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BW: Apple TV Not the Answer in Consumer Search for TV Holy Grail
Thursday, November 8th, 2007 at 3:00 PM - by John Martellaro
The provincialism and protectionism in the U.S. entertainment industry has created a mass of confusion, and even Apple cant make it all go away, according to BusinessWeek.
The Holy Grail of home entertainment is a single box that provides access to everything: TV, movies on demand, YouTube videos, reruns, and the Internet. Unfortunately, every company that has a piece of the entertainment pie is holding on for dear life with patents and contracts to preserve their livelihood. Worse, other countries are surging ahead in flexibility and choice, leaving the U.S. in a mess of competing and incomplete services.
One of the effects this chaotic competition the U.S. is that every company believes the customer will want to install their box as the solution. Whether its a TiVo or DVR or Apple TV or Vudu, various vendors and carriers believe that if only their message is clear and marketing successful, people will flock to their box.
As a result consumers have found themselves becoming victims of "box fatigue." They tire of being human science experiments as they attempt to connect a myriad of digital boxes in their living room and get it all working right.
While Apples vision has been fairly clear with music, iPods, and even with the Apple TV, it too is just another box that customers fear. "Apple TV is the one product that even Jobs concedes isnt a smash hit. Its a neat idea, a box that lets you buy videos off the Web and play them on a TV. But the business model is flawed: You can only buy whats on iTunes, 1,050 titles in all, vs. the 85,000 offered by Netflix. My whizzy $299 white, gray, and silver Apple TV box sits largely unused next to a big-screen television in my bedroom. The process is like running a Rube Goldberg contraption. Start with a Mac, where you download videos; wait for them to be transferred by wire or Wi-Fi to the somewhat limited storage on the Apple TV box. By then, you might as well have just watched the stuff on the computer screen," Business Week observed.
The industrys latest gamble is Hulu. While critics have dismissed it as another beast foisted on the consumer by "Old Media dinosaurs," according to BW, the authors first test with Hulu worked quite well, and he was left impressed.
"What works for consumers is that which removes the most friction," said Hulu CEO Jason Kilar. "The technology needs to be so good that it blends into the background, and nobody notices it."
Despite all his different solutions and boxes, the reviewer still couldnt sit in front of his TV and call up just the movie he wanted. The search for the perfect "iTV" will have to continue.
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