Only video that Apple designates can pass from the Mac to the Apple TV. That’s because they want us to keep spending money at the iTunes store. Apple customers never seem to be annoyed by this, but when I look at material outside the Apple sphere, this always seems to irritate people—so much so that they would never consider buying one. If Microsoft did this, there would be screaming and gnashing of teeth. Why isn’t there more pushback in the Apple community about this onerous Apple tactic?

Disclaimer: This is not a defense of Apple’s actions. Merely a thought.

Maybe Apple gets away with little tricks like limiting video formats on Apple TV because everything else tends to be so well thought out. Since Apple products tend to be more user friendly than the competition, users might be cutting the company some slack.

The attitude consumers have towards Apple, generally speaking, isn’t as antagonistic as their attitude towards some other tech companies. As such, fewer may be likely to approach an Apple product with the anticipation of disappointment. Also, Apple TV is fairly easy to hack, and Apple doesn’t seem to worried about stopping that. Just another little nugget to keep buyers happy.

Maybe consumers look at the offerings from other companies, and then decide that Apple’s products don’t suck. And maybe the iPod halo effect has convinced buyers that Apple’s feature lockdown offers a better overall experience becasue the company controls the design from end to end.

“For the greater good,” as they say in Sanford.

Jeff

They’re just keeping it simple

The only way you are gonna get people to use it is if it is simple. iTunes has a command to convert your video for AppleTV.

G-ma and G-pa are not going to use a MCPC no matter how stupid it looks.

AppleTV hit the right combo of ease of setup, consistency with regard to Windows and Mac in the same house etc…

Also, I have no problem putting all my dvds on the device so I don’t know why TMO is beating on a non-issue here.

Re: Apple TV Lockout and Strong Arming

[quote author=“j.martellaro”] If Microsoft did this, there would be screaming and gnashing of teeth. Why isn’t there more pushback in the Apple community about this onerous Apple tactic?

*listening to see if he hears XB360 owners screaming*

Oh, actually I do but its because of the RROD (which I’ve had twice now), not because MS severely limited the number of video formats playable on the Xbox.

If you want to play video on your AppleTV from outside the iTMS you have to either accept the risk of hacking it or accept the massive amount of CPU time required to correctly re-encode other formats into .m4v files, something that can be done for cheap/free if you know what you’re doing. Thats basically the same thing on Xbox, try playing AAC, ogg, .mpg or .mov files on a 360 with zero hacks and they’re unplayable.

Sony did the same thing with Ps3 and PSP, Apple did the same thing with iPod…in fact outside of open source and a couple other products I can’t think of a major video or audio playback device made in the last few years that doesn’t have some type of format limitation. I’m sure they exist, but they aren’t serious players in the market or anything.

So yeah, while it kind of sucks that piracy and fear thereof has changed the way companies design consumer electronics products for us (try finding a consumer level boombox with a clean line-out port on it these days), it really has little to do with Apple specifically. The majority of the people bitching about this are either straight up Apple-haters or they already have something like Slingbox that only the geekiest 5% of the population is even aware of.

Nobody is saying the aTV is the best, fastest, most expandable set-top box in the world. It just happens to be the easiest to use by a wide margin.

Re: Apple TV Lockout and Strong Arming

[quote author=“j.martellaro”]Only video that Apple designates can pass from the Mac to the Apple TV. That’s because they want us to keep spending money at the iTunes store. Apple customers never seem to be annoyed by this, but when I look at material outside the Apple sphere, this always seems to irritate people—so much so that they would never consider buying one. If Microsoft did this, there would be screaming and gnashing of teeth. Why isn’t there more pushback in the Apple community about this onerous Apple tactic?

It’s easy to pass almost any video from a Mac to the Apple TV—just use VideoHub (and other programs) to convert it to Apple TV format. Elgato’s EyeTV 2 can automatically save/convert captured TV in Apple TV format. If you want to rip a DVD and send it to Apple TV, you can (legally or not).

This is no different than preparing video for the iPod. The only difference is that the resolution and data rate can both be higher for the Apple TV.

The only problem is DRM. Amazon’s Unbox downloadable videos won’t play on Macs —it’s not just iPods and the Apple TV that are left out. They COULD make a Mac-compatible codec and DRM system, but they have not chosen to do so.

So, is it Apple that’s behind the “lockout,” or the other suppliers?