The results: Apple TV vs. cable TV

Cory Bergman April 1st, 2007

I unplugged my cable TV box and substituted my Apple TV in a week-long experiment to see if I could live off the a la carte shows on iTunes for less than my $92/month cable bill. I’ll admit up front that it didn’t trump my Comcast service (I have a HD DVR with VOD and HBO), but with a few added features and a little more iTunes programming, Apple TV would be my choice. Here’s a full report, along with some valuable lessons for anyone producing internet video that will ultimately end up on TV…

Whew, where to begin. I’m three weeks away from getting married, and fortunately my fiancee survived the experiment without chucking the Apple TV out the window. She still enjoys watching news on TV in the morning (she gets it off the web the rest of the day), and she lives off the DVR for entertainment programming at night. But after a few days, she started warming to the Apple TV experience.

We were able to watch most of the shows we regularily watch, but the biggest frustration was the delay in downloading shows. Normally, I’d arrive home from work and peruse the recorded shows on my DVR. Yet with Apple TV, I’ll sit down and try to download a couple shows while two or three podcasts are updating at the same time. At times, this would take 30 minutes or more.

The biggest benefit? Well, no commercials, of course. The user interface is terrific. And the Apple TV rocks with music and photos — an area where traditional DVRs are strangely lacking.

Ok, here’s the final tally:

Amount spent on iTunes for the week: $21.89
Episodes of shows we normally watch: 6 ($11.94)
Episodes of new shows I found on iTunes: 6 ($9.95, one show was free)
Shows we regularily watch that we were unable to download: 5, but 4 were in re-runs
Podcasts I regularily watch: 2
New video podcasts I added: 4
Podcasts I watched that aren’t available on TV: 6

Amount spent on cable TV every week, not counting VOD purchases: $23

So in the end, the only show we really missed was 60 Minutes, but it’s available online. Well, and the morning news. A couple of my favorite shows are on HBO — Curb Your Enthusiasm and Entourage – but fortunately both are in re-runs. So was SNL, but it’s also available online. And Frontline is available online.

(Apple TV only plays shows that exist within iTunes. Well, unless you hack it.)

In the meantime, I found new shows and new podcasts. I downloaded three episodes of Lost Worlds from the History Channel. Kate found Dress My Nest. I bought War Zone Diary with Richard Engel. And I subscribed to VH1 Best Week Ever, Scoble Show, ABC World News and NBC Nightly News.

And we found ourselves listening to a lot more music. The Apple TV interface is slick, and we loved the ability to upload our own photos to provide a cool slideshow (mosaic style) while our favorite bands played over our killer Boston surround sound system.

So what were the lessons learned? Plenty. If you work in the digital/online side of TV — or work at Apple — these will be worthy of your time to read:

- Ah, NO COMMERCIALS. For the first couple nights, I dove for my remote control to perform my patented triple-click commercial skip. But alas, no need. By the third night, I thoroughly enjoyed the uninterrupted experience. Yet it’s downright annoying when the show recaps the story coming out of a non-existent commercial break. Recaps are a waste of time and a distraction.

- I found myself changing my routine due to the iTunes download times. Before I would leave work, I’d find a couple shows to watch that night. By the time I hit the road, they were downloaded and ready to go. One night, I pulled my laptop into the kitchen to download a couple shows/podcasts that would be ready to watch by the time I was done cooking dinner.

- Some shows play in 4×3, others 16×9. Some play at 24-frames-per-second, others (like The Office) look terrific in 30 fps. Clearly, the lesson learned for video producers is to take the TV experience into consideration. It’s a careful balance between file size and quality, yet I’d rather wait an extra minute or so to have a 16×9, 30 fps experience. The Office, by the way, looked like a high-quality, standard-def DVR recording.

- Organizing shows on a DVR is much easier than organizing shows on iTunes and Apple TV. When I “subscribe” to shows on my DVR, I don’t watch all of them. In fact, I watch about one-third to one-half of them. On Apple TV/iTunes, when you buy something, you feel compelled to watch it. There needs to be some kind of feature that allows you to subscribe to a show without buying it. Then when you turn on your Apple TV, it should offer previews of the shows, and you can choose on the spot which ones you want to unlock and watch with no download time. Apple TV does show the top 10 movies and TV shows — you can watch a 30 second preview — but those are based on the wisdom of the masses and not my own likes/dislikes.

- Which segues into the next idea: Apple TV should suggest shows to watch. But please do it better than TiVo.

- It’s amazing how the internet really isn’t a perfect substitute for watching the morning news on TV. Kate watches it to wake up, and I’ve grown accustomed to hearing it (although the first thing I do in the morning is drag the laptop up on the bed.) Now if only morning news could be a little less smiley and a little more newsy/satirical/smart. Did I say that?

- The iTunes screen for managing podcasts needs to be simplified. Well, at least for those of us with tons of podcast subscriptions that feature tons of episodes. I realize you can click to expand/contract, but it really shouldn’t be this complex.

- Ok, Apple folks. I was clicking away on my Apple TV remote when all of a sudden Kate’s Mac Book starting spouting Swedish. Turns out the Apple TV remote also triggers iTunes on her laptop, and her Swedish lessons were the first to start playing. This was funny for the first night, but by the end of the week Kate was ready to confiscate the remote.