I purchased my Apple “boys-toys-make-me-look-cool” TV kind of way back in August and I hate to say this, but I haven’t actually watched any ‘normal’ TV since. Not only does this mean my index finger is slowly slipping off the pulse of popular culture but it’s also putting me at risk of having my flat reposessed (I know I rent but it’s more for effect!).
So why is this so revolutionary? Well, to be honest it’s not for most of you. It is for me, I missed out on TiVo and the like so here I am, rambling…
Apple TV is quite possibly one of the best (and worst) purchases I’ve made, this year at least. The pure volume of content that they’re starting to get on there is awesome. I know it costs less to buy the DVD’s and have them in ‘real life’ from Amazon or Play but the problem (for me at least) is that I want it NOW!
Saying that Apple TV is great and wonderful and everything is all well and good but there are definitely some improvements that could be made to help suck more cash out of our pockets.
Make the box more eco friendly.
It’s very difficult to switch the box off, on the first software release you used to be able to switch the box off in any menu or even watching movie/tv by simply holding down the menu button. So, rather than faff around and find the top menu I just leave it on, thus increasing my already large carbon footprint.
Suggest content with friends
Now I know this probably isn’t Apple’s cup of tea, having a social network within the Apple TV box BUT it would be great if you could suggest a movie / tv programme to a friend. Having suggested stuff to friends in the past it would be a nice little touch if you could do it from the TV itself.
Apple TV Suggestions
By making more of tracking the content that I am rating (and how I rate it), the content within my favourites and what I’ve purchased it should be able to start to see what sort of stuff I might like. At the moment there’s no use of the suggestion system that they’ve just started to use on iTunes. It could be so much more powerful if you have more than the “people who purchased this also purchased…”, that only goes so far and really doesn’t make the most of what Apple TV knows about me.
Review content via Apple TV
Now this wouldn’t have to be a full on review, a simple star rating system for you to review what you’ve just watched.
Marking purchases
One thing that annoys me is that if I’m buying programmes from a series I have to check back with My TV programmes to check what I have or haven’t got yet. I know it comes up with an alert if you are re-buying something but that could be quite time consuming. If there was a simple icon next to an episode you’ve bought.
Alerts
For example I’m watching Season 5 of Entourage and Season 6 is out in December on Apple TV. It would be great if I could either pre-order a season pass or simply get a little alert when I next turn the box on letting me know that it’s now available for download.
Another nice touch would be to have the ability to flag movies you’d like to watch or download using Apple TV when they’re realeased. I know that there could be a horrific amount of time inbetween when you watch a movie trailer to when it’s actually released but you never know it could be quite useful. Maybe just having the ability to ’save a trailer’ into a favourites folder would be enough.
Season Passes
Now these are all well and good but generally I use Apple TV to discover new programmes that have either been suggested to me by a friend, I’ve wondered what it was like or I actually know I want to watch it. The problem with a season pass or buying an entire series is that you don’t want to fork all that cash out on something you’re not sure you’d like.
At the moment if I buy two episodes of a TV series and I then decide that rather than either going through and buying each episode individually I want to get a season pass or buy the entire series. The problem with this is that if you do that you are paying AGAIN for the episodes you originally bought. All good for Apple I’m sure but it’s a bit of a piss take to charge you twice!
Ordering programmes
Looking through my list of TV programmes for some reason is displays various seasons of programmes in random orders. I want it to display the most recent first (or last), I want to have the choice to do both.
I think the most interesting thing is what exactly is going to happen when the UK goes fully digital in 2012. Who would want to pay a license fee to the BBC when they can get all of this other content over the web directly into their televisions. I’d much rather fork out the equivalent for the license fee on some sort of license for my Apple TV. At least then you’re not going to have a few over-paid fuckwits like Jonathan Ross but hopefully see it spread out more evenly across the industry.
Either way I love my Apple TV, the biggest problem is the damage that it’s doing to my credit card!
