Apple TV failure due to it’s limited video format support
October 17, 2007
The Apple TV has been a bust for several reasons. The Apple TV is fettered to the embarrassingly anemic and expensive library of third-rate movies available in the iTunes Store. Enter the iPod.
“People already had huge amounts of music when the iPod came along,” said Jorge Gonzalez, editor of Zeropaid, a news website devoted to file sharing. The Apple TV could have been in a similar situation with modern file-sharing technologies like BitTorrent and Usenet, but it’s designed to play video encoded only in H.264 and protected H.264 (the locked format used by the iTunes Store).
These limited video formats aren’t commonly found on the file-sharing networks. One of the main hacker forums, AwkwardTV, makes it clear it does not advocate using Apple TV to watch pirated content.
“The problem is that iTunes on Windows is just terrible for watching videos,” said Lowell Heddings, an enthusiastic video consumer. It’s super easy to acquire almost any video content, from popular Korean soap operas to obscure science documentaries.
“There’s been an explosion recently of TV shows and movies online,” says Gonzalez. Mostly mainstream network shows.”
Public trackers like The Pirate Bay and Mininova appeal to beginner and intermediate file-sharers, says Gonzalez, but advanced users might login to dozens of private trackers, often dedicated to particular categories of video content: movies, TV series, documentaries, independent films.
“I can download virtually any episode of virtually any TV show that I want. If Apple made it easy for Apple TV owners to tap this incredible and almost limitless on-demand library, the device would likely catch on and become a staple of geek living rooms everywhere. Until then, Apple TV will be relegated to the same small scrap heap that holds the Power Mac G4 Cube and Apple’s other failures.
Via Wired
Related Posts
Comments
Got something to say?
You must be logged in to post a comment.
