a bit better and is half the cost of the apple tv.
IMO, no. I'd recommend the Roku 3 instead, which I also use to watch Hulu, Netflix and Amazon. Of course, if you're happy with the Chromecast then just go with that, but I got annoyed with everything having to run through my phone.
I can't stand the Chromecast for TV watching. I don't want to deal with my phone when I just want to turn on something on the TV. The AppleTv is the best UI I have found, but last I checked could not do prime streaming. The device I would recommend right now is either a Roku or FireTV. Both can stream basically everything and have their own remotes.
Are TV boxes really a growth market though? This looks kind of interesting, but most new TVs already have Netflix, Amazon, iPlayer etc. At $149/199 it's not exactly in Chromecast territory, either.
Honestly, smart TVs creep me out. The ones I've used have had impossibly annoying menus and inexplicably slow connections. My parents' smart TV buffers low-res Netflix shows to the point that it's sometimes unusuable. I brought my Chromecast over once and it worked perfectly.
Not to mention hooking my television up to the internet means I'll be getting ads from the software (Hulu, broadcast commercials) AND the hardware. No thanks.
How often do you get updates for your smart TV? For mine, practically never -- and I've also had the fun of climbing behind the TV to pull the plug because it froze up on several occasions.
The TV works much better as a dumb TV, so I just use a Chromecast and Blu Ray player instead. When those get too dated, they'll be cheap enough to replace.
Quite a few dumb tvs out there. Gave my sister-in-law a Chromecast for her birthday last year, but might get an AppleTV for her if it does Plex. I think they'd prefer an onscreen display.
My coworker uses a Roku despite the Plex app on his tv, apparently that's pretty clunky.
Until the manufacturer stops supporting them, and the service provider changes out from under them (YouTube killed off various old clients a while back by retiring an old api, say). People keep TVs for a LONG time; you're probably looking at an expected lifespan of 10 to 15 years. I suspect that smarttvs may ultimately be a fad; a little box makes more sense given the replacement cycle.
This is especially true if the gaming aspect takes off; a 150$ box that is refreshed every year or so looks more attractive than something built into your 600$ TV that is supposed to be replaced every 15 years.
I wonder about the range of the remote. Right now I can keep my Apple TV in a media closet and use an IR extender with the remote. Will BT 4.0 work 40+ feet away through walls?
Pundits are out in force suggesting that the new Apple TV is going to somehow put traditional game consoles out of business, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the traditional console market and the difference between console games and casual gamers.
The iPhone and iPad has massively grown the casual gaming market, bringing whole new demographics into gaming, and it has disrupted the handheld gaming market, but it has not done so at the expense of console gaming. The core defining characteristic of casual gamers is the ability to get into, and out of a game quickly. They consume games in small bitesize pieces, waiting in line, in downtime between other activities, not in multi-hour binges. Being mobile helps this mode of consumption, because your mood for gaming can arise in many circumstances, and you can instantly satiate it on your mobile phone, without having to arrange TV time or disturb someone else.
By contrast, TV console gaming has a high transaction cost. You have to travel to your living room, turn on the TV, find the controllers, boot up the game, make sure no one else wants to use the TV for other purposes, etc. Moreover, console games are designed more as a TV experience, for someone to play 30, 60, 120, even 240 minutes at a time.
The new Apple TV, from it's leaked specs, is essentially a casual gaming machine hooked up to a TV. This might spell trouble for the Nintendo Wii, but Sony and Microsoft?
The Apple HW is no where close to current generation console level specs, and anyone creating content for it will be faced with casual gamer price expectations. How many publishers will want to spend tens of millions of dollars on triple-A titles and sell them in the app store? That would be like Marvel selling their next movie for 99 cents. Is EA going to put out a $1.99 version of StarWars Battlefront? They're not going to get console ports or exclusives of current games until they've exhausted the markets on other platforms.
So, without content to draw the people who want a 2 hour immersive gaming experience, they won't get console gamers. But what of casual gamers?
How many people will exchange the convenience of playing Angry Birds on their phone with playing it on their TV? My guess is, people have moved on from wanting to sit in front of their TV and that casual gamers are mostly mobile gamers.
I don't think this product fits either market very well, and the primary use case of it will remain video streaming, of which is is much more expensive (and less capable, no 4k streaming) than cheaper streamers already on the market.
It seems like you're assuming that all games are basically either Candy Crush or MGS5. In reality, there's a lot in between, and various indie games which work well with the touch interface have actually had a fair bit of success on the iPad at rather premium price points. FTL and Papers Please, say, are arguably better on the iPad than on PC (both benefit from multitouch), and go for $10 each.
There's a lot of potential for midrange semi-casual console oriented games like Rocket League or Starwhal here, and realistically, a surprising number of consoles are used mostly for that type of game.
I think there's also some long-term potential to hit the triple-A market, particularly if the console vendors keep up their current ~7 year refresh cycle. This is obviously a lot less powerful than current-gen consoles, it triple-As are still big sellers for last-gen consoles, and the gap will close as Apple refreshes this every year or so. It's far cheaper than a console, and also smaller and presumably silent. I think it'll find a place.
The controller alone dooms it to most console games.
Sure, some games work well on the interface. But those games are exactly the games I don't want on a TV. Do I really want to play Papers Please on a TV with a tiny touch pad controller remote as opposed to on my lap?
This is too much of a compromise system that sucks at both ends of the spectrum. It's not as good as the iPad for touch games, and it's not as good at consoles at FPS, Strategy, Fighters, etc.
Are people really looking for a niche console inbetween?
To be clear, I don't think people will be playing Papers Please on this; the interface isn't at all suitable.
There are plenty of iOS compatible controllers already available which presumably will work with this out of the box.
I see this as being potentially huge for people who want to play some console-y games but don't want to spend 400$ On a large noisy box. Also, it could potentially be big for indie devs who want to write console-y games; the current consoles are still not terribly indie-friendly, and in practice most popular indie console games started life as PC games.
Now let's play the game of "guess which provider won't be on the AppleTV". Amazon, perhaps?
This post cord-cutting TV world is pretty awful. I don't want to have to download an app for every video provider, if they even have one for my platform at all.
at $39 or whatever it costs, I suspect they aren't making a whole lot of profit on the hardware. They have an iOS app, I expect they'll have an AppleTV pretty rapidly.
Just my opinion of course but this is very bad for the consoles. Apple comes in with a stupidly huge and competitive developer community and everyone in their target audience already has access to plenty of controllers (iOS devices). I imagine we'll see big guns moving over quickly (I have four GTA titles on my iPhone).
Let me know when you can run GTA 5 on your Apple TV, and then we can talk about how this is horrible for consoles.
Smartphones have already stolen away the casual gamer. The people playing call of duty and final fantasy are not the people who will be wowed by the apple TV.
OK: I expect GTAV will run just fine on the new hardware -- the A8 will crush the PS3 hardware. Obviously it won't run the remaster for the newer hardware, but really who cares?
The old PS2 GTA titles had to be remastered for the iPhone and run fine on an iPhone 4.
I for one am sick of slow level loading and endless patches; every time I play on a console I want to throw something through the screen. And I've yet to see a single compelling PS4/XB1 title come out (I have high hopes for No Man's Sky).
It'll definitely be of interest to indie devs, but the console vendors don't really seem to care about them anyway, or at least put very little effort into making things easy for them.
For triple-A studios, the current-gen console hardware will likely always be a draw, though I'm sure this will get rereleases of old stuff, and possibly a downgraded version of new games (I suspect it isn't _that_ far from a Wii U, performance-wise).
259 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 251 ms ] thread> NILAY PATEL 11:01:09 AM PDT > It will play day or night shots depending on time of day. Sure. > CASEY NEWTON 11:01:08 AM PDT > "People are clapping for screensavers." -Walt Mossberg
And a TV remote without a power button?! That's bold.
"For what it's worth, this UI looks way more intuitive than the nightmare rodeo of the XBOX One or PS 4."
"You can quick rewind 15 seconds by asking "what did she say?" That's pretty cool."
"Pretty damned impressive.".
See what I did there?
Perhaps a lot of what Apple showed off is already developed into Now on Tap (part of Android 6).
Hard to know, though. Haven't seen any android blogs report on it.
Edit: I'm also incredibly infuriated that Netflix works in Apple's Universal Search but not Google's. That is infuriating.
This seems counterintuitive to me -- you'd think Apple has an incentive to push people toward iTunes instead of Netflix, but I can't figure out why Google would want to obscure that content.
* Universal Search (nope)
* Recommended to Watch (nope)
* Using your phone as a keyboard (LOL NOPE GOOD LUCK WITH THAT PASSWORD BRO)
Their app doesn't have ads, thank god, so I'm trying to figure out what the motivation would be. Is it just trying to get people to watch Netflix content they wouldn't have otherwise seen?
If they just become a cog in a larger search wheel then you'll just go directly to the one show you want to watch.
* Universal Search - which they're doing with everything else - the user is trying to find a very specific content.
* Recommended Shows - the user is looking for things to Watch
Netflix could easily plug into both of these to capture the user - but they plug into neither and instead opt to create a suboptimal flow for the user.
What they're doing here is that, when on Android I search for a Show I never see a "Watch on Netflix" button.
And there's never interesting movies to watch on Netflix highlighted on my homescreen.
They're not doing themselves any favors by NOT having this functionality.
I suspect they are - their catalogue is strong enough (and paid for) that people will seek out the app when they realise it is not included in the recommended watching list.
Their strength these days is not their catalog size, which is constantly shrinking, but their original programming.
Which is exactly the type of stuff they should be surfacing in the OS itself - as it's what makes people stay with Netflix.
Yeah, that's a good way to say it. It just seems as they don't even believe in their products themselves, whom they're for and how/if they'll maintain it. They're great at making "tech demos" (for IO specifically), but products? Nope, sorry.
Also upcoming public awareness about ads/tracking and how to block them might bring significant changes in their revenue success.
But you're 100% right. The user experience for glass and google fi have both been pretty horrible. They don't even have a mechanism to receive feedback, yet they are purporting that I am "beta testing" for them.
I have a feeling when they want to know whats good or bad at about a product, they look 95% at a database.
The Roku is in a unique spot: it's got a channel store, so it can be expanded easily, and it can be operated with only a TV (no phone or tablet required), but isn't to the point where it can run full apps. It'll be interesting to see what happens, given the Fire TV (excluding the stick, which is closer to a Roku) and current iterations of the Android TV have been sales disappointments.
I think Google was forced to give up on AndroidTV and just expects people to buy the Nexus Player for $69. Considering how much better the Nexus experience is on phones compared to the skinned Android versions, in the end, I think this is probably the better move. Especially when I can just unplug it and move it to a different TV. I don't want my TV buying choices to be limited to whatever model supports Android TV.
Not to mention, the low end is probably dominated by the Chromecast. I have two, they're great. I don't need yet another box or remote in my life. I just want TV's with Chromecast (or a cross platform equivalent built-in). I don't need more smart devices. In fact, I need less. The internet of things is greatly over-rated.
It seems casual games are the desired inroads to mainstream.
AppleTV has the biggest market share in streaming devices at around 40%...
You have a promising career ahead as an Apple analyst.
It's not like Apple has ever been late to a party (phones, anybody?) and redefined and entire already-saturated market.
Apple TV just.. doesn't.
Don't think "Apple TV," think "Apple bigass interactive application substrate."
"Apps...on your TV!" has been a promise on multiple platforms for a few years now and it seems like nobody really cares past the first couple of weeks they have the device.
Not-console-manufacturers have been trying to break into this market for ages by making a TV viewing device that also happens to be a casual gaming console (/app platform), but it seems that people who want gaming on their TVs buy gaming consoles, while people who want TV on their TV buy things that let them watch TV, and there isn't enough overlap between the two for One Grand Unified Device to capture the market. Microsoft really went hard-in on the married TV and gaming concept with the XBox One, and it's been a massive flop compared to the PS4 (with the PS4 outselling it 2:1).
I don't think it's an issue of "nobody's done it right yet" - I think it's actually two separate markets and attempts to marry them just can't force those two markets to both want the same thing.
Every "Smart TV" has garbage software features. Some become completely unusable during the hour it takes them to download and install weekly updates.
Apple creates new markets by switching the equation from 90% hardware/10% software focus to 70% software/30% hardware focus.
As for the xbone, that's more of a marketing/positioning argument. Just because a game console can be a home media center doesn't mean people will buy it for one. xbones are for teenagers who want to be racist over their headset connections online.
There's a very good argument to be made that the reason nobody wants "apps" on their TV is because the experience can be charitably described as utter shit.
Smart TV's are known for awful UI's with awful lag, high end consoles such as the Xbox One stutter and hitch on their simplistic home screens, experiments such as Google TV have failed for the same reason, set-top boxes from outfits like DirecTV have the same problem, lag, lag, and more freaking lag.
If anyone can put a decent user experience on this whole idea, it's Apple. After this, expect the rest of the market to shape up quickly.
I do hope Google was taking some notes during this keynote. Siri's interaction in Apple TV is far superior than Android TV's Google Now integration. Hopefully that changes with the work in contextual awareness they've been doing and Now on Tap in Android 6.
Sometimes being familiar with features prevents people from realizing that most people can't use them, or that they're not well implemented.
To put it another way, people who have 4k TVs today - the luxury market - may be put off of the new Apple TV because of its lack of support for their higher-end devices. I'm not sure that's a desirable effect.
Ultimately, it'd presumably add cost for a feature useful to few people. Connectivity for 4k also remains a mess; there's HDMI 1.4 (24hz at 4k, so not good enough; the interface presumably runs at 60fps like all other Apple interfaces), and HDMI 2.0, which does support 60hz at 4k, but which is somewhat rare, and has its own problems: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/168-hdmi-q-one-connector-world...
I expect in a couple of years when 4k TVs are more common, content exists for them in significant amounts, and the connector standard (possibly HDMI 2.0a?) is sorted out, they'll support it.
That puts 4K squarely in the "middle class" market, if you ask me, and if Apple TV doesn't support it, that means they aren't even targeting middle class. They are basically targeting poor people with an expensive luxury item that can run apps (half of which, like Netflix and Hulu, already run on most users' smart TVs). Their marketing strategy is borderline nonsensical.
Of course, some rich people are racing-car enthusiasts, or audiophiles, or whatever else—and it seems to be more common in the high-end, simply because more of the rich can afford to actually get these things when they want them. But that doesn't mean that the desire is a rich-people thing, or that making something super-duper-high-numbered will make it sell more to the rich.
(Of course, if you give the thing a super-duper-high-numbered price tag, you might inspire some rich people to get it as a Veblen good, which can often look like a desire for the bleeding-edge. You'll frequently find things purchased in this way being underutilized—4K "Veblen TVs" purchased in order to watch 480p Seinfeld re-runs and so on.)
You can buy a 50 inch 4K TV nowadays for under $1,000. 4K is going to explode in the next year or two, and if the new Apple TV doesn't support it, I won't be buying it. Period.
They are going to miss the boat if 4k explodes this black friday.
At which time they will no doubt support it. Right now it'd be an extra expense of use to very few users, and they'd have to deal with the connectivity problem.
Is that brief standing-too-close moment worth the massive increase in bandwidth required?
The only reason you can't tell the difference is because you are probably watching 1080p content that is being upscaled.
Watch TRUE 4K content on a 65+ inch television, and it's like looking through window. It's amazing.
4K TV's aren't going to "explode", they are going to continue to be a slow trickle.
http://www.rethinkresearch.biz/articles/15-years-after-launc...
Similar as pushing 2k/4k screens to mobile phones - marketing and sales.
Source: http://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/4k-ultra-hd-uhd-vs-1080p-full...
>60" TVs are a thing, but they're a serious niche, especially outside the U.S., where homes tend to be smaller. Apple would simply be adding cost to work for the tiny amount of the market who both want a really huge TV, and happen to have gotten a 4k one, and they'd probably have to release a hardware revision or so anyway in a year or so she the connectivity issues around 4k resolve themselves.
I mean, aren't they are supposed to be releasing cutting edge technology here? Why are they releasing a set top Apple TV that can't even display the content that the new iPhone and iPad can CREATE and edit?
I want to be able to record 4K videos on my iPhone, then turn around and play them on my 4K TV, without having to leave the Apple ecosystem.
It is a huge, glaring flaw in their ecosystem if I can't do that.
I'm not saying this a valid excuse for omitting 4K support. However, for the most part I don't think the infrastructure is really there for the wider population. I live out in the sticks and barely get 3Mbps.
Perhaps we might see 4K come to the Apple TV next year either as a software upgrade on current hardware or with better GPU/CPU to support it.
Probably a chicken and egg problem, why upgrade to fibre many people will think when you have no need for it apart from slightly faster large file downloads
That said, 25Mb/s is at the lower end of the FTTC service. I can imagine a lot of households will max out at around 40Mbps due to distance from the cabinet and cross-talk on busy lines (though vectoring should help somewhat). I would like to see what G.FAST can deliver but unshielded copper phone lines can only take you so far.
Simple step by step tutorial allows you to load Kodi from FireTV through any app icon.
It is. That's exactly how Apple revolutionizes anything - by making it fun, and natural, to use. Just like tablets, mp3 players, and smartphones existed before Apple got into them.
This is what they do, it's what they always do, and yet people are surprised by it every time.
What they didn't look at was how great the UI was, how well it integrated with their Mac (and eventually PC) and how much better the same features that already existed elsewhere were.
I believe the same rules apply here. And the app store will be the best in town. Again.
The fact that most of HN seems to hate or deride these features (like the Live Photos thing) tells me that they'll likely be a huge success and all be using them in a year.
If the fact that gifv videos are already everywhere (Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, Vine-sorta-kinda) didn't tip you off. It seems like people are starting to think of short, usually-silent, looped videos as just what you take to preserve a moment, instead of a photo.
Tech-savvy crowds are often the worst arbiters of taste, certainly the worst predictors of it.
Form and function are one.
I mean, you said it's identical...
I was really hoping to hear about a deal with ESPN to bring ESPN directly to viewers without a cable subscription.
If they ever offered an individual subscriber deal they sure as hell wouldn't do it for $6.50 per sub per month.
That's always kind of been Apple's thing, though. The controller does look somewhat original.
> What happened to Apple revolutionizing the way people pay for/consume content?
I suspect that the content providers looked carefully at what happened to the music industry when they played ball with Apple (especially the unilateral killing of DRM on iTunes; the last holdouts were supposedly told to drop the DRM or be kicked off) and decide that they don't want any of that, thank you very much.
https://github.com/iBaa/PlexConnect
https://www.google.com/nexus/player/
I did try out the Plex app that runs on the Amazon Fire box (Android), but it was slow and didn't feel very nice. Not sure if that's because it's a different, less-optimized codebase, or the Fire is just underpowered.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if someone was able to use the SDK to write a XBMC-like app.
You can license movies from creators in ways other than the general release, and I have worked with content obtained this way in auditorium film screenings. You definitely wouldn't use an Apple TV for that, though, you use high-end rackmount DVD/Blu-Ray players, HDCP media servers, or specialized cue playback software so that the audience doesn't see you fumbling with controls - they're on a dedicated interface. Granted there are scenarios other than public exhibition, but if it's for consumption in your living room then it's pretty much by definition general release.
Apple is one of the first movers in killing physical media. At this point I don't think you can even buy a Mac with a built-in DVD drive; facilitating playback of ripped DVDs would be pretty low on the priority list.
Closest thing I can anticipate would be a way to play videos from your Photos library - intended for the ones you shot on your iPhone. It would probably be possible to import an unencumbered video file there, and stream it across your house with Home Sharing, which has been built into the iLife suite for a few years.
Yeah, you still can. But probably for not much longer. Your overall point is quite valid. http://www.apple.com/macbook-pro/specs/
If Apple doesn't allow this, I'm not buying an Apple TV.
Uhm what? I know the studios are doing their best, but fortunetly non-DRMed video isn't illegal yet. Ripping your own dvd, recording from tv, public domain or cc licensed footage, buying from independent distributors or the authors themselves, video blogs, conference recordings and learning material etc.
Tell me with a straight face that Apple gives a shit about DVDs.
>recording from tv
Fumbling around with capture cards is roughly the opposite of the Apple TV's ethos.
>public domain or cc licensed footage, public domain or cc licensed footage, buying from independent distributors or the authors themselves, video blogs, buying learning material etc.
Vimeo is already a pretty polished UX for most of the independent film use cases. Offline is a concern on mobile devices but not really relevant to the Apple TV.
Also, let's be realistic here, people aren't watching public domain content on their couches day in and day out, they're watching big-name TV shows.
If I got videos from a kickstarter?
If I make videos myself and want to show them to friends?
Are stand up comedy fans, kickstarterers, and film creators not part of Apple's target market?
They are, but only if they buy/sell on iTunes.
Someone correct me if this is no longer true, or if I misunderstood it from the DeCSS days.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10193415
the limitations aren't technical, they are overzealous UX and business limitations.
Apple TV has a difference audience, than XBMC and PLEX, which I doubt will manage to get. All in all it's not a very successful product so far, we'll see now.
Watching subtitled video is the main reason I have a Mac Mini plugged into my TV.
Plus the fact that some content is not readily available in my country, plus the fact that I must change format for huge load of media makes the entire thing a deal breaker.
I won't even start mentioning what XBMC can do that AppleTV can not because it's embarrassing.
I guess it depends on your definition of "successful". Apple TV has sold over 25 million units. http://recode.net/2015/01/27/apple-tv-hasnt-changed-in-years...
Natively the Apple TV (currently, don't know the new model) supports H.264, MPEG4, and MJPEG - all of which are trivially supported by actual chipsets.
Matroska/Ogg/Avi aren't as well supported (or well used, tbh.. other than Avi which is a container anyhow)
[1]: http://www.inmethod.com/airvideohd/index.html
1. I can’t search across both Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, instead I have to search both one after the other.
2. I like how you can ask Siri “what was that?” or “what did they say?”. I’ve been watching House of Cards and found myself asking that question quite a bit. On Fire TV, this involves rewinding, turning on subtitles, catching the missing text and at last turning subtitles back off again. Such a chore! I really like how Apple solved this problem. I have yet to see a similar feature in Fire TV.
Regardless, the new TV just bought has netflix etc. and controls stereo cia CEC. Stereo supports airplay, so I expect in future my bar to buying another box is very high. Asking Siri does sound convenient, but not sure worth it to have yet anoyher device to deal with. Wife is exceedingly happy to have one remote that "just works" compared to the mishmash of deviced I had prior to buying new stereo and "smart" tv that support CEC.
That was a pretty clever idea by Nintendo.
EDIT: I've worked a bunch with bluetooth on iOS and I'm not super confident in it. IR anyday for me.
At work we have a bunch of apple tvs hooked up to presentation tvs/projectors and we all just use the hdmi cable to the screen directly. I do not trust Apple to have their wireless issues sorted out this time.
I'm not sure about others but I hate using my phone as a remote: grabbing it, unlocking it, launching the remote app. And then having to think about its battery level (especially if using AirPlay). It's nice when you're in a tight spot (have to enter a sensitive password in front of friends, need to AirPlay a quick video), but a phone is horrible as a general purpose remote.
The physical audience was muted and Eddie Cue took the piss immediately afterwards.
edit: While everyone here seems to disagree, many indie devs have been waiting for this for a while. It will essentially be the biggest indie console market. Ouya was unproven hardware and lackluster adoption. Innovation wise, sure, there's nothing new here in hardware nor software. But in terms of form factor, dev kits, and market, this will be very different.
Not really. The Wii has had this stuff for a long time, and for a more direct comparison, so has the Roku 3. Neither has changed the world, and while Apple has a greater chance of doing so, success is far from assured.
In any case, it wasn't what I was referring to. I'm referring to the idea of bringing the iOS marketplace to the big screen. It's the most adopted marketplace of both users and developers and while there isn't much to show for it now on the Apple TV I think time will bring many options of entertainment.
Does it really? I think the failure of greatly hyped consoles like the Ooya have demonstrated that there isn't actually much of a market for this. Hardcore gamers already have fully-powered systems. Casual gamers don't care about playing on their TV.
I'm looking forward to getting my phone back.
Apple TV brings a different form factor to a marketplace that is already successful, just like the iPad did to the iPhone.
Is that really true though? Seems like an under serviced market to me.
Wii Sports says otherwise.
All the fun things are on PC, not because of hardware, but because of openness of the ecosystem. You just cannot innovate in the self censorship environment of a walled garden.
I've got a Chromecast and it works fine, for the streams it supports. But does AppleTV content justify the extra cost?
I've got the previous version of Apple TV and a Chromecast. Long story short, I use both devices exactly the same. The only differences really is how I communicate with each device - remote control for Apple TV vs phone/computer for Chromecast. The Apple TV does do streaming much smoother than casting from Chrome, and of course you can use any window, not just a website.
I think like most things though, it depends on the person. I'm a medical student, so it's not like I have free time to kill playing games on a new platform or discovering new shows.
Of course, the apps and games on the new Apple TV change the game entirely... if any of that interests you.
(The framerate drops occur when navigating the interface, not when viewing content.)
The nexus player is on par with the apple tv/maybe a bit better and is half the cost of the apple tv.
Not to mention hooking my television up to the internet means I'll be getting ads from the software (Hulu, broadcast commercials) AND the hardware. No thanks.
The TV works much better as a dumb TV, so I just use a Chromecast and Blu Ray player instead. When those get too dated, they'll be cheap enough to replace.
My coworker uses a Roku despite the Plex app on his tv, apparently that's pretty clunky.
This is especially true if the gaming aspect takes off; a 150$ box that is refreshed every year or so looks more attractive than something built into your 600$ TV that is supposed to be replaced every 15 years.
Pundits are out in force suggesting that the new Apple TV is going to somehow put traditional game consoles out of business, but this is a fundamental misunderstanding of the traditional console market and the difference between console games and casual gamers.
The iPhone and iPad has massively grown the casual gaming market, bringing whole new demographics into gaming, and it has disrupted the handheld gaming market, but it has not done so at the expense of console gaming. The core defining characteristic of casual gamers is the ability to get into, and out of a game quickly. They consume games in small bitesize pieces, waiting in line, in downtime between other activities, not in multi-hour binges. Being mobile helps this mode of consumption, because your mood for gaming can arise in many circumstances, and you can instantly satiate it on your mobile phone, without having to arrange TV time or disturb someone else.
By contrast, TV console gaming has a high transaction cost. You have to travel to your living room, turn on the TV, find the controllers, boot up the game, make sure no one else wants to use the TV for other purposes, etc. Moreover, console games are designed more as a TV experience, for someone to play 30, 60, 120, even 240 minutes at a time.
The new Apple TV, from it's leaked specs, is essentially a casual gaming machine hooked up to a TV. This might spell trouble for the Nintendo Wii, but Sony and Microsoft?
The Apple HW is no where close to current generation console level specs, and anyone creating content for it will be faced with casual gamer price expectations. How many publishers will want to spend tens of millions of dollars on triple-A titles and sell them in the app store? That would be like Marvel selling their next movie for 99 cents. Is EA going to put out a $1.99 version of StarWars Battlefront? They're not going to get console ports or exclusives of current games until they've exhausted the markets on other platforms.
So, without content to draw the people who want a 2 hour immersive gaming experience, they won't get console gamers. But what of casual gamers?
How many people will exchange the convenience of playing Angry Birds on their phone with playing it on their TV? My guess is, people have moved on from wanting to sit in front of their TV and that casual gamers are mostly mobile gamers.
I don't think this product fits either market very well, and the primary use case of it will remain video streaming, of which is is much more expensive (and less capable, no 4k streaming) than cheaper streamers already on the market.
There's a lot of potential for midrange semi-casual console oriented games like Rocket League or Starwhal here, and realistically, a surprising number of consoles are used mostly for that type of game.
I think there's also some long-term potential to hit the triple-A market, particularly if the console vendors keep up their current ~7 year refresh cycle. This is obviously a lot less powerful than current-gen consoles, it triple-As are still big sellers for last-gen consoles, and the gap will close as Apple refreshes this every year or so. It's far cheaper than a console, and also smaller and presumably silent. I think it'll find a place.
Sure, some games work well on the interface. But those games are exactly the games I don't want on a TV. Do I really want to play Papers Please on a TV with a tiny touch pad controller remote as opposed to on my lap?
This is too much of a compromise system that sucks at both ends of the spectrum. It's not as good as the iPad for touch games, and it's not as good at consoles at FPS, Strategy, Fighters, etc.
Are people really looking for a niche console inbetween?
There are plenty of iOS compatible controllers already available which presumably will work with this out of the box.
I see this as being potentially huge for people who want to play some console-y games but don't want to spend 400$ On a large noisy box. Also, it could potentially be big for indie devs who want to write console-y games; the current consoles are still not terribly indie-friendly, and in practice most popular indie console games started life as PC games.
This post cord-cutting TV world is pretty awful. I don't want to have to download an app for every video provider, if they even have one for my platform at all.
They aren't. The idea is to get you using one and then make money from that usage.
Until you can ask Siri to buy you laundry detergent in your next subscribe-and-save order, Amazon wants to own whatever you use instead of Siri.
Smartphones have already stolen away the casual gamer. The people playing call of duty and final fantasy are not the people who will be wowed by the apple TV.
If you look at sales data for the Wii, there is a ton of people who bought a Wii, which game with Wii sport and then bought very few games. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_Wii_video...)
This will simply solidify that casual market into iPhone and Android apps. Consoles have nothing to fear IMO.
The old PS2 GTA titles had to be remastered for the iPhone and run fine on an iPhone 4.
I for one am sick of slow level loading and endless patches; every time I play on a console I want to throw something through the screen. And I've yet to see a single compelling PS4/XB1 title come out (I have high hopes for No Man's Sky).
For triple-A studios, the current-gen console hardware will likely always be a draw, though I'm sure this will get rereleases of old stuff, and possibly a downgraded version of new games (I suspect it isn't _that_ far from a Wii U, performance-wise).