Thanks Google for the AppleTV ?

May 29, 2010 in General by Angelina Roberts

Coming from the generation of film watchers who had to rewind the tape before returning it to the video rental shop the AppleTV iTunes rental system is worlds away from where it all began.

For years Friday Film Night involved a two mile trip to the local video store to peruse the shelves judging a film purely on the box. The worst bit was remembering to return the video the next day to avoid an additional night’s rental.

As my laziness grew stronger I moved to online rental systems, no late fees and all I had to do was to put the DVD back in the post. The big negative with online rental services was I never seemed to be able to get my hands on the latest releases for weeks after many of my peers had seen the movie.

Welcome iTunes

I have been an AppleTV owner from day one. I have seen Apple’s hobby project develop and improve and although many people shun the device as a gimmick it sits pretty central in my home entertainment solution.

I have already covered what I like about the AppleTV in this post but I thought I would draw your attention to the great rental system.

I think we have watch more movies in the last few months than we did in total last year. The process is simple, from the main AppleTV menu you can browse the film library, spot a film that grabs your attention and instead of making a decision based on the synopsis you can watch the trailer in full.

Once you are happy with your choice click the rent it in either standard definition or for an extra £1 in HD. Over the last 3 months I have seen the wait time for rentals reduce significantly. Now we can click “Rent” and pretty much be watching the film in 3-4 minutes.

Improvements

iTunes rentals isn’t perfect although the process for ordering couldn’t be much easier. The first thing I would say is buying and renting from iTunes is expensive. Once you start to watch a film you only have 48 hours to watch it.

The negatives covered the simplicity of the AppleTV surpasses the benefits of a Mac Mini media Centre in my mind and the fact I don’t need to ever face late fees again makes it the perfect home entertainment solution for us.

Imagine the same Apps Store solution for the AppleTV as exists for the iPhone and iPad…… now great would that be ?

Last week Google announced they were heading towards the TV market and coincidentally today rumours are rive of a new AppleTV in the offing. Tech Blog Engadget have posted an article on information they have received about a new low cost AppleTV running the same software as the iPad/iPhone. You can read it here.

What is your Opinion?