The Take 2 (now priced at $230) will add stand alone movie rentals with a simple software upgrade (free) to my current box. Pretty slick. These rentals may not be much cheaper than Blockbuster or pay-per-view (we have Dish), but if they provide a good selection of newer films, I can see converting our Netflix to the $9 (unlimited but only 1 at a time) to ensure access to their large library and use both services to optimize selection and convenience. So rentals plus IPod functions plus simplicity makes Apple TV ideal for my needs.

I applaud Apple for upgrading the existing AppleTV units and giving the 900k+ early adopters the newest version. I think the thing that distinquishes Apple more than anyother player is the complete universe of products that can take advantage of the rental of movies and videos: iphone, ipod, Mac, PC, AppleTV. Nothing else ofters that.

http://tinyurl.com/24b9m3

What Jobs apparently dissed was this: You place your content in something called a “peerpod” (which works like a video iPod in a shared information space). This approach allows one, two or as many as six individual advertisers in brand name “peerpods” to sponsor the content because the brand channels that stream the content are themselves attached to hundreds of product or service specific “peerpods” that have been layered across the public Internet since” 1998.

This method allows multiple sponsors in the product or service “peerpods” to microcast their creations directly to audiences of one person or one household without having to package, to stream and then try to extract a profit based on an item that retails for $2.99 or even $3.99 inside the walled garden presently occupied by Apple.

And where are the leftovers for the content producers after Apple gets through selling the content? The margins probably aren’t there, which means at the end of the day nobody makes any money, including Apple, UNLESS Apple intends to package the ads into each and every stream.

Movies are not songs. Three or four dollars isn’t chump change when you can get the same thing from Turner Classic Movies and other sources, including online sources, for free.

Who is going to be foolish enough to pay three or four dollars up front to sell advertising to themselves, which is what the movie distributors quickly found out when they started to offload numerous promotions for additional movies burned into DVDs.

Unless Apple beefs up AppleTV (say for instance, apple buys slingmedia and integrates the best features of their two products: AppleBox anyone [lol] - watch live tv on the iphone wirelessly) or figures out a way to get movies earlier/exclusively on itunes, the masses will discern no real ‘need’ for another media box regardless of how easy or inexpensive it makes the process of renting movies .

AppleTV with only MPEG-4 content isn’t compelling, just like the iPod would have been a failure if it had only been able to play .m4a and .m4p files.

If that happened, I would drop my Netflix subscription (or at least lower it — I did watch a lot of Anime). One thing that Netflix still has up over Apple is with Episode based titles. You can get a single DVD with 3-5 episodes on it whereas Apple requires you to get each episode independently.

Also, Rockband is the best video game experience since Wii.

I love it!!

On average, we rent about 5 movies/month (sometimes more) from Netflix. We’re on the 16.99 plan. 5*3.99 is about $20, so still more expensive, and you get them 30 days later.

Also, TV shows are still WAY too expensive. $1.99/episode I could see for new shows, but I’m currently watching Charmed through Netflix and there were 8 seasons of that. There’s no possible way I’m spending that much to watch a TV show. I might as well buy the DVDs (which I don’t want to, since it’s not a series I want to keep).

I think I’ll wait to see if they come out with a subscription model or something, or lower their prices.

The 30 day wait for new releases doesn’t help much either. If my local Blockbuster is any indication, I’d guess 80% of rentals are from new releases.

The purchase option I can’t currently do with my set-up, but that isn’t something I would use.

I don’t really see why I would want to purchase this? Am I missing something?

Why would non-geeks buy such a tool if they can rent movies?

I would have given this tool for a really symbolic price ($49.-). Then with a large client base, they would be in a position to set the rules.

As usual Apple is taking (without hesitation) the money of early adopters….

I would expect Apple to go “no drive” in most if not all of their portable computers within the next two years. Why bother putting BluRay in a MacBook when you can just go to iTMS to buy or rent stuff. They saved you money, you can’t lose or scratch the media, you’re going to watch it either on your TV or you computer anyway, and you didn’t get caught up in yet another format war. Are you really THAT attached to a 12cm piece of plastic.

DVD drives? Who needs ‘em. Apple’s got their sh*t together on this one.

uh, I get that now with Vista and Orb and a media center extender. I can also rent movies online with this system and I just watched all of Heros Season One oneline with netflix on my 52″ LCD TV. I also get High Def PVR with Media Center. It took me all of 5 minutes to set up. Why Microsoft doesn’t tout this more is beyond me.

Remember, this is basically simply a full blown Apple computer (think Apple’s version of MediaCenter but well designed and priced right), I’m sure exposing additional functionality is a question of software updates. OK the PVR/Tuner will require some additional hardware. Anyhow, in 5 years I don’t think the notion of “channels” that need to be captured/stored, will be relevant anymore.

My disappointment is in rental price. Personally, I was hoping for $1.99/$2.99.

In any case, I’m definately buying one and I’m really not much of a gear-boy.