If Apple came out with a gaming system next gen would you buy it?

[famousringo]

nordlead said:

famousringo said:

 

Except TV isn't free. Even if you're still using rabbit ears, there are costs in terms of arbitrary scheduling and enduring some really terrible advertising.

Where I live, a basic digital TV package costs about $60/month. That works out to $720 a year, and let's just assume that I can get all the shows I want without paying more for more channels. The set top box costs an extra $100, and doesn't have PVR functionality. Total cost is $820 for the first year.

Now consider that I can count the number of TV shows I want to watch on one hand for any given season. I don't much care for TV. Estimate twenty episodes of five shows and we get a nice, even 100 episodes of content that I want to watch in a year. At $2 a pop, I can get the TV shows I want for $200. Throw in the cost of an Apple TV and I've paid $430, saving almost $400 which can go to movie downloads, games or whatever else. I've also saved the cost of obeying the schedules of the networks and enduring tedious advertisements.

I'm not seriously looking at getting an Apple TV right now, (I watch most of the TV I want to watch on DVD, which works pretty well right now, although there are some advantages to downloaded videos over DVDs), but if Apple really can offer all the shows that I want at $2 an episode, plus some startup costs, I'm not crazy for considering the service.

although I agree the Apple TV isn't acomplete rip-off, for the most part you can watch most shows legally and free right on the networks own website. Anyone with half a brain can hook up their computer to their TV and watch the show competely for free with only like 4 30-sec commercials. Granted this only works if your TV is near your PC, or you're more adventurous like me and willing to run 100ft lengths of cable and figure out how to control your PC remotely.

 

 

 They region lock most of those 'webcasts' to the US, so they don't do me much good unless I circumvent that with a proxy or some other trick, raising the costs of this 'free' content. And I don't think it's legal for me to do that.

I really don't mind paying for the content I want. I can't expect the good stuff to keep being made if I'm not willing to pay for it. I just don't appreciate paying for all of the stuff I don't want (the overwhelming majority of terrible TV content), and I like the option of paying with my money rather than paying with my time (advertising).

Edit: And I took a look at how Apple's service stacks up against DVDs, which as I mentioned are my current preferred way to watch TV. I lose the physical media, which is nice in a way, but downloads are easier to manage, take up less physical space, and are more environmentally friendly. I lose the bonus content, which is 90% useless crap anyway, so no big deal.

The big problem I have right now is the library. I believe it's more complete for iTunes in the US, but there are titles I want which aren't yet available from the Canadian store. I could get around this by creating an account with a US shipping address, but that's tedious and shouldn't be necessary, just like the proxy solution above.

But let's look at what is there and see how it stacks up. I'm curious about the TV show The Tudors. The first season is available as a DVD set or on iTunes. Amazon.ca has a 50% off special on the DVDs for $38, while iTunes will let me download the whole season for $20. This sounds like a fantastic deal, but the problem is that the iTunes downloads in Canada are edited for broadcast on CBC, with 10 minutes shaved off each episode to make space for advertising (apparently the uncut version is available at the US iTunes store... yay).

In conclusion, Apple TV and other download services are very interesting to me, but they aren't mature enough yet to fully address what I want from the service. Perhaps Apple will be able to offer what I want by the time they come out with an Apple TV 2, which will have a much larger hard drive and an IR-based point-and-click interface (prediction).