I’ve recently been bitten by the urge to jump on the HDTV bandwagon. Cable and FiOS are both very expensive options, in the neighborhood of $60/month with a DVR.
One of my friends dumped cable and went 100% AppleTV. Even if I don’t save money going that route, I’d at least get to keep the shows after watching them. I wrote down a list of the shows I watch and poked around the iTunes store to see what’s available. I was pretty disappointed with what I found:
Many shows don’t have a season pass option, meaning you have to pay full price for each episode – and I think that also means you have to seek them out each week; iTunes won’t grab them for you. Most shows I looked are not available in HD, but I realize this was a recent update so I won’t complain about that too much. “NOVA,” an excellent documentary program that I can watch for free on PBS.org is $4.99 an episode on iTunes – and that isn’t even in HD!
On top of all that, I think the iTunes store interface is fairly convoluted, TV series don’t seem to have their own landing pages, and clicking on some of the breadcrumbs doesn’t result in any navigation.
I don’t know who’s dragging their feet here, Apple or the networks, but it’s bad enough that I’m going to stick with cable!
Living Critic 
Apple TV actually exist?? I thought it was a prototype. I mean, purely TV, not iPod kind of TV
No, I definitely meant the iPod style of TV. I think those of us with a TiVo are used to that format anyhow, just a list of recorded shows to watch – I never flip through the channels to see “what’s on.”
As someone who solely uses the aTV, let me be the first to say that there are MAJOR problems. I like that it offers content when I want it. I like that it doesn’t have any ads. I even like the UI, although there is one certain short coming. Here are a couple of things that I can’t stand, then I’ll get to the experience.
Youtube – I love having that on my tv. I hate that I have to spend 10 mins hitting the remote’s menu button to get back to the main menu after surfing for a while. I haven’t found a “got to main menu” function on the remote.
Movie – For some unknowable reason only some movies are available for rent, and others are only available for rent for a while. Some will eventually be available for rent, and absolutely NO documentaries are available to rent. I don’t want to own most of this stuff. I don’t even know if I’ll like something until I’ve seen it so why do I have to commit to full ownership most of the time.
TV shows – Many are nice, some are even riveting, once. How often do you really want to watch a tv show. I cannot think of the time that I kept re-watching a tv show so that I just had to own it, other than Blue Harvest. I only want to rent them, not own them. Hell I don’t even mind the ads if I could just watch a season without paying 50 bucks.
These are the major problems that I’ve had living in an aTV world. Now, to offer some balance it only just occurred to me recently that I should pony up for an HD antenna at radio shack so that I can get all the broadcast channels for free. Don’t know how I just forgot that so much of tv is just broadcast over the airwaves. So get an aTV and an HD receiver, and most of the problems go away on the TV side. Another interesting note is to really thoroughly search the podcasts on iTunes. I was stunned to discover how many shows are offered in their entirety on there. The big new networks, the 24 hour news freaks, and a lot of great odd content in HD. Geekbrief is a great example, as is Zaproot and the TED talks. Odd, but free and in HD mostly.
Just an update. I bought an antenna today, and it doesn’t get reception in Redmond. So scratch that idea. What a disappointment.