Two weeks ago today was the Steve Jobs Macworld keynote and on that day he said that we will be seeing a software update for the AppleTV in two weeks (which is today).
I’m really excited for this software update, as many of you know I got my AppleTV for Christmas and have been enjoying it ever since but with this software update I will be enjoying it even more.
The one thing that frustrates me about this though is that Apple has lowered the price of the AppleTV to $229. iSuppli is saying that the AppleTV hardware is costing Apple about $208 to manufacture, which means that Apple must have lowered the cost of the AppleTV to basically the cost of the hardware hoping that they would make their profits with the Movie Rentals/TV Show purchases. If my AppleTV was purchased just a few weeks after it was than it would have cost $70 less than it did.
Even though I am very excited for this software update I’m very skeptical as to whether or not I’m going to enjoy the new AppleTV homescreen. I was expecting the homescreen to just have a new button for the iTunes Store, but instead the homescreen is very focused towards purchasing, my AppleTV is mostly used for video podcasts and the fact that I have to go through one more menu to get to them is a little frustrating but I’ll probably get used to it.
A lot of blogs are annoyed by the HD content that will be on the AppleTV, mostly because the content will only be 720p 24fps and the video will only be 4-5mbps. Many HD enthusiasts think that 4-5mbps is a little low and many are saying that it isn’t exactly “HD.” I have a 42″ 720p HDTV and although I can see the difference between HD and SD content I don’t really have much a problem with the iPod formated video, it doesn’t look great but it looks good enough for me, so this bump to 720p will be greatly appreciated and the extra $1 seems very reasonable to me.
To those of you who have an AppleTV I’m sure (just like me) you’ll be hitting “check for updates” fairly regularly.