Engadget’s AppleTV Review says “don’t buy for HD”

Robert: Didn’t say that.
If you ask apple, they say it requires a HDTV, or widescreen. Either way it won’t work on all Standard TVs. Your TV has to have component inputs and if you care about the aspect ratio the TV, it has to have a widescreen mode.

I am saying it should have included a S-Video or composite output and a 4×3 mode, considering how poorly it supports HD video, especially considering that Apple doesn’t have any HD content on the iTunes music store.

Ben: the marketing deal is that people who have HD TVs are far far more likely to buy an Apple TV than people like my dad who have a 20-year-old TV set and are perfectly happy with it.

But, yeah, I think Apple’s blowing a chance to really take ownership of the HD space. They should have shipped a ton of HD content, or at minimum, wide-screen content, into ITunes the day that Apple TV shipped.

“Goebbels: I already have the HD camcorder, the expensive computer, and might be able to handle the additional workflow.”

Which is what I said. And you still haven’t pulled it together. Someday “maybe”… Great!

“I guess you would suggest waiting for everyone else to try it out first then jump in, right?”

No. I simply would not claim there is a driving force for video podcasters to do so.

“Let Rocketboom take all the marketshare and then try to compete later on.”

And this is the absurdity: losts marketshare to one podcast with its own niche market. How does anyone with a different audience lose audience to Rocketboom?

Video Podcasting is such a nascent, niche, and inbred market… people aren’t going to abandon a single pdocast for lack of HD.

“Do you do business consulting?”

Yeah, I had this great idea once about having Elton John design an iPod clone in under 3 months… and 4 years later: Zune! That one netted me more than $1,000 an hour.

Heheh. If I were a consultant getting $1,000 an hour maybe Microsoft would have listened to me. Instead they fell back on “wait a year, copy the iPod, and add a few features to it while not quite getting the whole wheel thing.” Boring!

Rocketboom is a metaphor. There are others in this space. Ask a Ninja, if you will.

I never said “driving force.” I said “putting pressure on.” Hardly the same.

Driving force is a cat 5 hurricane. Pressure is like what you feel on your feet when you stand up.

“Rocketboom is a metaphor. There are others in this space. Ask a Ninja, if you will.”

Help, a metaphor is stealing my marketshare! What the hell does this mean? RocketBoom having HD support prior to AppleTV is your only anecdotal evidence that the AppleTV applies pressure to adopt HD. What does a metphor have to do with anything?

“I never said “driving force.” I said “putting pressure on.” Hardly the same.”

To me, they are, but fine, I’m still asking to see this pressure?

“Pressure is like what you feel on your feet when you stand up.”

Ha, ha, ha!! As in, nothing is new. Or was your ass glued to the couch before the AppleTV came out.

People should invest in HD because I got some email, RocketBoom is a metphor, and I can stand on my feet!

Goebbels: you are sounding a lot like someone who wanted to buy an HD set but was rejected by Best Buy’s credit department. Sorry about that.

And, again, this is your arguement? A lame insult. Fine.

I’m an Apple fan, I’m an HD fan. I support the AppleTV. I think video podcasts are 99% stupid, but encourage the market for their true audience. I do not agree with you in respect for the demand for HD. I don’t agree that podcasts with crappy sound and talking heads deserve HD. I don’t think HD should be “wasted” on anything that doesn’t “utilize” the upgrade. I don’t agree with someone who claims AppleTV pressures the market to move to HD which is a huge investment when he himself was given those resources and has been talking about it for months but has, himself, been unable to make the step. You cannot intelligently respond to that, but you accuse me of being insulting and solely anti-Scoble.

>I’m an Apple fan, I’m an HD fan. I support the AppleTV.

Translation: I’m just here to pick on Scoble and make my pathetic life seem a little better.

>I think video podcasts are 99% stupid.

What, not enough Anna Nicole Smith for you?

>I don’t agree that podcasts with crappy sound and talking heads deserve HD.

It’s obvious you haven’t watched mine or Rocketboom’s lately, if that’s all you think we’re doing.

>I don’t think HD should be “wasted” on anything that doesn’t “utilize” the upgrade.

Neither do I. Which is why I wouldn’t do EVERYTHING I do in HD.

>I don’t agree with someone who claims AppleTV pressures the market to move to HD

And, I’m feeling pressure to move to HD. You don’t live in my shoes. So, the fact that you’re speaking for me makes me think you’re just here for a fight. Which you are. Consistently.

>which is a huge investment

It’s not a huge investment. It’s one that needs to be considered against other opportunities. For instance, i just got an email asking for transcripts. Those probably are more important. That doesn’t mean that doing HD is not being asked for, though.

>when he himself was given those resources and has been talking about it for months but has, himself, been unable to make the step.

I don’t yet have the bandwidth resources, and I just recently got an editor who is catching up on my backlog and doing some creative stuff and wants to try other stuff too, like HD.

>you accuse me of being insulting and solely anti-Scoble

If the shoe fits…

>I’m an Apple fan, I’m an HD fan. I support the AppleTV.

Translation: I’m just here to pick on Scoble and make my pathetic life seem a little better.

>I think video podcasts are 99% stupid.

What, not enough Anna Nicole Smith for you?

>I don’t agree that podcasts with crappy sound and talking heads deserve HD.

It’s obvious you haven’t watched mine or Rocketboom’s lately, if that’s all you think we’re doing.

>I don’t think HD should be “wasted” on anything that doesn’t “utilize” the upgrade.

Neither do I. Which is why I wouldn’t do EVERYTHING I do in HD.

>I don’t agree with someone who claims AppleTV pressures the market to move to HD

And, I’m feeling pressure to move to HD. You don’t live in my shoes. So, the fact that you’re speaking for me makes me think you’re just here for a fight. Which you are. Consistently.

>which is a huge investment

It’s not a huge investment. It’s one that needs to be considered against other opportunities. For instance, i just got an email asking for transcripts. Those probably are more important. That doesn’t mean that doing HD is not being asked for, though.

>when he himself was given those resources and has been talking about it for months but has, himself, been unable to make the step.

I don’t yet have the bandwidth resources, and I just recently got an editor who is catching up on my backlog and doing some creative stuff and wants to try other stuff too, like HD.

>you accuse me of being insulting and solely anti-Scoble

If the shoe fits…

>I judge a market based on what the market can be perceived to be.

Translation: I judge it to be the opposite of whatever Scoble says it to be.

For instance, here’s the kind of thing I’d love to deliver in HD: http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1431/get-a-tour-of-franck-muller-famous-swiss-watch-maker

“Translation: I’m just here to pick on Scoble and make my pathetic life seem a little better.”

More insults.

“What, not enough Anna Nicole Smith for you?”

What does this mean? I guess it’s another insult because you know I watch E!TV all day for Anna updates, huh? Whatever…

“It’s obvious you haven’t watched mine or Rocketboom’s lately, if that’s all you think we’re doing.”

Rocketboom is different, but still rather pathetic. Not compelling. And you? You’re kidding, right? I’ve seen you and that is a kind description for you. Even if you are wandering someone’s company or showing a screen occassionally.

“And, I’m feeling pressure to move to HD. You don’t live in my shoes. So, the fact that you’re speaking for me makes me think you’re just here for a fight. Which you are. Consistently.”

No, I’ve agreed that your an HD geek who wants it and put pressure on himself by hyping it and can’t figure it out. Where I question you is the pressure on the whole market of video podcasters.

“It’s not a huge investment.”

Ha, ha, ha! Price me the cheapest end-to-end HD solution you think you can. I want to see what you think is affordable for a market of folks who half the time are using a

[weird cut-off]

…a

Who cares.

The Apple TV scores an ace with me for two reasons:

1 – Video Podcasts. I can sit back and watch them.
2 – The kids. I bought entire seasons of Spongebob Squarepants and Dora the Explorer. The kids are ecstatic and spousal approval is through the roof. Also, just having the kids watch photos and dance to music.

Yes, I could do this (excluding the “buy a season of a kids show”) with Media Center, but Media Center ain’t in the rec room and I refuse to buy another Xbox 360 to get it there, let alone force my wife to boot the Xbox; select Media Center; Wait; run through difficult UI, just to get to an episode of Dora.

Apple TV completely wins in this space.

I agree with Steve. I found the AppleTV to be so easy to use that it enables the exploration of new forms of content in the living room. I believe that it will bring video podcasting to a whole new and much larger audience.

Audio podcast content has completely changed the way I consume media. I have so much great podcast content that I rarely have time to listen to the stuff that I love. I listen to it when ever I can. The same thing will happen with video podcasting.

With AppleTV in the livingroom, I simply wont have time to watch broadcast television any more because I will be busy watching great podcast content.

I think that this will have a tremendously positive effect on our society … http://podslug.com/blog/?p=90

Point is that Apple – or Sony or MS – still have time to own the HD space. It’s early days yet. I presume there were/are a lot of engineering compromises on the ATV to hit the price spot they were targeting, and I doubt it could consistently render all H264 HD content without stuttering or over-heating, given that it causes the fans to start going at full speed on a Mac Mini.

More to the point, I doubt anyone can currently hit that price point without it also being subsidised by a content sales model like the PS3 or XBox.

Apple’s focus is always on doing ‘less’ well – ‘it just works’ and all that.

As for ‘fuzziness’ . . . I’ve always found Apple’s DVD software player to be fuzzy compared to Quicktime. Perhaps there’s some issue with their scaling routines that causes output to become blurry at certain resolutions?

The other question is whether Apple will ‘upgrade’ the ATV to support some of the services people are hacking in – i.e. Joost. I can understand why they won’t do Div-X (name the amount of legitimate content in Div-X format) but I can see the value in supporting other on-line video models. (Lest we forget, Jobs is also CEO at Disney, so he’s also – in another role – pushing the ABC player model).

@10. Where did Mr. Markman say you were his favorite video blogger?

“My inbox. More than 20 emails received so far. That’s enough for me to get interested in providing higher resolutions.”

20 emails from within your relatively small demographic and you that leads you to draw a conclusion? Sheesh. With that type of market research, no wonder Microsoft never listened to you.

You guys all have to chill a little … get outside – you know, fresh air – a walk in the park or along the beach.

(love one another …)

>cause I just can’t deal with the file sizes and, mostly, compression times

Ahhh, so there is going to be a use for multi-core processors after all

>Ahhh, so there is going to be a use for multi-core processors after all
No, we need them to run the multiple embedded Flash scripts in your typical mySpace page!

“The Apple TV is definitely putting pressure on videobloggers to deliver a higher resolution version of our shows, which will prove troubling to deliver for a variety of reasons (I record my shows on tape in HD, which looks glorious, but don’t currently capture those tapes into the Mac in a high res format cause I just can’t deal with the file sizes and, mostly, compression times).”

———

I disagree. Video bloggers have no need to release HD video or even SD (i.e. 640×480) video. YouTube has shown that people will gladly watch horrible 320×240 video. Nobody expects HD or SD video in a video blog. Users want something that downloads quickly, not HD or SD video. They’ll play the video at full-screen and live with the resultant blur. (Of course, you can’t do that with YouTube; I assume that’s because Flash is horrible at scaling, so it’s disallowed altogether.)

Note: The above doesn’t apply to situations where video quality is of great importance (like movie or video game trailers); but it does apply to the vast majority of video blogs and stuff like channel9.

“Everything about you is always an anti-Scoble rant. It clouds your vision.”

“Umm, no. I presented rational, real reasons. You are largely trying to just dismiss me. Boo hoo.”

————

Goebbels, you can disagree with Scoble without being disagreeable.

The worst thing about the internet is the drastic decrease in simple politeness. Everyone is free to flame, so they do. They say things that they’d never say in person.

Brit,

I had my mac mini in my living room with a video out to my TV … I wanted to be able to watch zefrank and other great video podcast content there. The poor quality made it hard to enjoy … I assume that most people who are watching video podcasts on their TVs are saying the same thing … no?

I don’t think it has to be HD quality … I would be happy with VHS quality … but it needs to improve in my view.

Erik