Josh Ferguson

Apple TV: A Device We Don't Need?

"And besides, there’s not that much interest in TV shows and video on the Web, anyway."

You're kidding right? You'd have to be living under a rock to think that is even remotely true. Video is revolutionizing the web. Every major content creator offers some form of video broadcasting, podcasting, or videocasting. Youtube is the #6 visited site on the internet and you can already get desktop clients to manage your videos from many different sites (look at Democracy Player). Apple has been selling TV shows and movies hand over fist in their iTunes media store. Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft are all scrambling to get into the video arena for a reason. On-demand for-pay video over IP networks is going to crush bundled television services, the same way iTunes and other online music services have been running rampant selling music for the past few years.

"Giving people the option of watching "Lost" on their PCs after paying $1.99 to download it from the iTunes Music Store isn't much given that the free broadcast is so available on TV, cable, satellite and on-demand on the Net."

Someone gives you these services for free? Most people are shelling out $60-$70 a month for these services, a substantial amount when you could spend that on buying shows you cared about and have a netflix account for movies.

It's pretty easy to figure out why this product is important. This is to television and movies on iTunes what the iPod was to music on iTunes. It unchains you from your computer to live your life and multiplies the utility you can derive from your purchases on iTunes. No normal person wants to fight with format issues, networking issues, etc. to try and get their content to some PC with a TV-out card or whatever. They just want it to work, and I think that's what this will do.