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Forbes has a pretty good article detailing how Apple got the new Apple TV device wrong, calling it an “iFlop”.

When Apple first announced a new living room device to stream and buy movies from your TV, people had high hopes. Apple’s iPod and iTunes work so well and have tremendously successful. How could Apple not get a next-gen TV device right?

Says Forbes:

“Six months later iTV is a flat-out iFlop. Renamed Apple TV upon launch, the ballyhooed box has sold perhaps 250,000 units–far behind the 1 million sold for the iPhone, which was priced twice as high and has been on the market less than half as long. Apple, which declined to let FORBES interview Jobs and other execs for this story, provides detailed sales data for the iPod and other digital wonders but won’t reveal any numbers for Apple TV; apparently the truth is too humiliating. A company spokesman declined to respond to written questions.”

Surprisingly. Jobs said at a May tech conference that the Apple TV was a “hobby” and even Apple isn’t giving much shelf space to Apple TV in their own stores. Apparently Apple has been trying to drive the price of its video downloads, much to the chagrin of the studios. Apple wants to sell movies for about $10, while the studios want $20 per download.

The movie studios got their way with Vudu, a start-up video download service, which allows users to rent movies for 24 hours (Apple TV has no rental option) and charges $20 for purchasing downloaded movies.
Apple also had problems pricing Apple TV.

According to the Forbes article:

“It wanted to keep the price low at $300, but that resulted in cheaping out on components. The first box had a tiny hard drive (40 gigabytes to store fewer than 50 hours at standard-definition TV resolution) and an older, slower Intel chip. Even then the box’s insides cost a total $237, says research firm Isuppli. That left a scant $62 in gross profit, or 20%, to be split by Apple and retailers (barely half Apple’s typical 37% gross margin). The stores went along, but when Apple TV faltered, they had even less incentive to push the new product.”

Worse yet, is Apple’s relationship with Hollywood. NBC Universal dropped plans to put its new Fall TV shows on iTunes and switched to Amazon. Again, the issue was pricing—NBC wanted higher prices, while Apple stood firm on its price.

Bonus: Unfortunately, Forbes requires free registration to read their articles online. Try BugMeNot to get access to free user names and passwords for sites that require free registration.

[tags] Apple, Apple TV, Vudu [/tags]

All I can say is, duh! Finally, Amazon and Tivo give us what they should have offered when they first unveiled Amazon Unbox on TiVo: The ability to rent or purchase shows directly from your Tivo rather than having to go to your computer.

In order to activate this, you need to provide a five digit PIN at Amazon.com which you’ll need to enter when you order Unbox video from your Tivo. I haven’t tried this yet,

I did try the old Unbox on Tivo and found it to be working well. But I haven’t rented another movie since I first tried out the service 2 months ago. I’ve chosen NetFlix and On-Demand video from Comcast, my cable provider, when I want to watch movies.

I think my biggest problem with Unbox on Tivo is not remembering it exists. It’s not compelling on its own and  it’s not the first thing I think of when I sit down with my Tivo.

The other problem is content–it’s really hard to find stuff you want to watch. What about the long tail content theory? When will Unbox have more content available?

Because I’m an avid watcher of 24, I didn’t see the entire first season of Heroes. So I tried searching for it on Amazon Unbox and had trouble finding anything useful in the search results. First, it was confusing because I didn’t realize I had to select Unbox Video Downloads in the search drop down. So my search found everything with the word “Heroes” in it. Not very useful.

Next, I typed in “Heroes Unbox” in the search box and got closer. I found TV shows like Spiderman and Greatest American Hero. Oh well. Apparently I can’t get Heroes via Unbox.  Performing a broader search, I discovered that season 1 of Heroes won’t be out on DVD until August 28th.

But why can’t NBC offer it online first? I tried watching the first episode of Heroes on NBC.com, but I really don’t have the patience to go there and watch it while it streams to my computer. Plus I’d rather watch it on my TV.

Unbox seems convenient but it’s pretty complicated to find Unbox content on Tivo. You need to go to TiVo Central then select “Find Programs” and “Download TV & Movies” before you get to the “Amazon Unbox” option. Overall, I found that Unbox on Tivo seems like it’s crudely bandaged into the Tivo interface rather than eloquently integrated.

Maybe they should offer some kind of subscription service, where I can download certain genres, all new releases or movies with certain artists. Having shows ready to watch and appearing in my Now Playing folder, for example, would definitely motivate me to try it out. What do you think?

If you’re like me you have lots of movies on your Netflix queue. I just checked my account and found that I have 246 movies in my queue. How many are in your queue?

There’s been some buzz around this plug-in for Tivo DVRs that lets users view their Netflix queue via Tivo. It also works with Amazon’s Unbox and Blockbuster online, but who uses those anyway?

The plug-in is open source, and can actually let you browse and purchase movies from Amazon. (Ok, that’s a pretty cool feature.) Although you can’t download movies via Netflix’s service yet, you can still browse and re-order your queue. Perhaps once Netflix opens up their movie download service to more users, this feature can be added.

The bummer is that the software runs on Galleon, which is software you have to install over your Tivo operating system. And how many people are going to do that? Someone who’s either a geek or a borderline geek.

Actually, I’d like to give it a try. I just wish I had a spare Tivo that I could use in case I have to re-format it or something else goes wrong. I’ve got lots of shows from 5 months ago, that I’ve really been meaning to watch (this means you The Aleut Story).

Bonus: Watch a video of the Galleon in action.

[Via Sickles Insight]

[tags] DVR, Tivo, Netflix, Galleon, digital video recorder, Unbox, Amazon [/tags]

According to HDTiVo, there’s a loophole that lets users download purchased Amazon Unbox movies to multiple Tivos in your house.

After buying an Unbox movie for downloading, you can choose multiple Tivos from the drop-down box.

“After doing that, a confirm page comes up (for me in a new tab) which I close. I am left with the prior thumbnail page that still has the drop down box. I can then choose another device to download to and click download…”

As ZatzNotFunny points out, you don’t have to do this, since “the license and content are transferable, but like many hacks that isn’t the point.”

[via ZatzNotFunny]