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Can Apple TV replace cable?

With the announcement of the new Apple TV comes a new wave of questions from the media asking if cable TV can be replaced by internet video. So I decided to do the math. I’m also in a certain time in life where I’m having to make this decision for myself, so it seems like a good time to discuss this issue.

I’m sure you don’t care about my personal life, so I’ll be vague: I need to cut my monthly budget back by a lot. I’ve been looking at where all of my money goes, and one easy way to cut spending is by canceling my cable service (which is approximately $49 per month with an HD DVR). Obviously this would mean I would have to cut my television entertainment back to what is available online. I’ve lived this way before, so I’m OK with that, but I still want to watch shows on my 50-inch TV. I’m already using my PS3 to stream Netflix video, but there are other shows I enjoy watching that aren’t available on Netflix.

Just for fun I wanted to find out how much I pay my cable provider for each show I watch. I was interested to see if paying for cable was a cost effective way to enjoy these programs. Results will vary, but I am paying about $0.53 for each program.

Would you pay $0.50 to stream a TV program online?

If you had to consciously consider how much each program actually costs, would you spend that money? Apple is betting on it with their new renting structure. Of course Apple is charging $0.99 for each program, (and now Amazon is charging that much as well).

Now, some of these shows are available free from Hulu, or the broadcasters’ website. Apple TV doesn’t allow streaming from those sources – unlike competing boxes such as Roku and Boxee. But even if I removed those free programs from my calculations, I’m still paying a comparable amount for renting TV programs.

Is streaming video cost effective?

Some of you use torrents, or other unofficial free websites to obtain video, and those certainly are cheaper (the Federal government picks up the tab), but for the rest of us, it really depends on how much TV you watch.

I might watch upwards of 90 TV programs every month, and if I had to pay for each one of those, I would certainly find cable to be cheaper. Cable also provides television like EPSN, Fox Sports, NBC Sports, ABC Sports, CBS Sports, American Idol, America’s Got Talent, news, and more. If I cancel my cable will I miss out on Project Runaway, Rubicon, The Walking Dead, and Breaking Bad?

I guess the coming years will have a lot of people asking themselves all of these questions, and we’ll have to consider every entertainment program as a consumer purchase. I’m sure in the future the cable companies might use their high-tech fiber optic lines to also provide every program on demand. And I hope they only charge $0.50 per program.

Apple still trailing competition with new Apple TV

Apple has a unique position in the marketplace. Because they are so popular for introducing game-changing products, when they don’t meet this goal it is seen as a failure. Steve Jobs is cursed with his success; he can never do anything mediocre.

And that’s exactly what the newly unveiled Apple TV is – mediocre.

The Apple TV wasn’t very popular compared to their other products. It was mainly ignored by popular culture, who swooned over the MacBooks, iPods, iPhones, and iPads. It was loved by those who did have it, but it was mostly the dedicated Apple users who actually looked that way.

This new Apple TV has shrunk in size, lost the hard drive (and the ability to purchase movies), and added a bunch of social media features – including Flickr and Mobile Me. Also new is the inclusion of Netflix and YouTube. This is interesting because Apple clearly understands the market dominance of those two services, and their product could not compete without them.

Apple decided to go another route with this box by removing the hard drive. Movies are not downloaded and stored anymore. It can stream movies on your computer through iTunes, but it won’t download to the box. The iTunes store will provide movies day-and-date with DVD (so they claim) for $4.99 – cheaper for library titles – and TV programs at $0.99 each. Everything will be available in HD where the original is in HD, and all movies will be in HD. (Apple claims 480p is HD, so we’ll keep an eye out on this.)

The best new feature is AirPlay, which streams from an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch directly to the TV – a cool feature for those who have one of these devices.

The pre-sales are already available, and the product will begin shipping in 4 weeks. The best part is the Apple TV is now priced just $99, making it the most affordable Apple product that isn’t an accessory or the iPod Shuffle.

So why is it mediocre?

Well, because most people aren’t entirely sold on the whole-home Apple experience, so we don’t have Time Vaults, iMacs, AirPorts, etc as our entire home environment. While some people might like the ability to just enter their iTunes account information and get going, most of us don’t care if we get content from Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or whatever else there is out there. There are many devices already available on the market that offer the same features for less money, and soon we’ll have some with even more features at comparable costs. Also, most new HDTVs include all of these features without requiring a separate box.

Roku has had their Roku HD player on the market for over a year, and it now sells for $69 (SD version is $59). It provides Amazon Video On Demand, Netflix, Facebook, and many other features. Unless you care about buying through iTunes, or streaming from an iPhone, the Apple TV doesn’t quite compare.

Most new Blu-ray Disc players and many new audio/video receivers include these features standard.

Soon there will be products with Boxee or Google TV which also include all of these features, plus other features (like Hulu, and searching live TV).

The fact that most new HDTVs come with these features is also another reason why a separate box will have to offer something even more compelling. TVs from Vizio, LG, Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, and many more all include Netflix, Amazon Video On Demand, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and much more.

Even more, many of these new products are controllable from an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.

This version of the Apple TV just seems like playing catch up for Apple. It doesn’t offer anything new (besides AirPlay), and it’s not innovative. I guess this is why Jobs called it “One more thing hobby.” It’s something an Apple fan would like to add to their home, but it’s not where Apple is focusing a lot of attention.

The Boxee box or Google TV?

You should be familiar with both Boxee Box and Google TV by now. If you are not, click both links and inform yourself.

Basically, they both offer a single graphical user interface (GUI) to search the internet for streaming video content. They both have additional features, and some that do not overlap, but that is the driving feature for both. They are both priced under $200.

The Boxee Box is built by D-Link, and comes with the Boxee freeware installed. It was supposed to be available now, but the release has been moved back to November. Boxee is unique as it also integrates social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google Buzz.




Google TV doesn’t have a whole lot of information available yet, but there will be both set-top boxes and integrated TVs. Logitech will have the first Google TV box, and they will announce its availability this fall. It is built on an Android platform, so it also includes Android apps – though I wouldn’t necessarily blame certain manufacturers from disabling this feature. The killer feature Google TV provides is the ability to connect a cable or satellite DVR so the GUI will also index television programs. The first partner is Dish Network; this would connect to the DVR and allow Google searches for live programs, and programs stored on the DVR.




There are, of course, competing boxes on the market – and one could also convert any PC into a Boxee Box at will – but these two seem to be the most promising solutions coming down the pipe.

It seems at $200, the Boxee could conceivably replace your existing cable DVR, and you would be saving money on cable service in under 2 months. On the other hand, there is still live programming and certain television serials unavailable on the internet still, so the Google TV would be a great compliment to Dish Network.

My question for you is, which box would you like in your home entertainment system?

Netflix thinks you’re a pirate if you cancel

A friend of mine recently canceled his Netflix subscription because he didn’t use it much. While going through the motions to cancel his account, he was prompted with a customer exit survey, which is no surprise as Netflix is known for doing lots of surveys.

The most interesting part of the survey was the question on what the customer would now use as their primary source for TV episodes and Movies, after canceling Netflix. The top option presented to the survey participants is peer-to-peer and Bit Torrent sites! Screenshot below (red box outline added by me for highlighting).

With Bit Torrent being the number 1 option in their survey question, this leads me to wonder: Does Netflix suspect that the people canceling their subscriptions are pirates? It’s possible, or I could just be scrutinizing the survey question & answers a bit too much.

Either way, it’s nice to see that Netflix is not scared to ask the tough questions and evaluate their business properly. On the other hand, if people really are canceling their Netflix subscriptions in favor of obtaining content through piracy, I wonder if they’d answer the survey question truthfully anyway…

Thanks to Ben for sending this in.

Apple iTunes Movie Trailers claim 480p is “HD”

A friend of mine tweeted out a link to a movie trailer hosted on Apple’s website earlier today and I checked it out.

After clicking the link and getting to the Apple site, I noticed some different options for viewing the movie trailer. There were various options to watch the trailer as a stream online or via downloadable video files. As I looked over the menu, a big ugly flaw stuck out at me right away.

Here’s a cropped screenshot from the iTunes Movie Trailers website.

So what is the ugly flaw? It’s the “HD” (High Definition) symbol sitting alongside the 480p stream and 480p download video file.

Guess what Apple? 480p ain’t high definition, in no way, shape or form. And while Apple does offer some real HD download options (720p and 1080p video files), their glaring error of marking 480p as high definition is quite lame.

So get with the program Apple, 480p is not HD.

Hulu coming to Playstation 3

Earlier today, Hulu announced the subscription service Hulu Plus. Most of the information in the press release wasn’t news to readers of WesleyTech as we’ve reported on this news previously.

What is news is the revelation that Hulu will finally be available through other devices besides computers and laptops. Hulu will soon be available on the Sony Playstation 3, certain Samsung Blu-ray Disc players and TVs, and a Hulu app will be available to iPhones and iPads. Access will also be forthcoming on the Microsoft Xbox 360.

What is disappointing is Hulu Plus will still have ads. The service will cost $9.99 per month, and what it offers is access to complete seasons and bonus content unavailable to the fee-free service. It will also offer high-definition content for the first time ever from Hulu. Video will be available at up to 720p.

Are you interested in paying for additional Hulu content?

Why is Netflix ignoring Linux?

While Linux doesn’t have a terribly large percentage of the operating system market, with just over 1 percent, it simply doesn’t make any sense that Netflix doesn’t support the open platform. Jumping to the answer right up front: it’s Microsoft’s fault.

Netflix Watch Instantly uses the Microsoft Silverlight platform with Microsoft PlayReady DRM. This is fine for the majority of users who use Microsoft Windows, and Macintosh OS X. However, Microsoft Silverlight does not run on Linux platforms.

The full story is a bit more complicated than that, however.

There is a Linux project for Silverlight called Moonlight, which is developed by Novell. Microsoft even helps with the Moonlight development. So why doesn’t this work with Netflix? Well, Netflix uses the newest implementation of Silverlight, and Moonlight is a full version behind. Additionally, the query from Netflix checks the operating system for support and will not respond to a Linux query.

So why doesn’t Microsoft add support for Linux in Silverlight? That is a good question. They are working with Intel to provide a Silverlight platform for the Atom processor which is ported for Linux, but they are not looking to support the broader Linux community. That’s what Moonlight is for, they claim. Microsoft’s Brian Goldfarb, director of the Developer Platform Group, said,

I’m really clear about our commitment to Moonlight. I see the work we’re doing with Miguel and Moonlight as core to our strategy for delivering implementations for Linux.

It really appears Microsoft is deliberately preventing Linux users from achieving full support for Silverlight in the latest version. They do this while simultaneously claiming they want to bring Silverlight to “as many platforms and as many devices as possible.”

The fact remains that if Microsoft can port Silverlight to Linux for Intel Atom netbooks, they just as easily could port it to the broader Linux base.

The conclusion to the matter is that Netflix’s decision to use the Microsoft Silverlight platform has alienated their Linux user base, and it appears Microsoft is deliberately preventing these users from full Silverlight support.

There is a way to watch Netflix Watch Instantly in Linux, but it is through a virtual machine window running Windows XP (although the virtual machine makes the video choppy). Of course since you’re running Windows XP anyway, what’s the point?

Sign the petition to bring Linux support of Netflix.