Apple TV tops connected set-top box chart And the most popular net-connected set-top box is… the Apple TV. So says market watcher Strategy Analytics, which calculates the small black gadget is to be found in no fewer than eight per cent of US households. The £99/$99/€119 Apple TV is in seven per cent of European homes too. Apple TV That, SA said, gives Apple 32 …
Not sure about consoles.
Very few people buy a ps3 just to be able to stream media from their pc or the internet to their telly. Whereas for AppleTV and Roku and the rest, that's their primary function.
Also, the types of people (like me) who would buy an AppleTV, are also going to have at least one console connected to the telly as well. And I use both for streaming video media (AppleTV streams iTunes content, PS3 streams avi's and divx's).
So including consoles would complicate the results terribly because you'd have to account for those that bought and use multiple devices. Whereas I doubt anyone uses both a Roku and an AppleTV.
"Very few people buy a ps3 just to be able to stream media from their pc or the internet to their telly. Whereas for AppleTV and Roku and the rest, that's their primary function."
Maybe they don't but that's what a lot of them get used for. And Xbox 360's too. Both make excellent streaming devices and both have their own video rental services plus 3rd party apps like Netflix players and so forth.
People are still able to use their Wii or their Xbox for the same exact things as you would buy a separate Roku or AppleTV for. Plus you've got other devices like BD players were these features are bundled in.
So it's really hard to take anything like this terribly seriously.
It sounds like some fans trying to create something that isn't really there.
Cue the Disraeli quote...
From the study at
http://www.strategyanalytics.com/default.aspx?mod=reportabstractviewer&a0=6921
"Among many options consumers can choose, purchasing a Connected TV player/set-top-box from retail is one of the easy options."
See - "easy options" - this is about consumers, not bloody geeks who managed to finagle TV functionality out of their PS3s. Stop thinking the rest of the planet wants a PS3 as they're thinking they would like a games console with - oooo, look - some set top box functionality.
They don't. They want a set top box to hook up to their TV for more TV.
I'm surprised someone so quick to jump to the easiest negative conclusion went AC - unless you have some proof somewhere that Apple bought the study, pipe down. Note - they may well have done so, I just ain't seen proof they have.
Apple give sales information every 3 months as required by law. When the CEO is given 500 million dollars if he stays at the company for 10 years plus wages and bonuses and the company has over $80 billion in the bank and is worth more than any other company in history.
I'm wondering why you think they need to buy a good report, at the rate Apple are going, within two years they will be the biggest company by sales and the most profitable by employees.
It didn't include every type of smart device that could connect to a to a TV, like every HDMI PC. That's more in this year than every PS3 ever sold. The major point to take from his is that 13 million devices were sold this year. That beats the combined console market sales this year.
What are the implications of this? The console market is dead, it's all going to be streamed data. When shitty ADSL (in the UK anyway, you may have better) can do 1MB per second who needs disks or hard drives to play games? LTE is promising to be faster than blueray by 2015, when it quicker to get it over the air than buy a disk with limited capacity, why pay the markup to keep shop's, distributes and everyone else in business.
I take 4 things from this 1) Apple may have a goldmine on their hands, 2) Google TV is shit but it could be a shit load of gold if they get it right 3) I'd really hate to be Sony 4) Apple TV(Apple making a TV) is something to be ignored, whoever gets the interactive streaming right gets the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Someone should buy Netflicks, they have the ball's, give them cash and they could outdo facebook.
Ive tried several builds of XBMC on my ATV2 and none of them are much cop, even putting up with only 720p output, they have far too little horse power and an anaemic network connection.... 100mbit wired and 150mbit wireless, any decent HD film results in visits from the bufferman every few seconds...
My ATV2 is now used to show the folks photos of the kids airplayed from my phone...
the standby feature bothers me a little, but as the unit lives out under the stairs with the rest of the AV/Networking, I can ignore the white light.
As far as I can tell, it will absolutely refuse to start playing a video until it has downloaded enough of the file to ensure essentially no risk of buffer-refilling pauses during playback. Fine... ...makes sense in theory. But the *unanticipated* downside (shame on Apple!!) is that one must sit and wait for minutes-on-end to see if the video is the one that you're looking for (or not). This stupid design decision makes the device extremely frustrating when used for browsing YouTube searching for a certain video.
Also, with any power glitch it turns itself on. Putting it back into standby requires turning on the TV, selecting the correct input, using the too-simple-by-far remote control to manually move through several menus to eventually reach the 'Stand By' setting. I honestly can't be bothered, so now we have an ultra-bright white LED annoyingly glowing away right next to the TV. I'm tempted to drill out the LED. Dumb design decision.
Apple - not quite the top drawer industral designers that they think they are. These are some glaringly-stupid design decisions.
I think if you're waiting for 'minutes' for a YouTube video to start, you must still be on dial-up - most YouTube videos aren't even that long! It takes seconds to start playing from YouTube here. Besides, you still get the title of the video and a thumbnail to go on before you start playing, which is all you'd get from the full-fat interface on a desktop browser.
Also - just as the 'play' button will wake the unit from standby, it will also trigger standby if you hold the button down. No searching through menus required.
> I think if you're waiting for 'minutes' for a YouTube video to start, you must still be on dial-up
...or WIFI.
I tried to put one of my MythTV boxes on WIFI and had no end of troubles. Thought I would try to plug the AppleTV into the same TV and see if it did any better. It didn't. The knackered network clobbered it.
Your network (and the experience of any network attached device) is only going to be as strong as the weakest link in the entire network between your appliance and Apple Corp or Netflix Corp. If there is any crummy WIFI or 3G network link in the middle, you may just be out of luck.
> Putting it back into standby requires turning on the TV, selecting the correct input, using the too-simple-by-far remote control to manually move through several menus to eventually reach the 'Stand By' setting.
Or you could just press Select on the remote control for 5 seconds, assuming it's the newer Alumin(i)um type controller.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht3176
OK, I'm not sure what's happening on your end, but on my two AppleTVs when I play Netflix or home network streamed video I only wait about 5 seconds. Totally acceptable.
The only times I've waited longer was when I had an IPv6 issue on my network (fixed that) or when my WAN connection was a bit dodgy for a while. The latter made Netflix wait for about 20 seconds instead.
Never had this problem. I use my appletv to stream music and videos from my Mac on an almost daily basis. I turn the power off at the wall every night without going in to standby and it always comes back one fine the next day. Have has it since launch. Had to reset maybe 3 times in that period
Hold on, how can it be predicted to sell (not actually sold yet) 4 million units WORLDWIDE yet:
Number of EU households (2009) 202 million.
Number of US household (2011) 131 million.
Gives you a lovely 1.2% of households....
Then take away all the ones no longer used, the ones where people have more than one.
Oh and then add the number of European contries NOT in the EU.
And that equals bullshit stats (what's new)
This thing is in 7% of European homes? BS! I don't know a single person with one. And if this gave Apple a third of the network-connected set top box market, that would imply around 20% of Europeans had a network connected device attached to their tv? If xbox, ps3 and wii are all excluded from this, it's just utter, utter BS.
I'm shocked how many Apple TV has sold (especially considering a near-idential product flopped just before the world went Apple-crazy).
Valid point about the PS3, but the fact the Fruit Company's little box outsells anyone elses comes as no surprise.
What I like about the product is the fact that as small as it is, it has an integrated PSU, so no in line or power adapter plugs, hangs of the home network via wireless or Ethernet, an optical connection to the DSP and HDMI connection to the TV in one small, silent little black box. Sure there's no option for any external storage connections like the first generation, but its simplicity is probably what makes it appealing to most.
I have one, as I said it's small, piss easy to set up and works very well indeed. To be honest I don't buy any content from iTunes, but it's the best method for my household to stream downloaded / ripped movies to the TV.
Want to connect your digital media to your tv then you can use a TV that is 'net-connected' unless you have a Mac in which case you'll have to stick to your propritary format and use Apple TV.
So the 'digital contect to TV' market is split between those that can use various offerings including consoles and inbuilt to TV where as Mac users can only use a 'net-connected set-top box' - Apple TV.
Completly pointless set of data.
Hmm...
Strategy analytics "calculate" that 4M Apple TV's are shipped WW in a year. I'll be generous and assume Europe soaks up 30% = 1.2M units per year.
In 2001, the EEA reported there were 151M households in Europe.
Strategy Analytics reckon 7% have Apple TVs = 10.5M households.
Assuming Apple sales are reasonably constant and that no units ever break or are discarded and that only one unit is acquired by each household, then Apple has taken nearly 9 years to build up this share.
Apple TV was launched in March 2007. Erm ....
"Also, with any power glitch it turns itself on. Putting it back into standby requires turning on the TV, selecting the correct input, using the too-simple-by-far remote control to manually move through several menus to eventually reach the 'Stand By' setting."
Baloney - they have a setting where it can go into standby automatically after xx minutes.
"As far as I can tell, it will absolutely refuse to start playing a video until it has downloaded enough of the file to ensure essentially no risk of buffer-refilling pauses during playback."
Perhaps your broadband service is too slow - on mine videos start almost instantly and when I rent a movie it downloads perhaps 10 seconds then says 'ready to watch'. It's not really a fault of the device to try and work with your broadband being so slow - I certainly would not want it juddering / stopping while playing a film.
This 5-second to Stand By advice should help. Thanks!
@Pikelet - More and more YouTube videos are HD, and some are now much longer duration than 10 minutes. My "high speed" DSL is just over 1Mbps - certainly not ideal, but also quite common. ~1Mbps is occasionally less than the data rate required for the HD video, thus it needs to buffer for X minutes.
Also, YouTube is becoming infested with 'fake' videos of the same or similar name and description. The net result of all this is a waste of time.
The Point-> Most gadgets allow one to press the Play button to force it to start playing, *no matter the state of the buffer*. Not Apple. They know 'better'.
Dial-up has *nothing* to do with it.
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