Miss #8: Apple TV

Sorry – the Apple TV was not a miss as far as I’m concerned. We got rid of Cable and Satellite service and now get our TV entertainment through a combination of Apple TV and Netflix (dvds and streaming) – and saving a lot of money doing it.

Apple TV…. BIG win.

Wrong. There is no way this is a miss. I own 2 and they rock. I have totally done away with DVD’s etc. Every DVD I ever owned is now ripped and stored for use on my appleTV. 5000+ TV episodes, 800+ movies and with iTunes I can lie in bed and rent or buy any movie or TV show I want. This device rocks. Sorry you can’t see that.

AppleTV is definitely not a miss. Whoever decided to throw this in the mix was an idiot.

No way this is a miss. You probably don’t own one and you MISS the whole point. Just like man others, I don’t watch cable nor TV anymore. I’m saving tons of time not having to fast forward through commercials or worst yet have to watch them. I spend about the same or less than if I had Cable. I have tons of movies (Specially all the Disney Movies) I ripped from my collection. My kids can easily play any of their movies over and over and over without having to worry about the media. I can have my entire family collection of movies online, and 20K+ pictures handy when family comes around. I can control it with my iphone, connect any PC to the network and access pictures and music from anywhere. I can just go on and on about this device.

I can see not calling it a hit (at least by Apple’s lofty standards) but a miss? They’ve been selling them for years now.

This is crap. How Apple TV is a miss?
I have it, I use it.
Millions of them were sold.
How is that a miss? Please explain.
I bet the only reason SJ labeled it a hobby is because movie studios are holding out, they are afraid, they see the future and they don’t like it, think iTunes and music labels.

A big Miss is this site(techland) with its awful design and incorrect picture captions not APPLE tv.

A lot of people love to hate the Apple TV – but I love the two that I own. I have one connected to my main entertainment system in the family room and another in the bedroom. When combined with my office computer running iTunes, I can wirelessly stream my entire media collection throughout the house (including the ability to play the same music simultaneously through the entire network). I no longer buy DVDs … while I own a BluRay player, I haven’t bought a BluRay disk in over a year.

I think the people that give this device negative reviews have never experienced it incorporated into a higher-end setup. Everyone that sees what I can do with these devices and the seamless and slick interface becomes a convert.

I have a good friend that works in management at Comcast, and when he saw my setup, his only comment was “uh-oh.” All Apple needs to do is add: (a) the ability to stream cable channels; and (b) an integrated web browser … then it’s game on.

not a miss at all. again, i wish the “editorial” “board” would do some homework and realize this was actually a trendsetter an a tremendous success due to what it was capable of doing. it made life easier and so it was a true success.

Was it that hard to come up with enough misses?

The Techland folks must be real dolts. Have you even used an AppleTV? Why is it a miss? Nice hardware, elegant design, great UI, the best quality (by far!) video I’ve seen from any paid download/rental site. So how is that a miss? Apple is appealing to a different kind of customer with this product. Thank goodness at least one company out there is actually trying to offer an alternative to the nightmare that is television these days. I don’t want cable, satellite, tons of commercials, and high monthly fees. And I’m not a loser couch potato who spends 5 hours a day in front of the TV. Apple’s solution is, like most things Apple, simple and elegant. I purchase a season pass, shows download once they’ve aired, and I get great HD video with no commercials. What’s not to love?

No way this is a “miss”. I went through several Media Player type devices, including “features” of my DVR and Blu-Ray players. They were all frustrating, slow and poorly designed. While AppleTV may not be perfection, for anyone who uses iTunes, it’s easy to use, and for anyone who can use translation or rip programs to get your videos and music into one of many compatible formats, it’s comprehensive. Everyone in my family is very happy with the HD content on our TV from the AppleTV and can’t tell a quality difference from Blue-Ray and DirecTV content.

Oh, duh. Of course the AppleTV is on this list. I’m surprised it wasn’t the #1 miss. Given that this site is owned by a media conglomerate who also happens to be in the cable TV business…it now all makes sense!

Big media needs to pull its head out of it’s you-know-what. The public is sick of high television prices and endless advertising. Apple’s vision, whether AppleTV or a Mac Mini connected to one’s television (as I have), is all about giving the consumer, not the media monster, control.

Of course you big media pushers would call that a miss. Thankfully, I unplugged you long ago – and I’m never going back.

If you have this product and like it, it is a hit to you. Unfortunately, 99.99999% of the people out there don’t have it so it is not a HIT.

A miss based on what? It does what it’s designed to do, many people have cracked it to do more… And it sells well.

What exactly makes it a miss?

To all the people saying “What makes it a miss”, that can be best answered by two things:
1. It did not do very well. the people posting here are among the vast minority if you actually own one. The fact that you are posting here just means you are all MAC devotees. The responses on any internet forum are always going to be skewed towards the hard-core types.
2. Apple thrives on Buzz. They spent a lot of time and money promoting this thing and it never took off. If the Ipod or Iphone (while great devices) had done the same thing, Apple would not be the company it is today. This is a failure in the sense that APple thought they had an idea, and maybe it is a good one, but werent able to execute, which reflects poorly on them as far as marketing and company goodwill is concerned.

just my humble opinion.

This is more of a luxury item or a compliment item, it’s great if you have it. I don’t think you can look down on this product just because it doesn’t carry much hype, it might just be a little ahead of it’s time or the economy just doesn’t have a place for luxury items at this time. If I ever get one then kudos to me, if I don’t then I won’t feel left out.

@ jabrwock
while i think the appletv was actually a cool gadget, the fact that you are basing your opinion on the fact that you can crack it and thats why it was great is well, lame. I’m not trying to offend anyone so dont get all cranky on me, but if you have to hack your device to get it to do what you want it to do, then that device, to put it bluntly, sucks. i own an ipod and to actually fully enjoy it, i had to jailbreak it. I mean, c’mon! why do i have to hack my ipod to do something as simple as create a theme? we all know why… if apple allowed us to do whatever we want with something we paid top dollar for ( download 3rd party apps for example) how else are they going to charge you for absolutly everything?

I really want one of these now!