AppleTV ? The price is not right
I am not talking about the hardware here, but the Movies/TVseries prices. I live in Canada, so I am not sure how the prices are in the US.
Movies :
New movie rentals prices average at 4.99 dvd quality and 5.99 HD. Old stuff is average 3.99/4.99HD. For the new stuff it?s about the same thing has my cable provider on demand rentals. But for old movies, Cable is much cheaper and there are a lot more free movies on cable. The only + for apple TV is choice, they have a better choice. But, both on demand services are no where near my local video store prices, which rent at 5.99 (dvd or br) for 2 movies for 3 days. The AppleTv buy prices are just plain retarded, with prices way over the prices of the physical DVD or BR you can get at Best Buy.
TV series:
They are around 2.50-2.99 per episodes. This is way too much and season passes are just insane. I have seen TV series ?buy? prices and season pass that are 2 to 3 times the price of the DVD/BR. Most of the Cable on demand TV series are FREE, yes you heard it right, all free.
I guess this is what you get when you are force to buy from only one store and this is why un-hack AppleTV?s are nothing short of a complete rip-off, they should GIVE away the hardware since its nothing more than a box that allows you to buy stuff from a single store that can pretty much set any price they want with zero competition.
On the other hand, when the AppleTV is turn into a HTPC with XBMC, the rental features become a nice bonus. But Apple needs to get a clue and put prices that compete with physical media and local video rentals. The only times I rent on AppleTv is when its minus 30 outside and I really don?t feel like going to the video rental.
Movies :
New movie rentals prices average at 4.99 dvd quality and 5.99 HD. Old stuff is average 3.99/4.99HD. For the new stuff it?s about the same thing has my cable provider on demand rentals. But for old movies, Cable is much cheaper and there are a lot more free movies on cable. The only + for apple TV is choice, they have a better choice. But, both on demand services are no where near my local video store prices, which rent at 5.99 (dvd or br) for 2 movies for 3 days. The AppleTv buy prices are just plain retarded, with prices way over the prices of the physical DVD or BR you can get at Best Buy.
TV series:
They are around 2.50-2.99 per episodes. This is way too much and season passes are just insane. I have seen TV series ?buy? prices and season pass that are 2 to 3 times the price of the DVD/BR. Most of the Cable on demand TV series are FREE, yes you heard it right, all free.
I guess this is what you get when you are force to buy from only one store and this is why un-hack AppleTV?s are nothing short of a complete rip-off, they should GIVE away the hardware since its nothing more than a box that allows you to buy stuff from a single store that can pretty much set any price they want with zero competition.
On the other hand, when the AppleTV is turn into a HTPC with XBMC, the rental features become a nice bonus. But Apple needs to get a clue and put prices that compete with physical media and local video rentals. The only times I rent on AppleTv is when its minus 30 outside and I really don?t feel like going to the video rental.
Comments
And you're right, the hardware should cost next to nothing, considering all midrange to high-end televisions and blu-ray players have some form of built-in movie rental service that's as good as or better than Apple's offerings and quality. $229 for an Apple TV is a joke when you can get an LG blu-ray player with Netflix and VUDU HDX streaming for $250 - $300.
Fanboys would argue that you're paying extra for the "convenience" of being able to instantly rent from a mediocre selection of low-quality movies (iTunes SD is nowhere near DVD quality). That would be a silly argument of course, because Apple doesn't have the overhead of maintaining and employing several-thousand physical stores like Blockbuster, in which case they should be more than able to at least match their pricing.
And you're right, the hardware should cost next to nothing, considering all midrange to high-end televisions and blu-ray players have some form of built-in movie rental service that's as good as or better than Apple's offerings and quality. $229 for an Apple TV is a joke when you can get an LG blu-ray player with Netflix and VUDU HDX streaming for $250 - $300.
The only reason I bought an AppleTV was to hack it to run XBMC. After spending weeks trying to configure XBMC on a 1000$ windows laptop, I gave up. It was a dream to have the thing work in less then 30 mins. Took me 10 mins to configure network drives and another 10 minutes to configure the correct movies and TVshows information site to IMDB (english) so all movies and TV shows information was fetch. Put it in librarie mode and "voila"
I found the Apple store to be convenient, but too expensive.