Apple TV and the 2.0 Upgrade

Yes, I’m an early adopter. That’s why I bought an Apple TV last year. And, I will admit that it has mostly just been an experimental toy until now. The biggest benefits? Being able to access my iTunes library of music and view my photos all from my living room entertainment system. My kids love going through all of our photos on the big screen HDTV. The YouTube videos were fun for a little while, but that faded quickly.

The 2.0 Upgrade
However, the latest 2.0 software upgrade finally made it a lot more interesting. Now I can instantly rent movies (including a number in high-definition with Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound), buy TV shows, and browse Flickr photos on my widescreen HDTV (and I love Flickr). The downsides are that it does take a long time to download a movie (especially an HD movie), once you start a movie you have to finish it in 24 hours, and they need more titles.

Instant Movies + Variety
I do already have Pay Per View movies through DirecTV. The instant purchase and instant on do provide instant entertainment gratification. But, the variety is sorely lacking. Way too many PPV channels of the same titles. I am also a Netflix subscriber and a big fan of the service. They have a huge library of titles and a nice recommendations engine. The only drawback is that you have to wait. They do offer a movies download service if you have a Windows PC, but no solution yet if you are an Apple house (unless you’re running Parallels). So, if you feel like a movie right now, you’re out of luck.

Key Highlight
Consumers like instant gratification and the movies entertainment business is shifting rapidly to meet that need. PPV, Netflix, and movie downloads are all competing to be this movies-on-demand solution. The only barrier now seems to be bandwidth. Once that problem is solved, the winners in this space will be the ones who can provide consumers with the largest number of high-definition movie titles instantly available with one click.