05-09-2012, 11:57 PM
Having jailbroken one of my Apple TVs, and used it as a platform to experiment and explore all those options, I can report, I was underwhelmed. Most of what I tried (XBMC for example) are about 85% duplications of what the box natively does, only with more bells & whistles, a less stable interface, more crashes, and a lot of half-baked, incomplete-feeling features and offerings. Just being able to play different file formats, like XViD, and so forth, is not compelling enough to make it a dramatically improved experience. And Boxee--dont' get me started. It's just a convoluted pipeline to 'the web'. And web content is easy enough to simply view on a computer, without the packaging and menus and so forth. I've downloaded and installed, and tried just about every app that's available for a jailbroken TV, and found that "unlocked', an Apple TV not notably more useful or entertaining than it is in its native state. In fact, the occasional crashes and freezes and buggy behaviors tend to neutralize any perceived benefits.
And this isn't to bash the lameness of this stuff (though it is less exciting than advertised, jailboken, or native)) mainly, it reveals how underdeveloped this medium is in general, as an alternative, for those who are looking to cut off cable TV. It's promising, it's got some novel ways to display entertainment content, but the medium yet to break out of the 'hobby' category, into a robust and threatening category in its own right. For all these players and devices. It's all still evolving, and is mostly an amusement for those of us who are computer-centric. It's appeal to mainstream entertainment consumers remains limited.
In the meantime, I'm among those that find Apple TV useful enough to really enjoy having it. Mainly because once you can access a large movie library you've made yourself, sticking in DVDs, one at a time, into a DVD playing appliance, seems primitive. And a few of the other features are nice to have, too. I rarely use my DVD or Blu Ray player anymore. I realize I'm a minority, encoding my own movie vault, as an avid enthusiast and collector. For some of us, using one of these connected boxes (Apple TV, and others) can be rewarding, while we wait for the medium to grow up, expand, and further erode Cable's dominance.
And this isn't to bash the lameness of this stuff (though it is less exciting than advertised, jailboken, or native)) mainly, it reveals how underdeveloped this medium is in general, as an alternative, for those who are looking to cut off cable TV. It's promising, it's got some novel ways to display entertainment content, but the medium yet to break out of the 'hobby' category, into a robust and threatening category in its own right. For all these players and devices. It's all still evolving, and is mostly an amusement for those of us who are computer-centric. It's appeal to mainstream entertainment consumers remains limited.
In the meantime, I'm among those that find Apple TV useful enough to really enjoy having it. Mainly because once you can access a large movie library you've made yourself, sticking in DVDs, one at a time, into a DVD playing appliance, seems primitive. And a few of the other features are nice to have, too. I rarely use my DVD or Blu Ray player anymore. I realize I'm a minority, encoding my own movie vault, as an avid enthusiast and collector. For some of us, using one of these connected boxes (Apple TV, and others) can be rewarding, while we wait for the medium to grow up, expand, and further erode Cable's dominance.