Apple TV: 5 reasons to dump your Cable and DVDs

Monday, Jan. 15 2007 | Author: Griffith

In Apple Gazette, one of our sister blogs, editor Michael has just posted an interesting article explaining why he plans on dumping his cable TV service and choosing an Apple TV instead. Here are the five reasons in short:

Buying Your TV - By dumping cable, and switching to ï£¿tv, youâre essentially going from renting to owning your television (…) at the end of every month what do you have for your $50 to $100 cable bill?NothingâŠthatâs what.

Take it anywhere - Another advantage of buying from iTunes and watching on your Television is that your show will also work on your computer (any computer in your house) AND your iPod.

No more DVDs - I donât know about you, but my DVD collection is getting out of control. I have so many movies and tv shows that I donât know what to do with them.

No More double buying - If youâre paying your cable bill, and youâre buying your favorite shows on DVD, then youâre double buying. Youâre dropping $35 - $60 bucks on your favorite shows so you can keep them, when you should be able to keep them from the startâŠand letâs not even get into the fact that you canât rip those DVDs and put them on your iPod without breaking the law and taking waayyy too much time out of your life.

Watch when you want - Just like with a DVR, you can watch your television programming whenever the hell you wantâŠas it should be.

All in all, he seems to have really good points, however, I’m not entirely sure if his plan would work as well outside of the States. If Apple hurried up a little, and started getting programs from localized channels on the iTunes store, I think that the Apple TV could become very popular.

In my country, as an example, Soap Operas are terribly popular, and I know for certain that if I tried approaching one of the viewers about a television without her or his favorite show he would quickly neglect it. But if you live in the US, I think that it’s certainly something worth considering.

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2 Responses for "Apple TV: 5 reasons to dump your Cable and DVDs"

hap

January 18th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
1

Those are some good points until you realize that you don’t really own much of anything thanks to DRM. You do with the content you “own” what Apple says you do with it…nothing more. Like with music, the best plan may be to rip content into iTunes if you like the hardware and software (what’s not to like).
geologista

January 30th, 2007 at 5:58 pm
2

i have to disagree with the 5 reasons to get the apple tv.

1. your movie selection is limited (Disney and Paramount???). what about non-hollywood crap save the world. i have quite a number of dvd from europe that i like to see
2. what about subtitles (burn 1 subtitle with the dvd? and that’s it). maybe I like to have spanish or whatever subtitles or not. maybe my mom comes over and she speaks polish only, and then i put my polish subs on.
3. how aboout true HD vs “almost” HD content… at the moment my DVD have better image than AppleTV. So I need to buy the Apple TV and keep my DVD. I want to get rid of all the stuff around the TV not to pile on. At least they could have added a slot DVD player on.
4. What about tunner capabilities. Maybe I want to keep my cable and record stuff from it, edit it, abd burn it. Check out this link: http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=438. It has been on the market for a while. It has a DVD player built in. You can record from the TV. I don’t like the interface and it does not work with a Mac but it is far more revolutionary than the Apple TV. Yes, they do have a “n” version out w/o the DVD player in. They are working on it. If they make it for Mac, I am in for it not Apple TV.
5. What exactly do you own. A copy on your machine and 4 other. What if you loose the downoaded copy? As far Apple is concerned, buy another one from them. I better buy my dvd and rip it. I can put it on my 10 machines and 5 ipods at home if I want to. I had an iPod for 3 yrs or so now. And i bought 1 ebook from itunes. how many movies do you envision I will buy from them and $10+/piece. I better get the DVD for 15.
6. Why would I want to keep all my stuff in iTunes. With front row I can keep them separately, and run them (dvd, movies ripped or not, photos, and itunes music) under the front row UI. I think the Apple TV version is a more restrictive front row UI that will limit you ability to stream stuff so they can charge you an arm and a leg on itunes.

And the list can go on for a while. I guess I will stop here as 6 seems to be a magic number. So don’t dump your cable just yet. I will not buy an Apple TV. I better look for some extra cash and get me a second mini for living room. It will do the job for now (play dvd, hook up external drives to it and play all my stuff from it), record tv, internet conection, etc… All on my LCD. By the way, I have a 1Tb attached to my mini, and it works fine. 1Tb!!! That is 25x the apple tv hd for about $100 more. And I can add on more. And if the tech gets old, i can still use it as a mini server. a mini is still a fully fledged computer, and it will do fine for most basic home usage (internet, excel, word, email).